DISK GOLF CLUB IS HAVING A BLAST
Sport that began in the 60s is flourishing in Vacaville
When Gabe Neustadt was growing up in Santa Barbara, he noticed some poles with metal baskets down the street from his high school. He had no idea that they were part of a disc golf course.
“But one day I was out with my brother, and his friend invited us to play some disc golf,” recalled Neustadt, who was a baseball pitcher for his school. “I didn’t even know what it was. I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go check it out.’ And he gave me this one specific disk that your throw overhand, kind of like in baseball, and it does a corkscrew move and it can go pretty far.
“I threw it like a baseball and it went like 600 feet or something ridiculous, and I caught the bug and after that I was pretty much playing daily… So it was a loveat-first-sight kind of thing.”
Neustadt, 30, has been playing ever since and is one of about 100 members of the Lagoon Valley Disc Golf Club in Vacaville.
Modern disc golf started in the early 1960s, but there is debate over who came up with the idea first. In 1965, George Sappenfield worked as a recreation counselor during his summer break from Fresno State. While playing golf one afternoon, he thought that perhaps the kids on his playground could play golf using Frisbees.
The children liked the idea and Sappenfield promoted the idea through the Wham-O Frisbee company. Independent of Wham-O, a small group from Rochester, N.Y, had been playing disc golf. They decided to make the 1974 City of Rochester Disc Golf Championship a national tournament to
find out just how many other people around the country were playing disc golf.
That’s when disc golf was born as an organized sport. A countless number of players have fallen in love with it since. During COVID it has become even more popular.
“Especially with the pandemic people are trying to get outside and do something,” noted Neustadt. “The
boom in disc golf has been pretty incredible in the last couple of years in general, but especially in this last year there has been a ton of new players out there picking up the sport, which is pretty cool to see.”
Disc golf is played much like golf, which disc golf players refer to as “ball golf.” Instead of a ball and
clubs, players use a flying disc. The sport shares with golf the object of completing each hole in the fewest strokes (or, in the case of disc golf, the fewest throws).
The discs, though smaller than general-purpose recreational Frisbees, are heavier. They measure between eight and twelve inches in diameter and weigh up to about seven ounces. Thie discs vary in design according to their purpose — distance drivers, fairway drivers, midrangers and putters.
The distance drivers have the pointiest edge and the biggest rim. The fairway drivers are more bluntnosed, with a smaller rim. Mid-range discs are like a general-purpose Frisbee, with a very rounded edge and thin rim. The putter has the most rounded edge and is the most accurate for short shots.
As in regular golf, good putting is crucial to success.
“There is a saying which I think goes for all kinds of golf,” said Neustadt. “‘Drive for show, and putt for dough.’ Anybody can throw the disc out there a couple of times and get relatively close to the basket. But you really increase your score by getting your putts in the basket from the shorter distance.”
The basket contains chains that surround the pole. Hit the chains and the disc falls into the basket.
The Lagoon Valley course has 27 holes. When the club
plays its weekly match on a weekday afternoon, it plays 18 holes. Its larger monthly and annual meets are 27 holes. Apart from one par four, every hole on the Lagoon Valley course is a par three.
Neustadt rates the course as a six on a scale of one to ten.
“Some of the more challenging, unique holes are the front nine,” he pointed out. “It plays around the lake and the smaller lake, so you’re throwing over or around water. So it definitely can be challenging, especially with the winds at Lagoon Valley.”
Neustadt is one of many who transitioned from ball golf to the disc version of the game.
“I grew up playing ball
golf,” he said. “My buddies and I would play pretty regularly. When you’re younger you got the special rates. But as I got older it became pretty expensive and that’s one of the main reasons I transitioned to disk golf. It was free for the most part, so you could just go out there with some friends and enjoy it together.”
It is free at Lagoon Valley (apart from the $5 parking charge at the park). And it is open to anyone. But players have to provide their own discs.
The Lagoon Valley club is part of the Professional Disc Golf Association. There are different levels of play — recreational, amateur one, amateur two, and open professional.
Neustadt plays in the
open division, where winning players can earn some money. But he does not tour year-round and try to make a living from it. He said that a top player recently signed a professional contract that will pay him $10 million over the next ten years.
For Neustadt, it is mainly about the competition.
“I played disc golf in the beginning just for fun,” he said. “It was just a way to get outside and exercise and hang out with friends and enjoy the time together. But as I graduated out of baseball (he played in college) and moved on I was really lacking the competition in my life. I dove back into disc golf to be more competitive in it, to take it from casual play to something that I could focus more on in trying to get better and compete and be the best disc golfer I could be.”
He said that nobody ever reaches perfection.
“It’s like ball golf in that it’s such a game of inches and precision, it’s really almost impossible to master,” he said. “With disc golf, there are so many factors in play, different discs and different conditions. We play on wooded courses and open courses and elevated courses and flat courses. A little bit of an angle (in releasing the disc) can throw things off. It’s very technical.”
But it is still fun and the group, which usually fields 20-40 golfers for its weekday events, is a close-knit one. Golfers mark their discs with their names in case they get lost, and other members who find a disc will return it to them. One golfer, Ian Newell, actually goes out into the water hazards in a wet suit and with a grabber that he uses to retrieve lost discs.
The club holds an annual tournament for the entire Bay Area but was unable to do so this past summer due to COVID. Neustadt, who is in charge of the club’s tournaments, hopes to hold the event again this summer.
Those who want to give disc golf a try can purchase discs online at otbdiscs.com.
To join the Lagoon Valley Disc Golf club, visit the group’s Facebook page at facebook.com/groups/LagoonValleyDGC.