Biggest smile wins at Vibram Disc Golf competition

It’s all good times and gargantuan grins at the GoPro Mountain Games Vibram Disc Golf competition this year. And that, said event director Steven “Yoda of disc” Dodge, is exactly what the sport is about.

The founder of disc golf, Ed Headrick, had this to say about the sport: “The biggest smile wins.”

Don’t let the good cheer fool you though; strategy, strength, and skill are the orders of the day for Disc Golf competitors as they run a gauntlet of three qualifying events including a three-tier putting competition, a MPH Speed competition, and an accuracy throw down.

“The design of this competition is very unique in that the events are just as fun to watch as they are to play. It’s not a standard disc golf game where you play one round and reshuffle everyone for the next. Only the top 36 make the cut for Sunday’s finals,” said Dodge.

Sean Jack, a competitor from San Francisco, California, is no stranger to the skill needed for a competition like Saturday’s.

“Specifically for tomorrow, I plan to throw a clean even shot through the middle and shoot for 50 mph. There’s also a sucker’s gap bonus below that gets you double, so I’m really going to try for that,” said Jack.

Tomorrow’s competition marks the debut of Disc Golf as an event at the GoPro Mountain Games, which, as Dodge explains, reflects the speed at which the sport is growing.

“I don’t know whether it’s the culture and the people, or whether it’s really fun to throw discs fast and hard. In general, when I started off there were about 100 disc golf courses, and now there are over 5,000. The sport is becoming more main stream now, but there is still a unique counter-culture and spirit of the disc,” Dodge said.