Discmasters TV — looking at a disc golf’s first variety show

January 2, 2013 / P.J. / Leave a comment

By Jack Trageser — Rattling Chains staff

Most of you who read Rattling Chains or the School of Disc Golf blog know I run School of Disc Golf as a side-gig, mainly because I thoroughly enjoy getting new players hooked on the game and helping those already addicted get better.

You’ve likely read, at some point, that I used to play in as many tournaments I could, topped out at a 999 player rating (so close!) and, for a time, was an officer of the DeLaveaga Disc Golf Club.

What I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned in this space before is another off-and-on project of mine — Discmasters TV. Since the first new episode in quite a while just hit YouTube, it made sense to take a little time to tell you about the show and its origins.

It started when I came across a YouTube video that covered a Santa Cruz tournament called the Faultline Classic. I thought the video was well-produced, given the obviously limited technical resources. I decided to approach the person who posted the video with an idea I had been tossing around for some time. The concept was for a lighter side of disc golf-type variety show, incorporating instruction, interviews and cheesy — and badly acted — comedy. It should be no surprise the last part came naturally.

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Happy New Year! And the winners are …

January 1, 2013 / P.J. / Leave a comment

I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year’s Eve.

Remember — lots of water will help you with many issues from a night like that!

And like that, 2012 is behind us. With 2013 now in the picture, may your year be full of birdies, aces and, of course, chains rattling. We’ll continue to grow as well and hopefully do it with all of you!

For about the past week, we’ve also been holding a series of large giveaways. The prize packages, I think, are truly awesome. We had many entries for each contest, which is always good to see.

We have more things to give away and plan on doing it soon.

For now, let me announce the winners. For those who won, please e-mail me (address is below) with your full name (if not used for the entries), and address so I can get this stuff sent out to you!

Let’s get to the winners!

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Poll 40: Looking to 2013

December 31, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

Happy New Year’s, everybody!

Before we begin here, I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you may celebrate!) and I hope you all prosper in the New Year. Be safe out there tonight!

We’re back from our break starting today. And, if you’ll remember from the one post, we’re going to be a little more laid-back for the new year. That means though we’ll strive to keep our Monday to Friday schedule, we might miss a day here and there because we want to make sure Rattling Chains continues and is sustainable.

Hopefully, in the long run, it will make us better. My goal for 2013 is to make this blog even better than our first year.

How about you guys?

What will 2013 bring? We’ll get to that more in a second. First, let’s see what some readers said about 2013. Our last poll asked what you best disc golf memory of 2012 was. We only got 113 votes for this poll, but of those, the winning selection was “other” with 27 votes (24 percent).

Second place went to playing in your first tournament with 20 votes (18 percent), followed by improving certain aspects of your game (17 votes/15 percent), reaching a big goal (16 votes/14 percent), a new course or two you played (15 votes/13 percent), winning a tournament (10 votes/9 percent) and learning how to do something new (8 votes/7 percent).

It seems like it was quite varied when it came to people’s thoughts about 2012, so let’s see what some readers had to say.

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Celebrate the holidays with a Rattling Chains giveaway

December 26, 2012 / P.J. / 73 Comments

I hope everyone had a great day yesterday and that the holidays are treating everybody well.

And despite the Rattling Chains staff being on vacation this week and giving the site a break, something needed to be done…

… such as a major giveaway!

Since before we officially launched this blog, we’ve had many people donate stuff to be used for giveaways. Therefore, the pile is growing. With that in mind, I thought it would be good to make some packages up and have a giveaway where we’d give more than one thing away.

There are three groups of items we are going to be giving away. For each, there are specific things you need to do. If you don’t do exactly what is required, your entry will not count without notification. Any entries that require you to post comments below need to be separate. In other words, if you are entering two of the contests and they each require a comment, you need to comment twice and do it as required.

So make sure you read this fully before just entering or your entry might not count!

Also, though you can (and I would encourage you to do so) enter each contest, you can win only one. It would be smart to enter each, though, giving yourself better odds to win something!

