Author: Ted Hegemann

Throughout our annual State of Disc Golf survey results blog series, we’ve talked about almost all of the poll questions. We’ve covered our demographics, tournament interests, and what we do or do not know about certain brands. We’ve talked about pros, how many discs we own, and what we look for when buying a disc, among other subjects. In other words, we’ve covered a lot of ground. However, we ended up with a few extra poll question that we still need to address.

We still need to find out how we responded to questions about our education, how we keep score in casual rounds, our ace numbers, and transgendered women playing in FPO. Realistically, I could have included each of those in one of the other blogs. But, they got skipped over. So let’s address them now!

Education

Although there were a couple percent of us (1.8%) who didn’t graduate high school, there are also a couple percent of us who are too young to have finished yet. There are 3.7% of us under the age of nineteen. That could easily account for most of those who didn’t graduate. For reference, the Department of Education stated that the graduation rate in the US is around 90%, and that number has been climbing for decades.

If you look at the percentage of us who went to a Trade School or got a degree, that accounts for over 57% of us. As for the 28.7% of us who got some college, we can also say that a certain percentage of respondents are still going and will end up graduating.

Comparing disc golfers to the general public, we have a higher percent of us who got a Bachelor’s Degree. The survey puts disc golfers at 37.6%. The US census (for 2021) shows that 23.5% of Americans got a Bachelor as their highest degree.

The advanced degrees for disc golfers were a little closer to the US average, but still higher. There were 14.4% of the US population with advanced degrees (Masters or Doctoral), and there were 16.1% of disc golfers with advanced degrees. Regardless of our education, I think we can all agree that we are smart enough to pick up a great sport like disc golf!

Keeping score

When it comes to keeping score in a casual round, I’m glad to see so many people use an app. If more rounds are recorded, it’s easier to take that data to a city or town and propose a new course. Most municipalities like the idea that a new course might draw in people from surrounding areas, as well as take care of the needs of their own residents.

There were 68.6% of us who indicate we use an app to keep score in casual rounds. Although there are numerous apps on the market, UDisc is the biggest. That app keeps score, give you stats, and helps you know how far you’ve thrown.

The number of people who either don’t keep score, or do so in their head, is around 29%. And a small percentage of us who still use a physical scorecard. Since there are reusable, waterproof scorecards that attach to your bag, it can be even easier to use a physical scorecard. However, most people would rather use their phone.

ACES

According to the Ken Climo Wikipedia page, The Champ had 103 aces in his 20-year PDGA career. That is five per year, and that is just in PDGA sanctioned competitions. Some people just seem to hit more aces than others. Part of that depends on the courses being played. But, part of that is skill (or luck!). In the survey, we asked how many aces people got last year. Let’s see how many people racked up some aces.

A whopping 60% of us didn’t card a single ace last year. If you happen to play longer or more difficult courses, you really don’t even have ace opportunities. Plus, even on the holes that you can reach, you might be laying up your shot for an easier birdie. If you come close to getting an ace, but miss the basket, you’re usually looking at a longer comeback shot.

One in five of us got one ace last year. And 9.1% got 2 aces. That means 90% of us got two or fewer aces. And only a handful of people (11 people) got 21 or more. I would be interested to see the average hole length for those aces.

Transgender Disc Golfers

If you follow the tournament scene in disc golf, you’re probably aware of the wild ride that transgender FPO player Natalie Ryan went on last weekend (as of this writing) at the OTB Open. In case you weren’t aware of her situation, Natalie is suing the PDGA and Disc Golf Pro Tour (DGPT) in California because of a new PDGA rule regarding transgender players. (The rule can be seen HERE). That rule precluded her from playing at the Pro Tour competitions.

