As the daylight disappears and temperatures drop, many of us find ourselves spending a lot more time inside. It’s a perfect time of year for video games, and thanks to Gordon Griesel, it looks as though disc golfers will have a virtual environment to keep themselves entertained.

Earlier in the year, I mentioned Gordon’s project, and my eagerness to see it become a reality. Well, Gordon has made good on his intentions, and now has an early December release date planned for Disc Flight Sim. As a way to help get people ready for the release of the full version, a free downloadable demo is available on his site, which you can find here (currently, the password for download is “demo”.)

Being busy with several things lately, in addition to the encroaching holidays, I haven’t had a chance to play with it too much, but I can say from what little I have seen, I’m very impressed and am eagerly anticipating the full release. While the graphics may not be the cutting edge stuff you see in big budget video games, the physics at work here are quite impressive. Just throwing drives with a few selected discs, the physics at work were extremely realistic. Not that there has been a lot of competition in the world of virtual disc physics, but this simulator portrays the flight of a golf disc far more authentically than anything I’ve seen before. A disc thrown flat will fly straight and then fade left predictably. A flippy disc thrown hard with a slight hyzer angle will flip up to fly straight, turn right, and then fade left. That same flippy disc though, if thrown with full hyzer, will hold its hyzer line and finish left (just like my real life botched hyzer-flip attempts!).

The game will include some pre-made courses, a full selection of discs, several different play-modes, and the ability for players to design their own courses, which they’ll be able to share with others. As an added bonus, there will be many terrains the player can download at no cost from the Disc Fight Sim site. The game is currently only for XP/Vista, and Gordon is looking at selling it around $19.95, or “for around the cost of one nice disc” as he puts it. It will be available for download or on CD, and customers will be able to pay in a variety of ways.

Excited by the prospects of the game, I contacted Gordon (who is very accessible and responsive, by the way), and asked him a few questions.
More on Disc Golf Simulator Right Around the Corner

I’ve written before about how Portland is a great place to be if you want to play some disc golf. They have courses scattered all over the place there, something fit for all skill levels. Even with the vast varieties of courses to choose from though, that still isn’t enough for some people.

Most disc golfers, if they’re anything like me, will have noted while walking around in everyday life how great a particular spot would be if only there were a playable hole there. Well Matt Crider, aka Tennessee, and some of his friends have taken it upon themselves to do just that. Scoping out some unique places to put a basket Matt & Co. set up a camera and filmed themselves playing some urban disc golf. Matt’s the lanky fellow throwing the first bombing drive under the bridge, check out the video below:

Also, while you’re at it, do yourself a favor and check out some of his other videos. Matt puts together a good little piece of youtube footage, and I have to give credit where it’s due–he consistently has damn good music to accompany his vids. As always, they’re best enjoyed in high quality. Be sure to check back for further updates to the Urban Disc Golf series.

Maybe you’ve seen dyed discs on places like eBay. Or maybe you’ve browsed through threads like the infamous Dyed Discs thread on ODSA. Or maybe, you didn’t even know that a golf disc could be dyed.

Well, for those that are curious about the process of the dip dyeing technique, see the videos below. Chuck, who is well known through the Pacific NW, and dare I say, even on a national level, for his immaculate dyes, was gracious enough to come by my place and give a brief tutorial on disc dyeing (as well as help clean my kitchen).

Part 1:

Part 2:

This is just a basic intro to dyeing, with practice you can achieve some astounding works of art. Check out some of Chuck’s pieces after the jump:
More on In Our Time of Dyeing

For those that hadn’t been paying attention to the Pro Worlds, Dave Feldburg utterly CRUSHED this year, finally sealing the deal of winning the Disc Golf World Championship, finishing 14 strokes ahead of second place at an astounding 100 under par for the tournament.

Here’s a video clip of the new champ at what is currently his “home” course while he’s going to school. Warning: this may make you second guess all those improvements you thought you were making with your game.  At least I know I can bif it on the teepad like a pro.

OK, so maybe it’s not a real ace, and maybe its not exactly good etiquette to laugh when a pedestrian gets hit by a disc, but dangit, I think this is funny. This was a group of my friends and me on a recent roadtrip to play Lucky Mud, where we stopped to first play a round at Trojan. Before I get angry comments and emails, I’d like to point out that we did have a spotter out, and he did say fore, and though the guy got hit, the disc was slowed down considerably by skipping on the pavement. Part of what makes it so funny is that Joe has an uncanny knack of shanking a disc towards people, particularly little kids–this time he missed the kids. I don’t know if this is one of those situations where you have to know the people involved for to really find it funny, but for me, I laugh every time I watch that clip. And I always have to watch it at least two or three times.

Edit: For some reason, the annotations for this video don’t show up in the embedded version. For the annotated version, click on this link. On the same note, you can view the high(er) quality version there.

