The Rise of the $10M Disc Golf Celebrity
theringer.com
theringer.com
The speed rating on discs can be tricky for beginners. It's intuitive to think that a high speed rating on a disc means it will fly faster and further. However, a high speed rating actually means you need to throw that disc faster in order for it to fly it's proper flight path. If you do not throw a high speed driver hard enough, it will just go 100 feet and curve into the ground. Beginners and intermediates typically will throw lower speed discs farther than they would throw the high speed driver.
If you have the power to throw faster speed discs they will go farther.
In general, most drivers are designed to fly in a "S" shaped flight path. When you get this full flight path, you get the most distance. For a right hand player throwing backhand that means your throw should draw slightly to the right at first, straighten out, and then finish with a fade to the left.
If you throw a disc that is rated at too high a speed for you, it will just quickly fade to the left and go into the ground. You often see beginners chucking their drivers way out to the right in order to compensate for this quick turn to the left. It's just really hard to get distance when you do this because the high speed disc really wants to turn left and dive into the ground.
If you throw a disc that is rated too low a speed for you, it will draw too far to the right and will not straighten out and come back left. In this case, you should either throw a bit less hard or move up to a higher speed disc. For beginners it is better to start here because you can actually get a feel for how throwing speed changes the disc flight path.
Btw, the 2021 Disc Golf World Championships just started. You can watch the first 9 holes here: https://youtu.be/b-OICF4pyK4
When I was young, I was always better off the tee with a 3 or 5 wood, rather than the big ole' driver.
Swinging is really hard on your shoulders. I spent a day surfing, hiking, running and skipping rocks. My pitching shoulder was the one that was most sore (and slightly hurt) the day after.
Just a probable warning for anyone who has shoulder issues. (probably also bad technique)
https://www.dunhamssports.com/product/3-pack_disc_golf_combo...
To make it even simpler - a beginner could confidently play a course with only a mid-range disc. It's that simple. Don't get caught up looking at players who walk around with 30 disc sets in their bag. It's just simply not necessarily for a beginner.
The only caveat here is that it's beneficial to have a few extra discs to replace those that you might lose along the way. I've "donated" a few discs to rivers, swamps, and the like.
The big thing with disc golf, is that you want a consistent flight with whatever you are throwing. If a disc starts to become unpredictable (often times very understable) then it usually gets rotated out, or kept in for specific use cases (big turnovers, rollers, etc).
Some advice I got which I used to build mechanics/power was to not throw any fast (high speed) driver until I could throw a putter ~250 feet consistently. The one exception to this rule is if your local course has a big dog leg (and a short hole) and you need something that really moves that direction quickly.
The towel snap technique is useful to get an idea of how it should throw. I find I throw different discs for different throws (and one in particular is good for my forehand). But when I started every throw did the same thing no matter the disc. Then I worked through control shots at mid range, and only now is my driving distance increasing.
They will usually also carry some of the factory defect discs which are cheaper. And the defects are usually small or printing defects that would not be noticed when throwing.
I want to Roc! (Roc!)
For $15 we can outfit a kid with a three disc set once they’ve decided they like the sport enough to learn about the differences in discs.
The kids we give these away to are unlikely to get that money from family but a small org can raise the donations with out having to do big donor drives or the like.
Our club only exists because a buddy and me took a cheap basket down to the park to goof around and lots of like minded folks saw us. Now we have a pretty big Wed putting league in one park and temporary baskets we leave in others for putting & field work.
You might try just putting in a park with friends and see what happens.
We are trying to make the sport more accessible to kids on the south (east) side who can’t get out to anywhere else. IIT has a small course but it’s private and their security is known to hassle kids on campus who aren’t students. So having park sanctioned baskets is our focus.
A am very excited to watch the first round of the PDGA world championship tomorrow.
Have fun out there, it's a great sport
I also highly recommend watching a tournament on JomezPro[0]. They do day-after post production of tournaments and their videos are absurdly high quality for the size and scope of their team. They really seem to take an iterative approach to their product and UX and are seemingly just an indie shop who blew away the existing competition over the years while innovating regularly. Even though they're not 'hard tech' I view them as startup-like and a blueprint for video/media companies of the future.