Just before the OTB Open, Natalie’s lawyers sought a temporary restraining order to allow her to play. The California court ruled in her favor, and she was allowed to play the opening round. However, the PDGA and DGPT then filed an appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court, which reversed the restraining order and prohibited Natalie from continuing to play, due to the PDGA rule. (If you are interested in the legal aspects of this and other disc golf related cases, check out the Disc Golf dot Law YouTube channel HERE.)

Which brings us back to the survey. We asked how you felt about the rule. Is it a fair policy? Is it unfair for transgender women? We narrowed the choices down to four options, out of necessity. Since there is much nuance to the subject, and a lot of strong opinions, we didn’t allow people to write in answers. That basically makes the data unusable, since there is such a variety of opinions. If you didn’t agree with three of the answers, you were able to select “No comment/other”.

A lot of people chose No comment/other as their answer. Nearly one in four either didn’t think the options fit their opinion, didn’t want to comment, or possibly haven’t come to a conclusion about how they feel. That is a significant number of people. There were 14.1% of us who felt the policy is too strict and unfair for transgender athletes.

Two categories that received the highest percent of people who selected them are the 31.8% of people who thought the ruling was not strict enough, and unfair to non-transgender female athletes (Chromosomally female, etc., as listed in Part A of the rule), and 30.9% who thought the rule was fair.

Since men make up a majority of those taking the survey, if we break the results down according to gender, the men’s chart looks pretty similar to the overall numbers. However, here are the results of the women who took the survey:

There is a significantly smaller percent of women who think the policy is fair, versus the total number, and a larger percentage who think it is not fair for transgender athletes. Also, a smaller percentage of women who indicated No comment/other. In light of the numerous FPO players who have vocally opposed Natalie playing in FPO, I would have thought those two results would have been different.

We’ll see how Natalie’s lawsuit turns out, and what impact it might have on disc golf.

That’s all for this year’s State of Disc Golf survey! See you next year!

It wasn’t long after I started playing disc golf that I started throwing only Innova discs. I’m not sure exactly why I made that decision, but it probably had to do with Paul McBeth. He was sponsored by Innova and was also winning World Championships. I was a big fan of his, and probably wanted to throw the same brand as him.

My bag has definitely changed since then. Now I try to support the home team and throw mostly Infinite molds. However, I definitely have a mixed bag. I currently have six or seven different brands in my bag. Many of the Innova molds that I started with were replaced with similar Infinite molds. I do still have my original Dart that I started putting with years ago, but most of the others changed.

Which Disc Golf Brand Is Our Favorite?

We asked a few questions in the State of Disc Golf survey concerning the brands that we consider our favorite, and whether or not that brand changed in the past year. Let’s take a look at the results and see which brands are the most popular.

We’ve seen in past surveys that most of us throw a mixed bag. Which means we have more than one brand in our bag. In fact, we might not even have a favorite brand. So, the survey gave us the choice to indicate our favorite brand, or which single brand that we had the most of in our bag.

Innova is the favorite brand of one in every four of us. That’s quite bit more than second place Discraft. Discmania is sandwiched between two trilogy brands near the top of the list. And MVP rounds out the top five. A total of 56 different brands were chosen by at least one person as their favorite in the survey.

There were quite a few people who gave answers such as, “I don’t have a favorite” or “I like several brands equally”. Sometimes it can be hard to pick just one. That is a good commentary about having so many brands that make quality discs.

Did Our Favorite Brand Change?

The follow-up question that we asked in the survey was whether or not people’s favorite brand changed last year. People can have a lot of different reasons for changing favorites. So we also asked the people who indicated that their favorite brand did change last year, why it changed. Here are the results.

Surprisingly, nearly a third of us decided to switch favorite brands! That is a lot higher than I would have guessed. Switching favorite brands means learning new discs and breaking them in. Let’s take a look at why people were switching favorites.

New Plastic and Flight Numbers

Keeping in mind that people could select multiple reasons for changing favorite brands, nearly three-fourths of the people who changed, said they did so in part because of the flight and feel of new plastic. As we learned in a previous survey blog, the plastic type and the flight of a disc are two of the most important factors we consider when looking at discs. So it should come as no surprise that those two factors would be the reason people might want to change favorites.

