Remember: Playing disc golf > Watching disc golf

Does this really warrant a reminder?

If you’re anything like me …

Yes.

You see, we’re nearing the official start of the 2024 Disc Golf Pro Tour (DGPT) season. In fact, things will kick off this weekend with the Chess.com Invitational in Brooksville, Florida. It’s around this time of year when my brain tells me to start watching live disc golf again.

I write about this stuff on a daily basis, so flipping a mental switch on my end makes sense. It’s been a few months since watching live disc golf was part of my every-weekend routine. In the beginning, I’ll need to make a conscious effort to get back into proper couch-sitting shape.

There are three problems with this, though:

• The weather is getting warmer.
• The daylight hours are getting longer.
• The feeling of being a human slug sucks.

So while the world around me is screaming, “Get outside and disc golf!” the return of live Pro Tour action beckons me back to the living room with a bag of Funyuns. Listen, I love watching professional disc golf. I love writing about it, too. But there’s really no debate to be had …

Playing disc golf is better.

When I was growing up, I was obsessed with college football. This was Oklahoma in the early 2000s, so the rest of the state felt the same way. Similarly a die-hard fan of sports, my dad would join me for a quarter or two by the television for whatever game I was watching on Saturday.

But eventually, he’d pipe up with something along the lines of the following:

“Why don’t you work on some dreams of your own, instead of watching others work on theirs?”

Message received.

He wasn’t talking about disc golf, but he might as well have been. It’s been two decades since I was regularly bludgeoned over the head with some iteration of the above inquiry, but even as a full-blown adult, on more than one occasion, I’ve had to remind myself of dad’s wisdom.

And in many aspects of life: work, school, family, fatherhood – and disc golf, too. If you want an ace, nab one. If it’s a 900-level PDGA rating you’re after, get there. Maybe it’s working up the courage to sign up for your first-ever tournament – that’s good, too. Fuzzy slippers, a can of Mountain Dew and a La-Z-Boy in front of the boob tube won’t help you get there, though.

The truth hurts.

The good news is that the watching-playing disc golf dilemma is a false dichotomy of sorts. You don’t have to choose one or the other – you can do both. At the start of the 2024 DGPT calendar, my message is a simple one: Watch disc golf. Follow disc golf. Heck, argue about it on Reddit.

But play it, too.

And regularly.

That’s what got you into the sport in the first place.

Don’t forget it.

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