Read on to see what you have to do to enter each contest.

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A long road to create the PDGA course directory

December 21, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

By Allen Risley – for Rattling Chains

As a big fan of Disc Golf Course Review, I had to read the profile of its history that ran on Rattling Chains.

The article — and its follow up –was great. Steve Hill did a fine job of highlighting the the various tools available on DGCR – tools I have made a great deal of use of over the past several years. Whether it’s searching for new courses to play, tracking the courses I’ve played, building a road trip itinerary or searching for plastic through the marketplace, DGCR is a great resource. And I’d like to feel I played a little part in making DGCR happen.

You see, I compiled the first PDGA Course Directory.

The original PDGA Course Directory. (photo by Allen Risley)

I had to chuckle a little when reading about the frustrations of DGCR founder Tim Gostovic in regard to planning disc golf road trips using the “check the entire Internet” method. Imagine how frustrated he would have been back in 1984, when there was no Internet to check! Hell, at that point there wasn’t even a complete list of courses in printed form to check, much less one with a search function.

Early disc golfers – those with 4-digit or lower PDGA numbers – typically used word of mouth, a dog-eared copy of the PDGA Pro Tour tournament calendar, or an old copy of Frisbee World or Flying Disc Illustrated magazine to find new places to play.

And paper maps — lots of paper maps.

There weren’t a whole lot of places to find. Back in the early 80’s there were only a few hundred disc golf courses in the ground. In Florida for example, where I played, many of our tournaments were played on temporary courses set up just for the weekend using objects, homemade targets or portable DGA baskets. So even the tournament listings weren’t a sure bet to use to find a new course – it may have been packed up in someone’s trunk right after the trophies were handed out.

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Rattling Chains fun and games: Dec. 20

December 20, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

If you’ll recall, when we posted about the future of the site, we said we were also going to try and do a few fun things, such as games.

This is the first of those games.

We’re going to test the water a little here and see what kind of response we get. Hopefully, it’s something people enjoy as I think it’s a neat little way to do things a little more fun and laid back. Not everything can be serious!

So what we have here this week is our first crossword puzzle. Though it looks small, you should be able to click on it to get a larger version and hopefully be able to print it out with no issues.

Feel free, too, to let us know what you think about the games feature in the comments below. We’ll have other crosswords, as well as some word searches and other things in the future.

Enjoy!

Stumped?

Need to check to see how you did?

Check out the answers here.

If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else, feel free to e-mail me and the crew at: pj@rattlingchains.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Giving back can inspire others to do the same

December 19, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

By Jenny Cook — Rattling Chains Staff

There are many inspirations for this article. Perhaps my recent trip out west is most fresh in my mind. After spending time with locals and the tournament directors for the Beaver State Fling, I quickly discovered the eminent presence of community between everyone.

They were open-minded and embraced the evolution of the sport we all love to play. And the tournament layout for the tournament proved it. If I could build a house next to any disc golf course in the world — and taking into consideration I’ve only played a handful of courses outside the United States and fewer than 200 in the U.S. — I’d build it within biking distance of Milo McIver State Park in Estacada, Oregon.

The scenery at Milo McIver State Park in Estacada, Oregon is amazing. (photo by Jenny Cook)

The scenery was amazing and the people were great, which created an unforgettable atmosphere.

I have seen something like this in my home state. In fact, I am reminded of it every year as a local club spends months preparing for its annual Ice Bowl in January. I love that bringing two canned goods to the tournament is mandatory. The money raised is given to a local shelter for women and children. There’s also always a hot lunch prepared for players and a nice warm fire where players can get close and thaw out.

Every year, we crawl out of our warm beds in the early morning to reunite with friends who we don’t see as often on the course in the winter as we do in warmer weather. It’s a sanctioned tournament and we’re all there to have good rounds, but if you don’t, you still drive home with a smile knowing that playing in this annual tournament benefited the less fortunate.

