50 Fun Facts About Disc Golf

Who is regarded as the father of both the modern Frisbee and the sport of disc golf?

He got the idea throwing Frisbees at a trash can during lunch breaks at Wham-O.

How did Ed Headrick earn the nickname 'Steady Ed'?

He and friends snuck onto golf courses at night to play rounds with discs.

Where did Headrick design and install the first disc golf course in 1975?

Employees from the nearby NASA Jet Propulsion Lab played at lunch and the game spread across the country.

In which year did Headrick found the Professional Disc Golf Association?

The same year he and his son Ken started the Disc Golf Association to make discs and targets.

What did the first disc golf target designed by Headrick consist of?

The chain-and-basket 'Disc Pole Hole' followed in 1977 and could catch a disc from every direction.

What did Headrick and his son trademark in 1977?

It was the first formal target with chains and a basket, and became the PDGA technical standard.

What happened to Ed Headrick's ashes after his death in 2002?

The proceeds funded a museum and disc golf centre in Columbia County, Georgia.

Headrick's redesign of the Frisbee received a US patent in which year?

He was reworking the Pluto Platter mould to remove planet names and happened to thicken the rim, making it more accurate.

Who invented the flying disc that became the Frisbee, selling the rights to Wham-O in 1957?

It began with a popcorn-can lid tossed after Thanksgiving dinner in 1937 and became the 1955 Pluto Platter.

The name 'Frisbee' was borrowed from a Connecticut company that made what?

Yale students were tossing Frisbie Pie Company tins and calling the Pluto Platter by the same name.

Why do organised sports say 'disc golf' and 'ultimate' rather than using Wham-O's brand?

Wham-O refused to license the name for 'Frisbee golf', which is partly why Headrick left the company.

Roughly how many disc golf courses did the UDisc directory list worldwide by end of 2024?

About 90 percent of them are free to play.

Which country has the second-most disc golf courses after the United States?

The US has 75 percent of the world's courses, Finland 7 percent and Canada 3 percent.

Which country has the highest density of disc golf courses per square kilometre of dry land?

Kristin Tattar, the 2022 women's world champion, is one of its stars.

How many disc golf courses are there in Antarctica?

There are courses on every continent, including 24 in Latin America and 8 in Africa.

How many holes do most disc golf courses have?

Exceptions usually come in multiples of three, and the longest holes stretch past 1,500 feet.

What does the PDGA recommend as the average length of a hole?

No hole should be shorter than 100 feet.

On a course sign, what does a 'mando' tell you?

Signs indicate whether the disc must pass above, below, or to one side of a line.

Under PDGA rules, how must the disc finish for a basket hole to count?

Hitting the chains often deflects the disc into the basket, but not always.

By tradition, who throws first from the tee?

Players are also expected to stay out of the thrower's sight line and keep quiet.

What are the three general categories of disc golf disc?

Drivers have a sharp bevelled edge with mass on the rim; putters fly slow and straight.

What is the maximum weight of a PDGA-approved disc?

Typical golf discs weigh 130 to 180 grams and measure 21 to 22 centimetres across, smaller than an ultimate disc.

For a right-handed backhand throw, an overstable disc tends to track in which direction?

An understable disc drifts right; manufacturers rate this as 'turn' and 'fade'.

In Innova's flight ratings, 'turn' is scored on what scale?

+1 is the most overstable and -5 the most understable at high speed.

What is the term for a throw released with the disc angled to follow its natural fall?

An anhyzer angles the disc against its natural flight.

Why does a flying disc predictably fade at the end of its flight?

Spin adds gyroscopic stability like a top; when the spin and velocity lines cross, the disc begins to fade.

Who holds the world record for the longest disc golf throw, set in 2016?

His 1,108.92-foot throw beat Simon Lizotte's 863.5-foot mark from 2014.

In the PDGA rating system, what rating does a player who averages the courses' Scratch Scoring Average get?

Those players are considered 'scratch players'; averaging under the SSA pushes a rating above 1000.

In which year were the PDGA World Championships first held?

They have crowned champions in several divisions annually ever since.

Ken 'The Champ' Climo won how many PDGA World Championship titles?

Nine of them came in consecutive years from 1990 to 1998.

How many PDGA World Championships has Paul McBeth won?

Four in a row from 2012 to 2015, then 2019 and 2022; he never finished outside the top two at Worlds in that span.

In July 2018 Paul McBeth shot what historic score for 18 holes at the Great Lakes Open?

It came on the Toboggan Course in the second round, and he cruised to the win.

In 2021 McBeth signed a 10-year, $10 million deal with which manufacturer?

He had left Innova for a four-year Discraft deal at the end of 2018.

Where is Paul McBeth from?

He was born in 1990 and turned pro as a teenager.

Ricky Wysocki beat McBeth to the world title in which two consecutive years?

Wysocki turned pro after winning the 2010 Amateur Worlds.

Paige Pierce, from Plano, Texas, has won how many World Championships?

Her 17 Major wins are the most of any female player, plus two Mixed Doubles Worlds with Jeremy Koling.

Kristin Tattar, the 2022 women's world champion, competed in which sport before disc golf?

She was a two-time Estonian youth skiing champion and signed a $500,000 deal with Latitude 64 in 2021.

The United States Disc Golf Championship is played on the Winthrop Gold Course in which state?

It is on the Winthrop University campus in Rock Hill and has been a Major since 1999, sponsored by Innova.

The Ultra-Star's maker, McBeth's sponsor since 2019, was founded in 1978 in which country?

Jim Kenner and Gail McColl started in London, Ontario, before moving the company to Michigan in 1979.

Before creating disc golf, Ed Headrick worked at Wham-O, where he market-tested which other toy?

He worked three months without pay in 1964 to prove himself and rose to executive vice president.

In disc golf scoring, what is a hole finished three throws under par called?

A condor is four under par. A clip of pro Philo Brathwaite making an albatross drew more than 1.4 million online views.

Who set the 863.5-foot distance record in October 2014 that stood until 2016?

The German-born pro's mark was smashed less than 18 months later by a throw of more than 1,100 feet in the Nevada desert.

In Innova's flight ratings, the 'fade' number is scored on what scale?

Fade describes how hard the disc hooks as it slows at the end of its flight. Discraft uses a single stability number from 3 to -2 instead.

Students at which Texas university held tournaments using trees as targets as early as 1964?

Several groups played independently through the 1960s, including teenagers in Santa Barbara who used gazebos, fountains and lamp posts as holes.

Early-1960s players at Augusta's Pendleton King Park tossed Frisbees into what as targets?

The chain basket that replaced such improvised targets did not arrive until the mid-1970s.

The International Disc Golf Center and Hall of Fame sit on Clarks Hill Lake in which state?

The clubhouse houses the Ed Headrick Memorial Museum, whose exhibits run from a Frisbie Pie Company pan to the first prototype pole hole.

During the 2020 pandemic boom, disc golf was televised for the first time on which networks?

The re-aired Pro Tour championship drew 225,000 viewers, making it the most-watched show on its channel that day.

Which colour marks the top PDGA skill band, for players rated 970 and above?

The bands run Green, Red, White, Blue and Gold, and tournament tiers are often colour-matched to the difficulty of the course layout.

Which university's women's team first won the National Collegiate Disc Golf Championship?

A 2020 PDGA survey counted just 4,752 women among its 71,016 active members, though the Women's Global Event has grown to nearly 100 tournaments.

Which YouTube trick-shot star and ex-AUDL ultimate player joined Discraft in January 2020?

He made the jump to the Disc Golf Pro Tour the same year, bringing a large online following with him.