Driving Distance Question - 2005/05/13 17:08Okay, so I am a complete and total rookie for all practical purposes, but I've been playing 4x a week or so for about 2 months and I'm going to play at least 5 tournaments this summer. I am registered as an AM, and I plan on playing mostly in the Novice division (unless I somehow start doing really well).
My question is this, can a disc golfer be competitive w/o being able to drive 300 ft.? At this point, I can drive 270-280 ft. consistantly, and 300 sometimes (when the stars align). Is it possible to do well in this sport with these driving distances, or do I need to devote some serious time to increasing my driving range?
As a side question, I have an Orc, Viking, and Valkyrie that are all the same weight and I throw all three the EXACT same distance... what am I doing wrong? I had the Valkyrie and bought the Orc and Viking thinking I'd be able to get more distance out of at least one of them... but I can't.
Any advice or input at all would be very much appreciated! Thanks!
-Doug
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Scott Lyle
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Re:Driving Distance Question - 2005/05/13 18:13I'm not a compeditive golfer, so keep that in mind. However, I am new and have competed in a tournament at the novice level. At the time, I was throwing maybe 330' on average and would top out at 350'. I could outdrive most everyone in my division and ended up taking second place. The guy that won threw about 300' on average and had a killer second round by outputting me. So, at that level I'd say that yes, you can be compeditive even if you can only throw that far, especally if you can throw that far fairly accurately.
However, at any level to differentiate yourself from the rest of the field you definitely have to be able to hit putts. If there's a 300' hole and you throw 280' on it and nail the putt and the guy next to you throws 310' on it and misses his putt you'll still have the better score. On a 400' hole you'll both have a drive, approach and putt and you won't really have lost anything, especally if you hit that putt and he misses it too.
You can also think of it this way. Being able to throw 400' accurately as opposed to 300' accurately will only help you on a handfull of holes. Being able to hit 90% of your putts from 30' in will help you on almost every single hole.
It's probably worth trying to improve your distance, but to do that it's probably more effective to worry about your driving form. As you improve that you're accuracy will improve as well as your distance. Many times trying to make changes to your form will have a short term negative effect but will have a positive effect over time. [/url]www.discgolfreview.com[url] has a lot of good information about how to improve your technique. I advise reading everything on there. Playing at the tournaments and talking to people who are better than you will help out a lot too.
As for the discs, I think what you're experiencing makes sense. Those discs require you to be able to throw at least 350' or so to fly as advertised. You'll most likely get better distances out of slightly slower, more understable discs like a Leopard or XL (I know I did when I started). That site I gave above has an article regarding disc selection that's very good.
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