The added bonus is spending the day catching up with friends and playing some disc golf — even if it’s really could outside.

Disc golf serves as an outlet to get away from it all in a carefree way. I had the opportunity this past summer to help with a disc golf clinic for a local homeless shelter. The afternoon I spent with the children and adults was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

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Poll 39: Looking back at 2012

December 17, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

In a few weeks, we’ll turn the page on 2012.

So why not now to look back at the year in regard to disc golf. This week’s poll will be covering your best disc golf memory from the year.

Maybe it’s that tournament win. Or figuring something out about a new technique.

It could be something such as hitting a 50-foot putt.

With a year full of disc golf memories, will you be able to pick out that one moment — that perfect event — to be your best disc golf memory of 2012?

We’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s go back to last week’s poll and check in to see what some of you had to say about the oldest disc in your bag.

We had 149 people respond to this poll. The overwhelming majority selected a disc that is 2-5 years old (63 votes/42 percent). The second choice was 6-10 years (37 votes/25 percent), with a year or less coming in third (20 votes/13 percent). Then the older discs started popping up as 11-15 years old placed fourth (17 votes/11 percent), followed by 16-25 years old (9 votes/6 percent) and more than 25 years old (3 votes/3 percent).

That’s quite the range. I know I’d like to see those 25-year-old discs and what kind of shape they are in!

Let’s see what some of the readers had to say.

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Product Review: MVP Amp

December 13, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

By Steve Hill, P.J. Harmer and Dave Coury — For Rattling Chains

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a fan of MVP Disc Sports. In the company’s short existence, I have tried all five of its molds, and have bagged three for a nice driver-midrange-putter set-up – the Volt, Axis, and Anode.

At the same time, I love understable plastic. The Innova Roadrunner and Latitude 64 Fuse – a couple of the flippiest discs on the market – are staples in my bag for their control and ease of use.

So, when MVP announced it was releasing the Amp, an understable fairway driver, I was excited. One of my favorite brands releasing my favorite kind of disc, obviously, had some appeal, and I knew I wanted to throw it.

One thing I knew coming into the review is that MVP discs – whether it is due to the overmold, or some other phenomenon – tend to require more snap and spin to fly as advertised. To wit, it took me a month to really dial in the Axis and learn how to throw it correctly, which seemed odd for a mid-range.

This is almost a blessing and a curse for new users of MVP discs. Stick with them, and your snap will likely improve. But it can be extremely frustrating to click with the disc at first, which can make it easy to give up on and move to an old standby.

And even though I knew this would be the case with the Amp, I still found myself frustrated with my first few throws with it. Since it was advertised as understable, I expected a nice gentle turn out of the box, with maybe a little fade.

I know it is user error, but If I wasn’t really concentrating the first couple times I threw this disc, it would hyzer out on me real quick, leaving me a little demoralized and ready to throw in the towel.

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Feeling what it’s like to ca$h at a tournament

December 11, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

By P.J. Harmer — Rattling Chains staff

Cha-ching!

I’m sure many of you tournament players out there have experienced the feeling of having your name called out after an event and being handed either a gift certificate or cold, hard cash when you place or, better yet, win.

What a feeling.

To be fair, I kind of already experienced it. But both times were pretty cheap — and I’ll be the first to admit it.

I won’t be making a living off playing disc golf, but it still felt cool to get this.

When I first started playing, I somehow won the first tournament I was involved in. It was non-sanctioned, and the other person in the division was just as new as I was. Basically, we were battling to see who wouldn’t finish last.

I also somehow won a PDGA-sanctioned event. But I was the only person in the division and the tournament director was kind enough to leave the division intact and not force me to move up and get whipped.

Needless to say, I never really experienced the feeling of cashing.

My normal goal when I play in a tournament is to not embarrass myself. That basically means I try not to melt down and I hope to avoid big-number holes. But if the course is long and for big arms, I usually start dragging by the end of the second round. I get pretty beat up and it makes the game no fun.

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