From the mobile desk of E. R. Harris: Disc Golf or Stick Golf, ‘tis the question . . .

Being a lifelong lover of physical activities, mostly team sports, but some individual sports as well, naturally I came across the sport of Golf (hereafter referred to as ‘Stick Golf’) as boy growing up in the late 80’s. My grandfather played—a pretty common statement from the patriarchs of middle and upper class American families who can afford to play the sport—and he was the one who first got me to start hacking with a golf club.

Archilles D’ Arezzo, a first generation Italian-American, was a hard working union man who loved nothing more than a round of golf followed by an 8 ounce bottle of beer shooting the shit at the club house with his buddies. Just one beer, then off to do the errands, shopping and home to watch the Redsox game. His golf swing was an effortless thing of beauty, and he played into his early 90’s, still hitting the driver and fairway woods straight as an arrow, low line drives, not very far. Putted like a pro, rarely ever three-putting.

To Stick Or Not To Stick? That is the question . . .

When I finally got my own clubs when I was 13 years old, I was hooked for awhile. My best friend and I would go to our local nine hole, get treated like utter trash by the clubhouse dickhead Steve who, for some reason, liked to make all of the kids even more intimidated to show up and play the already tough sport. If you flubbed your first shot off the Tee Box on Hole #1, he would be out there frowning, arms crossed, staring at you, basically showing how much he disapproves of you slowing down the flow.

But damn . . . stick golf is HARD. This is coming from a kid who played every sport imaginable, who had excellent hand eye coordination from hitting baseballs for years, and who had the desire to get better. Shank. Shank. Shank. The body mechanics of the golf swing are incredibly difficult (focal points, swing axis, etc. etc.), and that is why improving one’s swing is one of the most profitable physical skills someone in the business could offer to their clients.

That brings about the money aspect of Stick Golf, and notice I still haven’t mentioned the word disc, or frisbee, or basket, or derel, yet. The negatives of stick golf are already apparent in my introduction, and now I shall pile on more of them—Stick Golfer’s brace yourselves if you haven’t already stopped reading with eyes rolling. (Those of you in that category will be moving on from this pseudo-intellectual exercise soon). But let’s be honest here, financially- speaking, the game of Stick Golf has got to be the most elitist sport that exists on the planet—with the possible exception of snow sports at resorts. Both require you to step on private land and an ENORMOUS fee, before you have even started your day. (Full disclosure time: Yes, I’m somewhat hypocritical—like all fallible humans—I do snowboard once a year and Stick Golf a few times a year. But, to quote the great Adrock aka Adam Horovitz: “I’d rather people call me a hypocrite than be the same person my entire life.” If you’re a Beastie Boys fan, the new live format documentary by Spike Jonze is a must-see. RIP MCA!)

An example of the elitist nature of the above mentioned sports? Sure: One day my friend and I bumrushed Tahoe, the 4 am get up and go to Squaw, and come back on the same day that evening after an epic day of pow—aka the ‘strategic strike,’ as it’s called in our strange California Surf Lingo. Well, one run into our day, my buddy injures his wrist. It’s serious enough that we have to go seek medical treatment at the lodge immediately, and know he was done for the day. Refund? Not a chance. Do I get to ride anymore that day? Nope, he’s bummed, ready to go home, I have to drive, I threw down more than $100 (back when that was a lot of money) and I got one run in. Lift ticket prices now would make your head spin.

Example #2: I was super sick (possibly with an early batch of Covid last Jan before it hit the main stream) bit had planned this trip to Squaw many months before, mixed in with a concert with my favorite band, friends coming up to rent the cabin . . . so I forced myself to go up there. I managed, once again, one run, and had to take the tram down to the bottom after I realized I was not physically able to snowboard. Refund? Not a chance in the world. Ski resorts pay several million dollars a year to their teams of lawyers, you think they give a damn about a dude who can barely afford to go once a year and gets shut down because of injury or sickness? We’re fodder.

Stick golf—same deal. Pardon the pun, but there is no break if you break something. There’s no refunds. You’re going to pay to get onto my private land (usually some of the nicest natural world spots in the world, utterly decimated by the awful techniques used to keep their grass short and their greens flat. Hint***yet another negative to Stick Golf: the environmental impact of the sport. Don’t get me going on that topic).

