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Mailbag: Learning to Play, Brodie Smith's First Rated Round, Crude Comments Towards Women

Originally published at: https://discgolf.ultiworld.com/2020/02/21/mailbag-learning-play-brodie-smiths-first-rated-round-crude-comments-towards-women/

Welcome to Ultiworld Disc Golf’s brand new mailbag! You don’t necessarily see my byline around here too much — I am more often behind the scenes as the publisher, but I’m still here as a co-host of the Upshot podcast with Jamie Thomas and I generally report from Worlds and USDGC every year.

Now, you’ll see my thoughts in print every week in the mailbag.

Generally, the mailbag will be for subscribers only (here’s our announcement about the new subscription), which helps keep me committed to writing it every week. It will reward subscribers with a weekly column they can count on. And it will allow us to offer a free one-month Mini subscription for the best question, email, or comment we get and publish in the Mailbag. If you’re already a subscriber, you get a free extra month (or a discount). If you’re not, you can come in and check out the benefits.

You can email me anytime at [email protected] with questions, comments, ideas — whatever you’ve got.

Question of the Week: Why hasn’t anyone created a systematic approach to learning the game? We have a host of YouTube videos that tackle the sport in piecemeal fashion and some rather basic attempts at disc golf 101. It would be great to see a company or Pro develop an instructional series that teaches people the best techniques, shot selections, and drills to focus on. DGI by Schusterick showed some initial signs of this but seems to have fizzled, DG Strong focuses on portions, but nobody has done something that captures it all.

– Matt R.

A: I think the simple answer here is the right one: it’s a huge upfront investment — planning, gathering the right technical equipment, setting up filming sessions, many hours of editing, marketing — with a relatively uncertain demand. How much can you charge for this? Will there be enough customers to justify taking the time to do it right?

And keep in mind that active pros, the voices that players most want to hear from on developing skills, can simply host a clinic, which only requires a couple hours of their time and doesn’t need to be a huge draw to still be successful.

If you’re looking for the bull case on why someone should do this (obviously, Will Schusterick has taken many of the big steps already), it’s that it’s content with a long shelf life. The basics of disc golf aren’t going to change anytime soon. You make one beginner video series and you can sell it for 20 years.

I also wonder if the relative simplicity of the game limits the upside of a product like the one you describe. Most of disc golf is about dialing in your form and understanding the flight path of your discs. It’s not that those things are easy to master, but they are relatively simple (and, frankly, hard to learn from a video of someone else doing it correctly). Nate Sexton can tell you not to round and to reach back and to brace, but you really need someone in person with you to point out how you’re doing it wrong.

Q: Did you see that Brodie Smith played his first rated round? He shot a 931. Impressive? Not really?

– Jack A.

A: Color me impressed but not surprised. And he’s going to get better — fast.

I thought Brodie should have started playing disc golf like five years ago. He can bomb. He instantly becomes one of the most athletic disc golfers in the game, seriously.

With a background in ultimate, which should give him a good feel and touch, and a cannon of an arm, he has all the things you want to see in a disc golf prospect (except that he’s 32 years old…which is why he should have started five years ago!).

To open up your PDGA history with a rating that’s near the recommended cutoff for playing advanced isn’t exactly Jacky Chen level impressive, but it’s still quite good.

Nice start — better than I bet most expected from him. Here’s the video of his round:

Brodie Smith Rated Round

Q: I am an ultimate player that has started playing in disc golf tournaments. This is about a local club throwing a doubles tournament. I played in MA2.

During our play we were walking with another pair and the other pair started catcalling a doubles pair of females in front of us. They did seem to know the pair, in some way. That same pair of women were asked to “Show us your tits!” through the microphone when they went up to collect on their prize during the award ceremony. No one said anything. It kind of got awkward but other than that nothing. A few questions:

Am I just being a soft ultimate player and is this something I should get used to at disc golf tournaments? How can/should I respond? The MC of the awards ceremony could be the TD — can you give me some advice on how to respond to this?

I want to play mixed doubles. I want to encourage my female friends to come and play. But if I cant guarantee them safety from harassment how can I sell this sport and competitive play, if they may come across this.

– Geoff R.

A: This kind of low-grade nonsense from a small portion of the disc golf community has just got to stop. I’ll say that I have never seen anything remotely like this in person, but there’s an unfortunate amount of 🍑 comments on women’s disc golf videos online, so it doesn’t strike me as impossible that this story is true.

Frankly, I think the awkwardness you sensed is exactly a sign that a lot of people there were uncomfortable right along with you, but perhaps nobody felt comfortable enough to rock the boat and admonish the MC publicly.

But the lack of outward reaction unfortunately gives people like him the idea that it’s OK to say that kind of crap. This sport struggles enough to attract female competitors even when leaders (the vast majority of which are men) make a good faith effort to include them; this kind of incident will ensure that those women won’t come back next time.

So, what should you do? At this point, I think it would be entirely reasonable to email the TD and express your anger about such a crass comment. Expect defensiveness. Who cares if they get pissed? It’s not soft to expect people to be treated with respect. 95% of people are going to be with you on this.

And if something like this happens again the next time you play, say something about it in front of everyone. Somebody has to.