Poll 33: One brand for the rest of time

November 5, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

I’ve met a lot of disc golfers in my relative short time playing this game.

Some jam as many discs in their bag as they can. It’s a virtual rainbow in there, with colors, brands and anything one can think about having.

You have the types who are very loyal to certain brands and will try and carry only that brand of discs — and even a bag by said company.

No matter if you fit one of these types or something else, people tend to be loyal to certain things. Whether it’s the willingness to try anything out there or the loyalty to stick with one single manufacturer, the choices for a disc golfer are endless.

So we want to see where you stand when it comes to brand — but we’ll get to that poll shortly.

First, let’s check out last weeks poll when we were wondering how many aces you guys have.

The results were pretty interesting.

Of the 192 people who cast a vote, 58 (30 percent) said they had no aces. I, unfortunately, am in that bunch, too!

That was followed by 2-5 aces, which received 56 votes (29 percent). One ace tied with 6-10 with 20 votes (10 percent), followed by 11-25 (20 votes/10 percent), 26-50 (7 votes/4 percent); more than 100 (7 votes/4 percent) and 51-100 (4 votes/3 percent).

Some of those numbers are crazy!

If I have one ace during my days of playing disc golf, I’ll jump for joy. But having somewhere upwards of 50 or 100? Holy smokes! I wonder what the feeling is like compared between the first and the 100th? Does that excitement ever calm a bit, or is always wild?

Before getting back to this week’s poll, let’s see what some readers had to say about aces.

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DGCR 101: A history of commitment drives the Internet’s largest disc golf hub

November 2, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

This is the first of a two-part series about DGCourseReview.com. Check back next Friday for the second installment.

By Steve Hill — Rattling Chains staff

When many players discover the game of disc golf, it is only a matter of time before they want to branch out from their home course and discover other venues to play.

Luckily for them, searching Google for “disc golf course” or “Frisbee golf courses,” much to the chagrin of those who despise that term, yields many results, none more useful than DGCourseReview.com

Boasting a directory of more than 4,500 courses, Disc Golf Course Review (DGCR) allows players to find courses, track scores, map out road trips, and so much more.

Genesis of the site

New players of the past were not always as fortunate as those today.

Take Tim Gostovic, the brainchild of DGCR. The Rochester, New York native started playing disc golf 10 years ago and was immediately hooked on the sport. As his interest grew, he and his friends took their love of the sport beyond their local surroundings.

“After I had been playing for two years or so, my friends and I started traveling outside our area to play new courses,” Gostovic said. “That escalated to full-on road trips after exhausting the nearby options. We would visit the PDGA site to see which courses were around and try to plan our trip.”

But with the PDGA website listing only locations and directions — and with other sources of information being scarce — Gostovic found the planning process to be restrictive.

“The problem was that it was very difficult to decide which courses were worth stopping at,” he said. “There weren’t really reviews at the time, and maps and photos were tough to come by and required going to a club’s site and hoping you could find something there. It was quite the ordeal and didn’t really guarantee the course you were traveling hundreds of miles to play would be a good one.”

It was from these dilemmas that DGCR was born.

“After planning two road trips using the ‘check the entire Internet’ method, the frustration of the planning process led me to the idea of a central repository of maps, photos, information, and reviews to make my life and the lives of traveling disc golfers like myself easier,” Gostovic said. “So I sat down, sketched out some basic page layouts and functionality, and got to work.”

After a little more than a month of development, DGCR was launched in May 2007. In addition to the number of courses available to locate, there are currently more than 44,000 reviews and 84,000 photos to accompany them.

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The five Ws of roller shots

November 1, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

By Jack Trageser — Rattling Chains staff

When teaching or playing with people new to the sport and they see me execute a roller shot for a long, accurate drive, it’s only a matter of time before they ask if I can show them how to do it.

They have correctly deduced that, quite often, a disc can travel farther rolling along the ground than spinning through the air. Actually, if the terrain and conditions are suited for the purpose — and the roller is thrown by someone who knows the right way to do it — it usually is the case. It’s pretty enticing for someone who is having a hard time getting the kind of distance he or she sees everyone else is getting.

Some people avoid the roller as a violation of an important aesthetic element of disc sports. After all, it’s supposed to float through the air. To that, I say geo over it.

At one point, I was in the camp myself. Then I realized I was a person who loved the competitive golf aspect of disc golf. I was jealous that others who could execute rollers had an advantage over me. So, I began to figure out a different world of getting discs from point A to point B.

In fact, roller shots are not as inelegant as they first appear. The same science of selecting the right combination of release angle, arm speed from an air shot applies to rollers as well.

From the time I started to now, I’ve learned a lot. The following is a journalist’s tried and true who, what, when, where and why for rollers. The how will follow in part two of this series.

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