Screenshot courtesy of ign.com

Being an avid disc golfer, casual gamer, and living in an area that doesn’t always offer the best climate for squeezing a round in, I’ve been pining for quite some time for a decent disc golf video game. There have been a smattering of offerings presented in the past, but none of them did much to impress. Probably the most well known game is the Innova Disc Golf game, published in 1999 by little known publisher Wizard Works (who put out the equally impressive Grand Slam Turkey Hunt). The most generous appraisals of the game were “pretty good for what it is,” while most reviewers summed it up as “crappy.”

After the Innova game, there wasn’t too much offered for disc golfers in the digital realm. There were a couple little flash based games, which Brian wrote about earlier, but again, it wasn’t anything to write home about (the designers didn’t even know the difference between an hyzer and an anhyzer).

We disc golfers had to sit idly by while we saw great games for traditional golf being released, like the ultra-realistic Tiger Woods franchise and the cartoony, yet undeniably fun Hot Shots Golf series. I know lots of disc golfers played these games, being the closest thing the market had to offer to a disc golf video game.

Then came the evolution of the Nintendo Wii. More on Holy moly, a halfway decent disc golf video game?

I found this great video to watch for learning good backhand technique. Usually when watching video footage of drives in disc golf, the player moves so fast, you don’t get to see the mechanics of their throws. Youtube user jaylewisstl has done a fantastic job of slowing down the drives here so you can see the execution of the various parts of the drive.

I’m not an expert in form and technique, but I will say that for those just starting to learn backhand drives, do not try to emulate Schultz’s form. He is irrefutably one of the best players in the world, but he has a style all his own that obviously works well for him, but would be hard for most people to copy. It’s interesting to see how his form works compared to Boro’s and Bunnell’s.

Boro and Bunnell have much more traditional throws and are good to study. Things to watch in their forms: light footwork, the x-step, keeping the disc in a straight line from reachback to release, rotating the shoulders, keeping the disc in close to the chest in pulling through, timing of the plant foot to pulling through the drive, rotating the whole body, following through cleanly. Don’t ignore Schultz’s technique though, he’s got plenty of good elements working for him too.

Even though this video only features 3 players with no commentary, I find it to be much more useful and educational than the Discraft Long Distance Drives Clinic.

Find more videos like this on discgolfersR.us

This video was posted by Dr. Zaius on the ODSA forums, and I thought it was just too sweet of a video not to share here. Erik “Buck” Smith tees off, right into where Dave Feldberg is crouched down, arranging his bag. It’s definitely one of the coolest sequences I’ve seen, great camera work, great reactions by those involved, and capped off with an excellent putt!

I can only imagine how I would have felt if I were in Erik’s shoes. I can hear my inner monologue now “That felt like a good rip, yeah, look at that thing fly. Oh…s!@$…its headed right towards that guy. OH S%$#, that’s Feldberg! Great. I think I hit him. All right, I’ll have that fat slice of humble pie now….”

Obviously Erik and Dave know each other pretty well though. I love the look on Dave’s face when the disc skips up to him, I’d call it perplexed amusement. And Erik seems unfazed by the fact that his disc is wedged in one of the best player’s legs, mere inches from hitting him in the junk. Just another odd lie for him, that he has to stretch out for, nevermind the dog, it’s still just a routine 35 footer. Simply awesome, you couldn’t script something this good.

Last year, disc golfers across the world were excited by a trailer for a disc golf documentary simply titled Chains (if you haven’t seen it already, you can check out the old trailer here). It looked extremely promising, well shot on high quality cameras, great editing, and probably most importantly, it communicated the vibe that is present in competitive disc golf. It communicated that people DO, in fact, take the sport seriously and that there is a whole lot more to the game than some hippies throwing around a beach Frisbee in the woods. The trailer showed that the sport is not only taken seriously, but also is cool–even cute chicks can be addicted to this game. The trailer held nothing but promise, but then, we heard nothing. More on Chains - The Movie: Still Alive and Kickin’!

The folks at Discraft have released another instructional video, this time focusing on putting, specifically, putting with confidence. This one is less action packed that previous installments, largely it is just Mark Ellis explaining his thoughts and observations on what will make you a consistent putter. Though it has the feeling of a Tony Robbins infomercial, Ellis makes some valid points here, and it’s sure to help out your game, especially if you feel that putting is the weakest point in your game. This video is a little long winded, in my opinion, and judging by the faces of the audience in the video, we got the brief version. Still, I commend Discraft and Mark Ellis on continuing to put out videos in this series. Too often, the top pros of disc golf speak like, well, jocks, and you only hear a clumsy rewording of the obvious. I appreciate that Ellis knows how to address an audience and make valid points, and is ready to admit that he was not always the player he is today.