The second most popular reason people changed favorites is because of the company itself. There were 40% of people who changed because they liked what the company was doing for disc golf, while 5.1% changed because they didn’t like some things the company was doing. Both groups were voting with their money.

Just over 15% of the people who changed favorites indicated that they did so because someone introduced them to some molds/plastics. I’ve seen a lot of people add a mold to their bag because of the recommendations of a friend or card-mate, but never switched brand favorites entirely. I had to see what brand their friends recommended. Here is a chart that shows the new favorite brand for people who received a recommendation.

MVP apparently draws the most people into its lair with their overmold technology.  Nearly a fourth of the people who changed favorites because of a recommendation did so by changing to MVP. I think MVP can thank Simon Lizotte for that one. His huge sponsorship appears to have paid off.

The next closest wasn’t really close. Discraft was a distant 9.9%. Lone Star was in third place, ahead of many larger brands.

Switching because a pro that you follow changed sponsors accounted for a decent number of us who indicated that is why we changed. I suppose that is why I chose my favorite when I started. Plus McBeth’s leaving Innova might have influenced my brand selection.

From One Brand To Another

The final question about favorite brands that we asked was meant to see which brands we changed from, if we had a change last year. We wanted to see which brands decreased in the number of people who chose them as their favorite, and which brands increased. Here is the data:

It looks like Innova took the biggest hit from their former fans. There were 35% of those of us our favorite brand was Innova in 2022. But this year, only 24.4% of us picked Innova. Discraft and Dynamic Discs also dropped some numbers.

MVP, on the other hand, more than doubled the number of people who indicated that the brand was their favorite at the end of 2022, vs the beginning. Latitude 64 and Axiom also picked up some loyalists.

People will always be switching brands and trying new plastic. With all of the selections out there, why not try something new? Whether or not we make a new brand our favorite remains to be seen. Maybe we love the brand that is our current favorite, but then our favorite pro signs a new contract…

Tune in next week for more results from the State of Disc Golf Survey.

Although the sport of disc golf has been growing steadily for over a decade, none of the growth compares to the explosion in popularity that occurred during the pandemic. Disc golf was the perfect activity for social distancing, and many people discovered the sport during that time.

In addition to the increase in the number of participants of disc golf, we have also seen a growth in the number of new brands hitting the market. There have been new brands rolling out with regularity over the past decade, but the explosion in popularity of disc golf also saw a rapid increase in new disc golf brands. A quick check of the PDGA approved discs list (HERE) and we see that already this year there have been numerous new manufacturers getting molds approved. Even in the past month we see a couple new brands. It will likely take some time before people know about some of the new brands and the molds they are producing.

Which Brands Do We Know?

In the State of Disc Golf survey, we asked if how well everyone knew some of the newer brands on the market. We asked you to rank how well you knew each of 14 new brands. You could rank your knowledge from “Not aware of them” to “I regularly follow this brand”. Let’s take a look at which brands you know best and least.

Who Are They?

Let’s begin by discussing how you ranked each brand that you were unfamiliar with. Part of the challenge in starting a new brand is getting the word out about your molds and plastics. That can cost a lot of money that newer companies might not have. You can’t rely on a pro getting an ace on video using your disc, like Cole Redalen did with Wild Discs’ Sea Otter. Here is a graph showing how many of you didn’t know these brands.

Five brands have a similar percentage of individuals who are not aware of them. Momentum Disc Golf (Now Momentum Discs), Wing It Disc Golf, Goliath Discs, Premier Discs, and Pie Pan Discs are all within a couple of percentage points from each other. All of these brands are just a couple of years old, and only have a few molds. As they grow and add more molds to their lineup, maybe they’ll get more recognition. Word of mouth about a great disc can give a young company a big boost. Hopefully this blog will get people to check out these brands.