As mentioned in the parent comment, the PDGA world championship starts today (first video tomorrow!) and that's a great way to jump in. You can watch live, but I find the post-production far more consumable. Watching old tournaments is honestly enjoyable too. Very calming to put on in the background while working.
[0] Here's a highlight reel for some quick hits showing off both the production and great disc golf shots: https://youtu.be/DXTVIwOQG2M?t=29
This doesn't pass the smell test at all. Opendorse doesn't give any transparency into how they arrived at those numbers; they could be pulled from thin air, and Opendorse are clearly ignoring some sports. For example, there are zero NHL players on the list despite Forbes listing at least 10 players who should be on that list, including several who make well over a million in endorsements.
I'd wager there are an order of magnitude more than 70 athletes with $1 million+ in endorsements.
Climbing is still a relatively niche sport (though depending on where you are, it might be one of the most popular), but I'd wager participants collectively spend as much on climbing equipment as many more popular sports. The gear is quite expensive, and for safety reasons, much of it needs to be replaced with relative regularity. You'd be hard-pressed to find a sport where people who don't compete at any level spend $500-2000 per year on equipment (though skiing might give it a run for its money, especially when other expenses of skiing are taken into consideration)
As a result, 'professional' rock climbers (many of whom counterintuitively don't participate in competitive climbing), court a wide variety of sponsorships.
Most "professional skiers" just get free gear and travel budgets to film a segment or go to competitions.
To be a professional, you either have to be a massive dirtbag, or have a trust fund; and the former has gotten much harder these days.
Same deal for professional climbers, AFIAK.
I also disagree in that climbing seems quite affordable compared to other outdoor recreation. Shoes and ropes are the biggest wearable expenses (the latter of which you can split with your partner).
You can even get a trad rack for ~500$ that will last you a decade (minus replacing a stuck piece occasionally).
Most importantly, climbing outside is free.
When I walk out of my house to go skiing, I probably have close to 7k in gear on me, all of which has to be replaced every 2-5 seasons :(
I think very few climbers have made $1 million in a year from sponsorships. But if I had to guess, I'd say Alex Honnold and Lynn Hill have (and perhaps a handful of a few others). Sure, it's probably not $1mm every year, but I'd be surprised if they're not making that some years. Right now, the climbing "industry" is also going through a massive boom which has led to hundreds of new gear companies, so this might be the most lucrative time ever to be a sponsored rock climber.
And yes, it's not the most expensive sport either, I already acknowledged skiing is likely more expensive. As someone who climbs outside 30-50 times a year I personally would need to spend ~$400/year just to keep up with replacing helmets, harnesses, ropes, slings, shoes, and misc. lost/broken/damaged gear. It's more because I'm adding to my trad rack constantly, but I know lots of climbers who spend roughly this amount every year, none of whom climb competitively or professionally.
And you can get a trad rack for $500 (in the U.S.), but that would just be single cams from .3-3 with carabiners, a nut tool, and a handful of slings and nuts. And you'd still have to buy it used. Add in quickdraws, double cams, more nuts, and other gear (guidebooks, bouldering pads, totems, offsets, hexes, tricams, UFOs, aiders, big bros, portledges, pulleys, ascenders, haul bags), and as a non-professional climber, it can be very easy to spend >$1000/year.
Compare this with a soccer player who plays a couple of pickup games every week. Even if soccer is a much more popular sport for people to play/watch, it's easy to imagine how the same amount of money could be spent on climbing gear collectively.
You’ll build your rack slowly over a dozen years, maybe tricking in a new cam or two and the odd nut to replace stuff you’ve lost. But nobody ever retires cams, and no dirtbag climber has ever decided to spontaneously replace his entire trad rack.
Similarly, as a sport climber, I get a new rope every six or eight years if I’m trashing it, and a new rack of draws every fifteen. It’s not a regular occurrence.
I moved to Fontainebleau specifically for bouldering and am on the rocks 3 days a week. I go through 2 pairs of shoes a year and add a pad to the collection every few years. If I spend $500 on the sport in a year, that’s a big year.
Compare that to something like surfing, where I’ll spend more than that on baggage fees for one trip, and it just rounds to zero on the scale of expensive sports.
