The Cost of Disc Golf

Disc Golf is often praised as a low cost sport- all you have to do is buy some discs and you’re good to go!  Most disc golf courses are free to play, where as in “Ball” Golf you have to pay per round, and often for a cart as well.  However, Disc Golf isn’t always “free” for a lot of players.  We wanted to take a look and see how much people spend on Disc Golf outside of disc purchases.  Once you’ve purchased your first set, what is the game going to cost?

Most additional costs will come from joining and playing in a weekly league.  Some people will play skins, or other money related games with their friends while they play. Pay to Play courses are slowly gaining popularity as well- and what will that cost per round?  Let’s look at some stats on Disc Golf related costs.

First we’ll look at how much people spend on joining a league.  leaguecost

Right away we see that the highest bar on the graph is the $0 response.  While I haven’t been in a “free to join” league myself, I could see how that might be an easy going and fun approach. However, I can see club funds being low or even nonexistent.  The local club near Infinite Discs costs $10 to join, and that gets you a Bag Tag which adds some (usually) friendly competition to the league rounds.  It also allows you to play for a CTP prize each week, which is paid for from the Club Funds.

The next highest response was the $16-$20 answer, with most other clubs just above or below that price range.  These fees are usually once per year, which makes them very affordable.  If you’re not part of a league, it is a fun experience to have!  The costs do go up, though.  Let’s take a look on weekly club costs.

How much do people spend at league on a weekly basis?
weeklycost

Most people pay between $4-$6 a week to play with their club.  At our local club, the cost is $5 with an optional Ace Pot and an optional Cash CTP. This makes the cost $7 a week if you’re all in.  Of course, if you play well you can win some of this money back, if not more.  To some, this may be affordable and fun, to others, they may prefer to play with their buddies for free.

Pay to Play courses are popping up more around the country as well.  These courses are usually well groomed, quality 18 hole courses (often built on ball golf courses) that you pay a small fee to play each time.  In the survey we asked, “What is the most you are willing to pay to play a round of 18 holes at a quality disc golf course?”  Here are the results:

paytoplay

While some people said that they wouldn’t pay to play disc golf, the overall response was positive towards paying to play.  $4-5 and $9-10 peaked together, with the other price ranges getting a good amount of votes as well.  Based on this data, we can predict that pay to play courses may continue to become more popular.  People are willing to pay to have a good experience on the course!

Other costs to Disc Golf include becoming a PDGA member for $50/year, as well as the costs of registering to play in tournaments.  These costs allow the player to be more competitive by obtaining a PDGA number and rating, and competing against others to raise their rating.

In summary, we see that there are costs associated with Disc Golf aside from the purchasing of discs.  However, they aren’t required costs, and that is what makes the sport so appealing to such a variety of people.  You have the option to grab some discs and play for free on your local course as often as you want.  For those that are wanting to get deeper into the game and culture, there are loads of options available to pay a little extra and play more competitively.  Altogether, Disc Golf can put a dent in your pocketbook, but compared to many other “mainstream” sports, the cost is still relatively low.

What is a Disc Golfer?

What is a Disc Golfer?

Disc golf has become a huge part of many peoples’ lives, and will continue to do so as the years progress- but what does this mean? Many of us closely identify ourselves with the sport, maybe writing about disc golf in our social media bios, or talking about our incredible putts at work.  Do these things make you a disc golfer? Like everything in life, the question of how to classify somebody is not as simple or binary as “yes, you’re a real disc golfer because you’ve collected over a thousand discs” or “no, I’m sorry, you are not a true disc golfer because you didn’t buy the new DGWT DUDE hoodie”. Most likely this kind of conversation concerning being a disc golfer will never end with a simple definition.

