Our Course Preferences and Courses Played
This week we’re going to look at what types of Disc Golf Courses we like by examining our vegetation density and course length preferences.
We will first take a look at the vegetation density, broken down by skill level.
Right away we see that Beginners like moderately wooded courses just a tad more than lightly wooded courses, but they are almost equal. However, Intermediate players vastly prefer moderately wooded courses. My speculation is that Intermediate players want more of a challenge, and they enjoy taking their game to the next level by having more trees to throw through.
Once players reach the Advanced and Professional levels though, the lightly wooded courses take a step back up to nearly 25% of preferences. Moderately wooded courses still reign supreme, while thickly wooded and wide open courses remain a minority. This could be because Advanced and Professional players are competing more, and courses with too many trees could add in some unlucky tree hits and kicks, hurting players scores. Yet, these players still prefer moderately/lightly wooded courses because it adds far more technique and skill than a wide open course.
Now we take a look broken down by gender:
We don’t see any vast differences between Male and Female disc golfers’ course preferences. The only noticeable difference is that males seem to prefer moderately wooded courses a bit more.
Now, taking a look at length of course preferred by survey participants. Here is a break down of the course distances broken down by the survey.
Short Courses: Less than 4500 feet
Moderate Courses: 4500 – 6000 feet
Longer Courses: 6000 – 7500 feet
Pro Level Courses: 7500+ feet
This is what you would likely expect in course length preferences, broken down by skill level. Beginners mostly want the moderate length courses. Intermediate players like the same, but with a growing percentage of people enjoying the longer courses. Advanced players have a larger percentage who enjoy pro level courses and longer courses, while moderate still reigns supreme. Professionals (with good reason) prefer pro level courses more than others, but still enjoy an equal mix of moderate and long courses. Short course preferences are all but lost among the higher skill levels.
I’m led to conclude that as your skill level goes up, the more likely you are to enjoy a longer course. This is what I predicted before examining the data, and you probably did too.
Here is the breakdown by gender, in case you were curious. These results are also to be expected:
Let’s take a look at our summary of course preferences of every player. These results show that the most preferred course type is Moderately Wooded with Moderate Length. This is followed by Lightly Wooded and Longer Courses.
Lastly we’ll take a quick look at how many courses we played in 2017, by skill level.
The results are also to be expected. As skill level rises, the average number of courses played last year rises. However, in every skill level, the most common answer was 10-15 courses played last year. It was the 2nd and 3rd most common answered that varied by skill level, slightly rising with each division.
In conclusion: We love Disc Golf, and as we get better at it, we want to play harder courses and we want to play more courses. This is to be expected! The only response that was not linearly effected by skill level, was the intermediate players preference to course vegetation density. It dramatically increased from beginners, and then dropped back down with advanced skill level.
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We’re excited to see a wide age spread participating in the survey and in the sport of disc golf. We’re also happy to see that disc golf is becoming a popular activity even among those over fifty with survey participants reaching well into their sixties, seventies and a few in their eighties. We’re hoping to see more growth among a younger, teenage crowd, bringing up the next generation of exciting professional and recreational players.