Personally I've been climbing outdoors for almost 3 years now and have had to buy a rope every year (2 ropes one year actually). I realize I'm not 'typical' of a climber, but I've probably spent $9000 USD total on equipment in the time frame. Mostly new equipment, but also mostly on sale 20-30% off retail price. But even the 'dirtbags' I know may save money by not paying rent, hitchhiking, living in vans, or camping, and still can spend $400-600 a year on climbing equipment
To be honest it’s pretty cheap living here. The little village were in isn’t on the train line to Paris, and it’s not a fashionable spot for parisien weekend houses. It’s just a farm village, with real estate priced accordingly. There’s no way you’d be able to buy so much as a tear down within 50 miles of a west coast city for the price of this house. And it wasn’t anywhere near the bottom end of the market.
You should probably come out for a season to see for yourself.
I climb ~50 days a year and I've got 5 year old draws that I'd still whip on.
I don't think soccer and climbing are even in the same ballpark when it comes to market size. I hope they never are because outdoor areas literally couldn't survive that level of popularity.
PS: Join the AAC if your aren't already. Gives you access to a bunch of discounts, including BD. Cams are in stock and 35% off rn.
But for argument's sake, let's say 5%. That's still 5% of climbers who are likely to spend more in a year on equipment than 99% of people who play soccer ever will. That's why I'm saying it's a sizable industry when you look at what people are spending.
I think your overestimating the profit margins on climbing gear (very thin) and underestimating the popularity of soccer (think every school has 20 kids buying expensive cleats that are mass produced).
Janja Garnbret has been the unquestioned top female climber since she started being a pro climber, but an American or British climber will always get more media coverage.
My wife was a sponsored rock climber when we met, and we know quite a few top level climbers (including a couple that non climbers might actually have heard of). Sponsorship keeps many of them going, but not at the level you’re thinking of.
Think “can afford to do a euro trip staying at Airbnb’s”. Which is cool, but you probably make more than any of them with your developer gig.
One of the interesting things about climbing though, is that this is often all the compensation climbers get. There aren't climbing leagues/teams that pay climbers a salary comparable to other sports (I suspect some competition climbers get paid a salary or stipend, but I doubt it's as much as a professional football/basketball player). But there is so much money to be made from selling climbing equipment, the manufacturers are heavily incentivized to get their names out. And the superstar climbers like Honnold will get sponsorships from other companies as well (Red Bull, Clif Bar, etc.)
One day hopefully.
https://opendorse.com/blog/top-100-highest-paid-athlete-endo...
Yet, this article from Sports Illustrated claims Derrick Rose and John Wall have multi-million dollar endorsement deals with Adidas that would have been active in 2019.
https://www.si.com/nba/2018/02/06/derrick-rose-adidas-sneake...
This article from Forbes claims footballers like Sergio Ramos and Luis Suárez earned more than $1 million through endorsements in 2019.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2019/06/18/the...
It might not be an order of magnitude, but there are certainly many more professional athletes who earned more than $1 million in endorsements in 2019.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/08/26/high...
It’s a silly comparison. Mike Conley Jr. makes about $30m/year salary. He may not be that interested in endorsements.
I can't say enough how much I love playing it. There's just something about flinging a disc a hundreds of feet around obstacles, walking around with your friends chatting about whatever that's a nice break from basically everything that's not disc golf.
It's had a serious effect on my overall happiness.
Although ball golf and disc golf share some of the same rules and name, don't get caught up in the trap that you need to have a bunch of discs to play. Unlike ball golf, you dont need a bunch of different discs for different distances. There are many times when you want to throw a high speed driver 100 feet, and even more times when you want to throw a putter off the tee.
One could get away with a starter pack for a good while, will come with fairly light weight fairway driver, midrange and putter. If you play much you will quickly get a feeling of what might be missing from that and start filling in the gaps.
You will often see people carrying around 20+ discs (I would fall into this category myself) but really if you were to look at my bag and watch me play much you'd see I probably throw the same 4-5 discs the vast majority of the time.
What usually ends up happening is you want to have a duplicate or 2 of the main discs, and maybe extra putters for practicing (or more so, throwing putters vs putting putters) and then will also have some more niche discs such as a roller disc (very understable) or super overstable discs (playing in headwind, or short approach you want a skip and to move left (right hand backhand) right (right hand sidearm) quickly.
But most of these things will be course dependent, and also not really mechanically useful until you have played quite a bit.