Before I start doing a straight across value comparison between the two sports in several categories—entertainment, exercise, financial, environmental, mental, and, most important of all, in light of the BLM movement and what’s happening in our country during the year of 2020, sociological—let me give you the ‘Folf’ genesis for me, since I shared with you already my early experiences with Stick Golf.

I’m a proponent of ‘Folf’, of course, but I just threw this 424 foot bomb leaning against the pin the other day for a ‘tap-in’ for bird, so . . . I might be extra, extra biased right about now.

Disc Golf—affectionately referred to in CSL speaking circles as ‘Folf’ (Frisbee + Golf = Folf; or, in contemporary iterations: (Free + Golf = Folf)—was something that was a leisure activity passed on to me as well. But not by Grandpa, by the older dudes who lived in our hometown. Back then, mid-to-late 80’s, there were very few actual official disc golf courses—i.e. signs, tee pads, baskets, etc.—so we learned with actual Ultimate Frisbees, not with the new designs you find all Disc Golfers using today. In addition, we learned to play in a public park, a course carefully designed and laid out by the guys before us. We watched them play closely (they never told us in the beginning what the order was, where to throw from and what was the “pin”—often it was water fountain, a metal pole, a wooden fence post, even a tree between the first limb and three feet up off the ground). But it was a Folf course, our first. A challenging and fun course with cool mandatories (stick golfers you guys don’t have those) and we got to know it really well. We invented other courses of our own in other parks, fields, and up on Bolinas Ridge, on the western slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, but none could compare to Paradise Park.

Then came college, everyone left town, and Folf was forgotten. Temporarily, at least.

I got the bug back when I moved to Colorado in the late 90’s and was so utterly hooked I did some things I would not be proud of. (I hope there is no open investigation on the Mach-3 basket that went missing from a course East of Boulder). Now I possessed a “real” quiver, with multiple discs (synonymous with having a set of clubs in your bag for multiple shot situations in Stick Golf), and the Disc Golf courses had concrete tee pads, signs, and real baskets. I could not get enough of the sound of my disc crashing into the hanging metal chains.

When I moved back to Nor Cal, I searched out every disc golf course in my area and began playing a place called Stafford Lake. It was a monster of a course, and since I played it yesterday it provides a good point of reference for the incredible changes in the sport in the past two decades. Back then, when I first played, they never mowed the fairways. It was six foot weeds and thistle bearing grass blanketing the course in every possible sunny location, whereas, in the shade of the trees, there were massive clusters of poison oak. Every single throw—when I played by myself without a spotter—it took me 15 minutes to find my disc. Many I never found. I learned quickly that, back in those days, you play Stafford in the Winter, when the grass is low and the poison oak dormant. Come Spring? Unplayable. Throw away the shoes and socks—they will never be worn again, unless you are a maschoist who likes being poked by stickers in your feet 24-7. But now—it’s a whole different story. Disc golf is so popular, and such a big draw of people to use the county park were the course is located, they keep it mowed, they move the pins around, they make sure the course is playable and fun—because, believe me, it’s extremely challenging even when manicured. Hold that thought on course maintenance and manicuring until the section on environmental value below.

Pretty soon, the rest of my buddies I grew up with were back in the Bay Area after college and equally-hooked, and we played tons (this was pre marriage and families, obviously). We invented a ritual, an annual event we like to call: Le Tour de Folf, named after the famous, grueling bike race. We camp in Lake Tahoe and play two courses per day, for three straight days. Six course, three days, fewest throws to make it into every basket wins. Period. I had my glory days, now I’m a middle of the pack finisher, but, proudly, I can say that I have been bestowed the title of Grand Master among my crew because I am on the only person to have made 20 straight years. Think about that for a second . . . is there any annual event you have done, without missing a single year, for twenty straight years?

Last year’s scoreboard, this will be the 20th Annual Le Tour de Folf—how many weekend long traditions have you attended 20 straight years?

That’s the allure of Disc Golf! People—can you see where this is going yet? If not, time for the value comparison, loyal Stick Golfer’s beware, you’re not going to like my conclusions.

1) Entertainment and Leisure: Both are very enjoyable for people. This is a very tough one to call. Both sports bring good friends and family together to laugh and rib each other, both can introduce you to new lifelong friends. You definitely don’t lose focus and think about other things when you are out playing either sport. I might call this one a draw.