Sounds Familiar

Next, let’s look at the brands that people had at least heard about.

Birdie Disc Golf Supply and Doomsday Discs are two of the ‘most heard about’ brands on the list. Both of these brands have been featured in Infinite Discs’ blog series about smaller brands that we carry. Birdie is a Delaware company, and Doomsday is a very, very unusual company that is headquartered in Wyoming (I think) but uses a variety of manufacturers and distributors (Including Infinite Discs) around the world.

Check out the Birdie Disc Golf Supply blog HERE.

Check out the Doomsday Discs blog HERE

Joining Momentum at the bottom of the list is local (to Infinite Discs) manufacturer, Wing It Disc Golf. Check out the Wing It blog HERE. Only a small percentage of us have heard of these two brands. It will be interesting to see how they grow and become more well-known.

Know A Bit About Them

Moving on to the third level of knowledge about brands, we’ll look at how many of them we know some things about. Maybe we’ve been to their website or checked out discs that they make. Here is the chart:

At the top of the list we have two brands that have garnered some attention lately. Clash Discs has announced some big name pros that they are sponsoring. The move ensured that their name would be known among anyone who follows pros to any degree. They also advertise on live events, getting their molds in front of a big audience. Check out our blog featuring Clash Discs HERE

Trash Panda Discs had a decent-sized following long before they released their first disc. Jesse, the founder of Trash Panda, had a stated goal of manufacturing and producing discs that are made from recycled plastic and are fully recyclable. He achieved that goal and is now working to expand his lineup. I interviewed Jesse before Trash Panda was even a year old. Check out that interview HERE

Finish Line Discs is just a year old, but many of us know about the brand because it was started by one of the top touring pros, Drew Gibson. That certainly helps get exposure for a new company with just a few molds.

Let’s Chat About Them

Knowing about a company, and holding a conversation about the company, are two different things. To hold a conversation about a brand takes more than just seeing a commercial, watching a pro who throws the disc, or seeing one of their discs in someone’s bag. If we know a brand well enough to converse about it, that means that we’ve at least spent time checking out the company or listening to a buddy who throws their plastic. Here are the numbers:

Once again, Clash and Trash Panda are at the top of the list. UPlay made an appearance in the top five companies. That is the brand started by Infinite’s Zoe Andyke. UPlay has one disc, the Zeal. Their focus is on growing the sport of disc golf by introducing it to kids of all ages.

I Know Them Well

The final category which indicates the level of understanding is which brand we follow. These are the brands whose molds we are familiar with, and maybe we even throw some of their discs. Let’s look at the results.

Once again, Trash Panda has the highest percent. Over ten percent of survey respondents indicate that they regularly follow this brand. Since Trash Panda has a popular Youtube channel and a mission that resonates with a lot of people, it is not surprising that they are in the number one spot. The large gap between Trash Panda and the second place spot IS somewhat surprising. Their 10% number represents hundreds of people who took the survey. Well done, Trash Panda!

If we look at the number of people who either knows about the brand, can converse about the brand, and regularly follows the brand, we can find the brands with the most exposure to the disc golf public. Given the top two  brand in the last couple of graphs, the winner pretty much comes down to two brands. Drumroll, please…

Trash Panda edges out Clash by just a few percentage points! Both of those brands can feel proud about the attention they’ve been able to draw to their brands in an ever-growing competition for attention. Congrats to both brands!

Check out Infinite’s selection of the brands mentioned:

Trash Panda Disc Golf
Clash Discs
Finish Line Discs
Doomsday Discs
UPLAY Disc Golf
Birdie Disc Golf Supply
Hooligan Discs
Terminal Velocity Discs
Alpha Discs
Wing It Disc Golf
Pie Pan Discs
Goliath Discs
Premier Discs
Momentum Discs

Check back next week for more State of Disc Golf Survey results.