I'm also a fan of esports, having got into Rocket League a couple years ago. It's quite interesting the difference. There are professional players there, but I've never quite understood how esports works - it feels like a VC funded Ponzi scheme that will implode some day. Like, how are all these Rocket League players getting paid?
The difference, I think, with disc golf is that to play, you actually need to buy some physical things (discs), and those will eventually get beat up from hitting trees and concrete, or you'll lose them, so there's constantly people out there spending a bit of money. (Not a ton, mind you, and that's part of what I love about the sport; the vast majority of courses are free! Just a walk in a park, basically.) And so these disc manufacturers can afford to sponsor some pros and so on.
I imagine the Paul McBeth deal is so big in part to be splashy and bring attention to the sport, but it's not so outlandish to me like with esports.
None of the wrestlers he beat got a shoe deal, because wrestling isn't that big a market, and who wants to wear the loser's shoe?
A lot of good wrestlers lost to Cael. A guy named Daniel Cormier is one of them. Cormier went on to win championships at two different weightclasses in the UFC. But he never got a shoe deal.
The biggest difference between discgolf and other sports is that the popularity structure is inverted. Discgolf is popular as a played sport. Most other sports are popular as a watched sport. Not many people aren't taking off early on Friday to go to compete in beer league wrestling. Good luck on your local course Friday at 3pm.
It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on its watched popularity cure.
Possibly in the US - over here in the UK, https://discgolfuk.uk/where-to-play/ reports 64 (some are "coming soon") of which 45 are "pay to play".
Redwood Curtain, Peregrine Point, hell even world famous DeLaveaga all started out this way. A close friend of mine used to say "If a course didn't start out as a garbage dump, its probably not worth playing"
The thesis of the article seems to be that this isn’t enough. It’s the marketing and social media aspect that makes the money possible.
McBeth might not be the disc golf GOAT, but he’s close and he’s in the right place at the right time and is learning to market himself. His lifetime on the course earnings (again, from the article) are less than 5% of one year of his current endorsement deals.
But then again, maybe disc golf is coming of age in a different era, where social media will just be ingrained moving forward, and it will continue to be just as important, if not more, than your performance on the course.
I think of it not as one type of thing overtaking the other, so much as it is something like an unbundling of the traditional sportsfan experience. The individual athletes will have one set of content, the leagues will have another, and you can participate in either with fewer commitments. Sponsors get a smaller but more focused niche market to tap into.
Maybe, but traditional golf also has the image, historically, of being a sport for the wealthy. I think this becomes sort of self-perpetuating, since it automatically attracts new wealthy people to the sport.
I think the spending power within the group of people that practices the game also affects the size of the total purse.
What made it send us to the disc golf videos - my interest in Formula 1, combined with watching some esports? Or was it just a random suggestion, because the disc golf videos have a high like count and watch-through-score, because they are really well produced?
You see four guys throw the disc in the same way, and a fifth one throw it some other way. With the second, third etc throws you get the flight paths of the earlier throws superimposed on the picture, so you can immediately compare those flight paths. You get instant distant measurements, and course overviews (like a mini map).
All this hooked me instantly.
I have no idea if "proper" golf has stuff like that, but if not, they should.
Eddie Felson: "If you got an area of excellence... you're the best at something, anything... then rich can be arranged. Rich can come fairly easy."
If you're one of the best at something, at that point you just need a lever, a platform of consequence to hitch up to and ride. Whether that's being the best toy reviewer on YouTube, or the best podcaster on a giant streaming service, or the best writer on Substack, or the best disc golfer.
The Doppler effect was pretty sweet when you let it fly :)
> It was originally approved in 2007, but had its approval rescinded the next year because it was argued that the disc did not have "radial symetry.
Discs with thick, round rims (generally "putters") already stop pretty short when they land. It's the distance drivers with sharp edges that can roll a long way, but those are very aerodynamically designed and bumps would probably mess that up.
Plus, there's regulations about the size and weight of discs, so it might not be allowed on PDGA tour anyway.
Also, I hate to generalize, but I've found that course regulars are extremely consistent about being welcoming and patient with newbies. The culture of letting people play through, giving people space to learn, and helping folks navigate tricky course layouts has been remarkably consistent.
My absolute favorite experience was playing in the San Juan islands. The locals were so excited to see us checking out their course... so much that their smiles and waving is still the thing I remember most about that entire trip.