2) Exercise: Not even close. Disc Golf is a hundred times more challenging to play in terms of physical exertion (maybe a thousand if you’re riding a cart for 18 and hit the ball on the fairway most of the time). Risk of injury in Disc Golf pales in comparison to Stick Golf, as well, with lower back problems common and golfer’s elbow—which I suffer from—severe tendinitis in the elbow join. Can you throw out your shoulder on a backhand drive, or a hammer, or tweak your elbow on a flick, while playing Disc Golf? Of course. You can also sprain your ankle or fall much easier playing Folf, depending on the terrain of the course. However, there is risk of that happening (i.e. falls and sprains) because you are ACTUALLY getting exercise. Some of the courses I have played are challenging just to hike, much less to throw a disc and search all over for it when it lands. Stick Golf is like a walk in the park on even, soft ground and cruising around in a golf cart. On many Disc Golf courses the players will be sweating hard, breathing hard, with elevated heart rates . . . don’t get me started on the F. I. T. T. concept and requirements of a cardio workout . . . there just is NO comparison: Disc Golf is better for your heart. Period.

3) Financial: Do I really need to write anything here? I guess I’m a bit concerned about the recent trend in the past few years (although it is a canary in the coal mine for the sport of stick golf) of traditional golf courses putting in baskets and tee pads and charging disc golfers the same green fees to play. I will refer you to an article here to give more numbers that prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Disc Golf WILL be supplanting Stick Golf in popularity, around the world. Now, remember the genesis of the word Folf is: Free + Golf. Well, 95% of the 8,000+ Disc Golf courses around the world are free to play. That’s zero dollars. What is the average green fee in the US? At a public course, $36 for 18 holes. Private courses—you’d imagine—would be quite a bit higher. Do I dare go into the minutiae of a cost comparison between equipment needed to play each sport, either at a casual or professional level (yes, there are men and women earning a living through sponsorships and tournament winnings today). A casual Disc Golf dude or dudette will not have a bag ($0) and own maybe a driver and putter, possibly a mid-range ($50) and not pay a green fee—EVER—to play. Whereas, a casual Stick Golfer has a bag ($100), clubs ($200), and balls and tees ($40). Then they pay the green fee ($36) every single frickin’ time they play! Again, there just is no comparison—Disc Golf is more affordable.

4) Environmental: This is where Disc Golf, who was already pummeling Connor MacGregor like Khabib Nurmagadegov so satisfyingly did in 2018, really goes for the rear naked choke to finish it. Stick Golf, get ready to tap out. Disc Golf courses are made in only three places: 1)public/state parks, 2)privately-owned land, 3) Stick Golf courses who turn their land into hybrids for both sports. Public parks need to show that people are using them. They shouldn’t be neglected and unmanaged, and if they are in an urban area, they shouldn’t be left for the domain of the homeless and drug dealers—that just prevents more of the public from using them. With the rise in popularity in Disc Golf, parks that were once unsafe were literally given an immediate boost in usage and—more importantly—mades safer with . . . drum roll please, almost net zero ecological impact. An example I would like use here from personal experience is the story of the San Francisco course. That area, before they put in an epic 18 hole course, was literally a homeless death pit. You wouldn’t walk around that part of the park by yourself, or at night, unless you really were asking for it—and I’m a large man. Women were raped, muggings, trash, defecation—overgrown darkness where there could be light-hearted joyfulness. Well, Disc Golf courses can do that, I saw it happen. I lived in that neighborhood from 1995-2015 and that specific area of Golden Gate Park transformed into an area that was clean, well-maintained, used everyday from sunrise to sunset for people in an urban setting that are dying to get a little slice of forest in their stressful days. No more homeless. No more rapes. No more drug deals. Just the sound of people laughing and chains jangling. A few tree trunks scarred, maybe. Meanwhile, the maintenance and creation of Stick Golf courses are known to be one of the most destructive and deadly uses of land for leisure (not economic necessity) that exists on the planet. The pesticides alone—it’s gotten better since the 70’s, but wow. Drinking the creek water near the course might be a bad idea. Then you take into account the clearing of natural world landscapes (that were not dangerous or unused areas of public parks) but perfectly idyllic slices of nature, free of human exposure. Disc Golf courses don’t clear unused land. They very lightly modify already established parks (the majority of Disc Golf courses are NOT on private land or the new hybrids) for the benefit of increased public usage. Can you get a more efficient use of land (for purposes of leisure) than that? Um, Connor, you might want to start tapping your hand on the Octagon floor, because in this analogy Disc Golf Khabib is all over your ass with the ground and pound! Disc Golf is a million times better for the environment and takes almost nothing to maintain. Disc Golf choking Stick Golf thoroughly, at this point. But Khabib ain’t done—more punishment on the way, Connor.

