Why (ball) golf is better than disc golf, reason #17
There is something poetic and dramatic about the differences between a driver and a putter in golf. To someone that had no idea what either was used for, they would scarcely resemble implements used for the same purpose- to strike a small white ball. One is typically much longer, with a large bulbous head on the other end of what is obviously the end meant to grip with ones hands. The putter, on the other hand, is shorter, with a smaller head at the end. And as different as the clubs are, the swings they are designed for are more different still.
When one looks to ‘drive’ a golf ball, a full effort is usually employed. The big backswing, the (hopefully) audible whoosh and whack, and the dramatic follow through all contrast beautifully with a putt on a fast green in golf. The operation requires the nerves and steady hand of a bomb-diffuser. When the club strikes the ball, it makes a quiet little click and sends the ball rolling toward a hole not much bigger than itself. Certainly dramatic contrasted with blasting that same ball through a wide open space.
Disc golf possesses many of the most important attributes of golf – risk/reward chief among them – but the differences between a putter and driver are immediately discernible only to the learned eye. They are both roughly the same weight and diameter.
Although a drive in disc golf usually involves more movement of the feet and a faster arm-whip, the contrast between that and a putt is relatively minor.
The best way to sum it up is this: Ball golf players get to whack their projectiles more than twice as far as disc golfers can throw theirs, and yet completing the hole is a far more delicate operation. The contrast between driver and putter, whack and tap, is one of the things that makes golf great, and that contrast barely exists in disc golf.
Why disc golf is better than (ball) golf, Reason #33
Everyone knows that disc golf is “easy to learn, yet hard to master.” But simply saying that disc golf is better because it is easier to play than golf is painting with too broad a stroke. There are many unique advantages that fall under this umbrella, only one of which is the following:
Two things combine to make a person’s first attempt at disc golf an almost guaranteed more enjoyable, less stressful experience than playing ball golf on a course for the first time.
- Disc golf courses are much less formal environments, with none of the rules and almost none of the social mores of even a public golf course, much less a private one.
- Not much compares to having multiple sets of eyes on you as you swing and miss at a golf ball sitting on a tee. In disc golf, that’s guaranteed not to happen! About the only thing that would compare is throwing the disc 180 degrees in the wrong direction (which I’ve seen). But that’s rare, and in disc golf no one seems to care.