Disc Golf Bag Building Guide For Beginners

What discs you need to help you succeed

Daniel Graves

·

Follow

5 min read

·

Oct 3, 2016

--

If you are here, reading this article, you probably opened it for one of three reasons: either 1) you like to play disc golf but have not played much and need help building a bag, 2) you have played disc golf for a while and you just want to know how I build a bag, or 3) you have no idea what disc golf is and you clicked to try and figure out what ‘Disc Golf Bag Building Guide’ means. If you came to this post for one of those reasons, or even a different reason altogether, then this post will help cater to your specific needs, as I will break the post down into different sections. So as a quick overview I will be briefly going over the rules of disc golf, explaining the types of discs you will want to have in your bag as a beginner, and including some of my personal favorite discs that I keep in my bag. Don’t worry new players, I will throw a lot of new terms at you but I will make sure to stop and define any disc golf terms that you may not have heard of when I say it for the first time.

The Rules:

If you have ever played regular golf, then you have some notion of how disc golf works. Each hole has a tee box and a basket, and the goal is to get your discs from the tee box to the basket in as few throws as possible.

Example of a disc golf basket

Each throw counts as a stroke, and each hole has a par, usually somewhere between three and five. The scoring works just like regular golf where you count your score compared to the total par of a course. For each hole, one under par is a birdie, exactly par is a par, one over par is a bogey, etc., just like regular golf.

When you throw your disc it will hopefully fly fairly far before landing. To prepare for your next throw, you go up to your first disc and stand behind it. You throw from behind the front of where your disc landed, and you can have a running start but you have to let go of the disc behind your first throw. Many players carry small disc golf markers around with them and mark their throw with that rather than their first disc.

Proper disc marker placement

The hole does not finish until one of your discs lands in the basket. The easiest strategy is to try and hit the chains, because usually when that happens the disc falls straight into the basket. If the disc lands on top of, or under the basket it does not count, and you have to take another stroke to place your disc into the basket.

Now you are probably wondering what different discs do and which ones to carry with you when you go out to the course to play. Let’s get into it a little bit and try and go over some strategies for beginners and more advanced players.

What discs to put in your bag:

This might sound weird to some newcomers, but in disc golf you have multiple discs that perform different roles, just as you have different clubs in golf. All discs fall under one of four basic categories: fairway drivers, midrange, and putters. Each section is somewhat self-explanatory: distance drivers go the farthest and you throw them from the tee box, you throw fairway drivers from the fairway and they go fairly straight, you throw a midrange when you get closer to the basket and need to make an approach, and you use putters when you are very close to the basket and need to hit the chains. Within these categories of discs there are many different varieties, but for today keeping it simple is in everyone’s best interest.

(From Left to Right) — Distance Driver, Fairway Driver, Midrange, Putter

Before I tell you how to build a basic bag, I must first define a few terms. First off, when you throw a right hand back hand, the disc will have a certain flight path that pertains to its aerodynamics. These discs will always ‘fade’, or finish, to the left. They have varying levels of stability however, stability being the discs tendency to turn over during flight. Overstable means that the disc will fly stably, meaning it will not turn or flip over when you throw it and will finish to the left like normal. An understable disc however will have the tendency to flip or turn to the right at the beginning of the the disc’s flight. After turning right, assuming the disc does not totally flip over, the disc wills till finish to the left.

I have a list below with some descriptions and examples of good discs for beginners. Each section has a recommendation with a link to where you can buy each disc. A very basic bag will contain discs that can do these things:

A bag built with these discs would navigate through a variety of situations and get around most obstacles on the course with relative ease. Note that I have linked the cheapest version of each disc I mentioned, mostly for beginners who do not wish to overspend, but there are nicer plastics of each disc above for more advanced players. Also for beginners, disc golf is an easy access sport, you can play an entire round with just a driver or just a putter if you want to, but to receive the best results it is best to have some options.