5) Mental: This is where Stick Golf sneaks out of the choke hold, and desperately starts aiming for something, anything, where they can get a strike at my logical pro-Disc Golf argument. To very little avail. There are millions of golfers who will claim they LOVE how challenging the game is—on a mental level—as well as the difficulty of the swing dynamics discussed above. I get it. Believe me. Now that I’m a large man with long arms and have a bit of muscle memory in terms of performing a decent golf swing, I have greened it on Par Fours on a few occasions. That’s 300 plus yard accurate drives. That’s crushing the ball. Then, next tee box I get a ‘D-O’—refer to CSL dictionary for definition—and then next shot, hook one into the forest, lost ball. Grounder with the five-iron on the next shot, while trying to make up for the penalty stroke. Finally a decent shot gets me to the fringe. But I don’t get any grass on my chip and my ball lasers off the other side of the green, WAY farther away from where I started on my last shot. Another snowman. After greening a Par 4, getting a birdie, then it’s just one snowman an D.O after another. I get it . . . it’s an addicting feeling, because you know what happens when you hit the ball cleanly, but you can’t seem to ever do it consistently enough to actually get a good score. I just try to break 100. Supposedly, that’s better than 90% of the Stick Golfers in the world. Lame. I want to do what I did at Donner Course last weekend while playing the MUCH easier sport to play. Five straight birdies, 6 out of the first 7 holes, and at one point, and unbelievable seven under. Chances for a hole in one are all over the place in Disc Golf—even on Par 4’s. It was fun! Conversely, the weekend before I met up with eight of my best friends to play Stick Golf and was not having fun, I was cursing everything under the sun as I couldn’t hit a straight shot onto the fairway to save my life. I must have lost ten or more balls during the round! For me—and I am very qualified to weigh-in, considering both sports have been part of my life since I was very young—Disc Golf is mentally more satisfying, more fun, and less nerve-racking. I am going to give Stick Golfer’s the benefit of the doubt though, and say there is no subjective data to prove my argument, and call this a draw. But consider this: average time for a round in Stick Golf is about 4 hours! If you jog a Disc Golf course, or play by yourself at a quick walking pace, you can easily finish an uncrowded course in forty-five minutes to an hour! If you are thirsty, hot, pissed off ,and have to be out there for three more hours until the round is mercifully over—please. I don’t buy the whole Stick Golfer argument of ‘Oh, I play because I LOVE the challenge, it’s the hardest thing ever, the toughest sport to learn, takes the most practice to get good at, nothing feels better than squaring up a big driver.’ (Although, that actually might feel better than ripping an epic backhand helix in Disc Golf, but it’s close). Draw, but this argument could go either way. Time for Khabib’s Disc Golf domination analogy to finish off Connor’s Stick Golf.

