Disc golf is a great hobby and sport to get into. It’s accessible to most people and it doesn’t cost a lot of money to get started. You just need a few discs and you are good to go. After that, just find a local disc golf course and you’re all set for hundreds of hours of fun and exercise. Like I said earlier, disc golf is easy to get into but once you get into playing, you’ll want to improve on a lot of accepts of your game. One that many beginners have trouble with is driving. It’s a complex move that can take many hours of practice to perform well and consistently. Since you are new to the sport of disc golf, I’m not going to go into the detailed steps of performing a backhand or forehand drive. What I am going to share with you is a few simple tips that will get you started in the right direction. If you take these tips to heart I promise you you’ll see some improvement and have more fun on the course. Without further ado, let’s jump into the list of my disc golf driving tips for beginners.
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#1. Disc Down
As a beginner to disc golf, you are going to want to disc down. So, what do I mean by disc down? I mean you are going to want to take that shiny new driver you bought and keep it in your bag.
New players should really focus on throwing slower discs. By slower discs, I mean your putters and midrange discs. Leave those high-speed fairway drivers and distance drivers in your bag or maybe even at home. When you step up to that tee, grab a putter and really focus on throwing it with great form.
When I first started playing, I was like most beginners and wanted a high-speed driver. But after I tried using it for one round, I quickly became frustrated. I found out my form and arm speed wasn’t yet suited for such a fast disc.
A buddy of mine saw my frustration and recommended I disc down and use one of my midranges. He was right and I had a lot more fun when I put that driver back in my bag and started throwing the slower midrange disc. As I got better and my arm got faster than I dusted off that driver I had tried to use to earlier.
#2. Stand Still
When I first started playing disc golf, I drove my discs standing still. During that first round I just naturally walked up to the tee pad and with my feet firmly planted on the concrete, I hurled the disc at the basket.
It wasn’t until later that I noticed that my friends were using a run-up during their drives. When I did more research, I learned this was called an X-step and that it could add more power and distance to your drive. While that is all true, I recommend you leave it out for now.
Driving a disc is a complicated sequence of steps and as a beginner, I’m suggesting you leave out some of those steps in favor of others. In this case, leave off the run-up and focus on the reach back, releasing your disc and following through. Once you master those things, you can then focus on getting the run-up down.
After I noticed my friends and even the pros using an x step, I tried to add it into my drive. But after a few rounds, I learned the hard way that without the perfect form the run-up didn’t really add anything. It mostly took away accuracy. Do yourself a favor and skip it for now.
#3. Keep It Flat
Something you’ll want to focus on while driving is how you are releasing the disc. When I started playing disc golf, I remember my first drives being very inconsistent. This was mostly due to how I was releasing the disc.
I was throwing the disc with my wrist bent. This resulted in my drivers quickly turning left after leaving my hand and hyzering out into the woods somewhere. Not the most fun you can have on the disc golf course. No one wants to spend time searching for their disc in the leaves when they could be playing.
Do yourself a favor and focus on taking your putter or midrange disc and releasing it flat and low. This should help you get a more consistent result off the tee. As you learn how your discs fly you can start to experiment with different angles.
#4. Understable Plastic
While throwing slower discs can be beneficial for newer disc golfers, something else beginners should consider about their discs is the disc stability. Stability or the high-speed turn rating of the disc refers to the disc’s tendency to turn left or right after leaving the players had.
Understable discs are recommended for newer players. Newer players tend to have slower arm speeds and at slower arm speeds, understable discs are easier to throw. When an unstable disc is thrown by a newer player, they are likely to see a nice straight flight. If the same player were to throw a more stable or overstable disc in the same way, they will likely see their disc take a hard turn left (for a right-handed player) and crash into the ground.
But how do you know if a disc is understable? I mentioned the high-speed turn rating earlier and how it measures the tendency of the disc to turn once it leaves a player’s hand. This measurement is printed on most discs. If you’ve noticed the four numbers printed on most discs, this is what I’m talking about. It’s called the flight rating system and the third number in the sequence is the turn rating. A disc is considered understable when this number is a negative number. As a beginner, you are looking for a turn rating of -1 to -5.
Disc Golf Driving Tip #5. Ask For Help
If you are reading this article you are already doing this tip. As a new player, you can speed up your driving ability development by asking for help. This can be from online sources, like this website, or in person.
Getting general help online will point you in the right place. You can get more specific suggestions on help with your release or follow throw by using online resources. There are also great online forums like Reddit that you can ask questions or even post a video of you driving and get help.
While online resources are great, I also want to point you toward your disc golf buddies or local players as a great resource. If you are having a specific problem with your drive, asking those players around you might be the best option. They can see your drive in person and point out maybe what you are doing wrong and help you change your form to correct it.
Also, just playing with better players will help you develop as a disc golf player.
Disc Golf Driving Tip #6. Practice
This tip may seem like a no-brainer. By practicing your drive over and over you will see improvement. I would suggest taking your bag to an open field near you and throwing each disc one after the other.
This helps because you can really focus on your form and making changes to improve it. You also won’t have to worry about obstacles you may see on the course or the added decision making that playing a round of disc golf can have. By regularly practicing your dive in an open field you will see improvement.
I also want to point out that I didn’t personally take this tip to heart until much later in my disc golf development. When I first started out, I just played rounds of disc golf and maybe did some putting practice. It wasn’t until much later that I added in fieldwork. After I did, I really started to see improvement in my drive.
Image Credit Flickr Creative Commons – MarkScottAustinTX