As the snow melts around the country, and the days get longer, you might be so fortunate as to find yourself on the course more often. Whether you took some time off during the winter months, or you managed to keep your driving distance up all season (props to you!), hopefully you had a chance to reflect on 2015, and thought about what you wanted to do in 2016. I know I did, and right on top of my goals for the year is “give my good friend Dylan a run for his money at the Trilogy Challenge this year.” (On a side note, who else is super excited for the new Trilogy Challenge discs: the Falchion, Marshal, and Sling?) Whether your aspirations for the year included disc golf or not, you probably did get the chance to think about things you wanted to do.

What do your plans or other commitments say about you though? My personal goals range from disc golf to a biology research project. In this community we have a huge variety of people, from vastly different walks of life. We are fathers, mothers, daughters, brothers, and grandparents. We are accountants, web developers, machinists, drifters, and potters. It is this variety that ultimately defines the sport, at least for me. I don’t think of the group as a bunch of disc golfers, but rather, a huge ecosystem of diverse and amazing people who all enjoy throwing plastic and rubber at metal baskets.

Again, these are just my thoughts concerning this topic. What really makes it a conversation is the sharing of thoughts. Asking others involved in the sport about what they thought it meant to be a disc golfer wrought responses like “one word: friendships” from twitter user @TheWiffle24 and “camaraderie amongst generations” from Robert Lair. Please let us know what you think it means to be a disc golfer, so that we can keep growing the discussion. Thank you for being you, it really is our diverse set of perspectives that makes this sport so awesome to be a part of.

Top 10 Words Used to Describe Disc Golf Game

While our monkeys are crunching away to bring you more 2016 State of Disc Golf Survey results, I slipped away to show you guys some fun data.  In a recent giveaway over on our Facebook Page, we asked people to enter by commenting ONE word that described their Disc Golf Game.  

top10post

We had 330 responses with a wide variety of answers.  I enjoyed reading those comments so much that I put together a little chart to show you the top 10 most used words in the Facebook comments, plus some fun runner ups.
wordgraph

The number one most used word was “Improving”, which I love to see!  I feel the same way about my game and it’s great to see other people succeed.  However, I think a lot of us can relate to the second most used word, “Inconsistent”.  My guess is that we can all relate to each of these words at some point during our game.

It was also interesting to see the balance of Positive vs. Negative responses.  I realize that spur-of-the-moment words used to enter a giveaway aren’t the best data points that can be gathered, as some people may put certain answers just to be funny or unique. But perhaps this will give us a little insight to what people think about their Disc Golf game in general.

I painstakingly went through every word and marked it as “Positive” “Negative” or “Neutral” and made this Disc-Chart to show you the results:

posnegchart

I was glad to see that most people view their game in positive light, especially when thinking of a quick word to use.  I myself might have been caught up in the “Treenied” or the “Strugglebus” category, but luckily I didn’t have to answer for myself.  We do know from our friends over at Zen Disc Golf that being positive is key!  Let’s just remember that everybody who answered this Giveaway question was trying to win a free disc, so obviously they love the game and want to play more.  

 

If I had to pick a word now, it would definitely be “Passion”. (That way I can still hit trees and be inconsistent- passionately inconsistent.)

 

After the top 10, these were the runner-up words:

Consistent 4

Beginner 4

Grow 4

Meh 4

Newbie 3

Sporadic 3

Noodle 3

Rough 2

Lefty 2

Promising 2

 

And some of my favorites:

Epic (Mhmm)

Bodacious (Mmmhmm)

Sexxxy (Mmmmmhmmm!)

Infinitely-Good (Are they really that good, or just trying to get some brownie points?)

Poetic (Beautiful)

Splendiferious (I didn’t know that was a word until I googled it)

Frontrimbanger (Technically three words that describe my putts all too well.)

Hellacious (adjective: very great, bad, or overwhelming.  I guess that goes either way!)

Ambidextrous (Okay, now I’m just jealous)

And the rest displayed in a nice word cloud:

wordcloudonly

Well that wraps up today’s word-stats!  Hope you enjoyed reading this very important article!  Now get out there and tear it up on the course!

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