6) Sociological: OK, Stick Golf you’ve got to wave the white flag here. You can say that YOU personally just prefer the sport (although most of you have never even tried Disc Golf once), but you CANNOT argue that it’s better for society as a whole. The BLM movement has forced many privileged white males like myself to do a little closer introspection and to really try to get out of our own egos and to try to imagine ourselves in people of color’s skin. What life would really be like, if we had to deal with discrimination. Despite the obvious facts that we have progressed tremendously as a nation from the dark era of slavery, I’ve had to admit we haven’t come far enough. Not even close. I’ve always kind of thought, growing up with very liberal parents in San Francisco—one of the great bastions of acceptance of cultural differences the world has ever known, that overt racists were few and far between. That they existed mostly in the rural South because of the historical connections to the slave trade that the founders of our country built this great nation upon. But where are the reparations? Forty acres and a mule—ha—how about simply some equal rights and justice? These past months I’ve changed my opinion: I’m calling myself out to do better—especially in my day time job serving inner city youth in the impoverished crime-ridden neighborhoods—and to think differently. Avoid a fixed mind-set. Seek an open mind-set. It’s time to smoke out the Confederate roots of overt racism, and hold those hanging onto those beliefs accountable the right way—in a court of law and their pocket books. Not with violence; we don’t need it right now—or ever—in this country. There’s more of them than I estimated, and pockets of them exist here in the Bay Area, with some of the more rural parts of my home state actually having a small majority. I thought they would slowly die out . . . that their mentality of holding one race superior over another because of the color of their skin (or sexuality, or other distinguishing physical trait). Not their minds, not who they really are as a person—but how they look. Not how they act—but how they’re born. Not their belief system, vocation, religion, ideology—but their skin color. It’s so utterly absurd and fascist it makes one shudder to think that the ignorant, white, male, patriarchal culture is alive and well, and some of them are cashing pay checks from the government to kill black people, while enjoying bizarre Draconian amnesty with little accountability for their actions.

Back to the question . . . even though it’s a pathetic ‘1st World Problem’ kind of question that is insignificant compared with the BLM question of how to reform the social justice system in a free democratic system that is supposed to be the leader and vanguard for fair and moral standards . . . which kind of Golf is better? Well, wave bye-bye Stick Golf. Just look at the history of the sport: the blatant, overtly-racist ideals propagated by the sport have done incalculable damage to the relationship between the impoverished and upper class communities in the US. The First Tee program, sponsored by the PGA, is absolutely awesome—no doubt about it. I know the team personally, and they are trying very hard each day to get more inner city people of color (starting in their youth) turned on to their sport. But the higher ups—the ones that pay the instructors and administrators of the program—are they doing it because they WANT more color in their sport, or because of the bottom line and public pressure and opinion of it? Food for thought. But the truth of the matter is this: a lot of people of color PLAY Disc Golf. I detailed all the reasons why it’s more appealing to them above, but what I am trying to get at is—Khabib slips in the choke hold again, Connor’s hand taps his arm—Disc Golf is not elitist like Stick Golf. The sport has ZERO precedent of propagating racist ideals, whereas the entire history of Golf is riddled with white male dickheads, sitting around in their country clubs, taking calls and making cash hand over fist, getting away from their mansions and neurotic wives and kids they hate. (That was all very mean and very judgmental, sorry, but that is the common perception when a random person from outside the bubble of privilege is asked and gives their honest opinion). Sociological problems are the X-factor in any great nation’s history. We’ve got no shortage of them, especially in 2020, and we don’t need more of them. If you love Stick Golf, it’s your thing—great—I have a love/hate relationship with it, but I’ll play again, I’m sure, mostly as an excuse to hang out with my friends that play, but if you ask me which sport is better for an individual AND society as a whole. Knock out. Disc Golfs wins.

Epilogue: To tie it all back to my grand father, bless his soul, he was a good man in most every way, I did love him, but I would be disingenuous if I withheld the fact that he had some racist beliefs. He would NEVER advocate for violence toward people of color, or held any menacing kind of ill will toward them—more like, he was brainwashed with the remnants of Confederate ideology, more specifically, the theory of superiority by virtue of race alone. Some of his remarks to me when I was a young child visiting him in Rhode Island were the opposite of what I was being taught in school in my open-minded, liberal- leaning coastal California community. My grandfather’s harmful words were the antithesis of the message being given to me by my parents. Luckily, my parents were young adults during the Civil Rights Movement and were part of the impetus for the massive changes that came about from those non-violent protests. All people are born equal and deserve the same opportunities, regardless of race, creed, color, faith or sexuality. They passed that worldview along to me. But sadly, just as many millions are born with parents who see the world the way mine did (a place where justice, morals and science are integral parts of the individual and collective success of a citizen and a nation) the ignorant, harmful and racist old line of thinking is also being passed along to millions of children, who are born to parents who hang on to systemic racism as their god-given right to free speech. The cycle will continue until we cleanse that kind of immoral and divisive thinking from our collective consciousness. It will take time and it will take reform. You can do your part . . . just play more Disc Golf than Stick Golf.

Nation with questionable form and balance on the release . . . but look at that backdrop!