One of the best ways to improve your game is by grabbing a practice bag and spending any spare time you have outside the course and working on field work. You don’t need a crew or a round of golf to improve your game. You can do lots of things like practicing in your yard with a target or even better your own disc golf basket.
You can even bring your portable disc golf basket to perform some field work, whether that be in the park, beach, a forest or an open patch of ground or your own garden if its big enough.
The idea of field work is not simple enough. Using the discs in your arsenal, grab a disc bag, find a open field, where you can practise in peace. Dial in the perfect practice routine outside of the course just like pro players do.
Things to work on
You can even visit your favorite or nearby course and work on decreasing your par for any or all of the holes. Even better if you get in on a quiet day or when there’s less people about. You can work on holes that caused you bother over and over again.
Change up your disc selection and throwing styles. Try throwing off the tee with a mid-range for example to see if that helps for instance. Try a new pair of shoes out on the course to see if they give you more grip on throws.
1. Improve your form – Regular practice creates good skills, there is power in repetition. It helps you iron out the creases in your game. It helps you perfect and understand flight paths.
2. Release the pressure – Doing something without competition pressure frees up your mental headspace when it comes to tournament rounds. Champions are built in the gym, or to insert our analogy in the field, or practice camp.
3. Frequency improves consistency – You must practise frequently if you are serious about raising your disc golf performance. Create a routine and you’ll stick to it even on the days you don’t feel like it. Days like this build you. They build your character, perseverance, persistence. All incredible skills that will help you master the disc golf game. Aim to get in 2 practice sessions per week and once you regularly commit to 2, up it to 3.
Once you get to where you need to be you can substitute a field day to practice rounds on the course. That is to say get a group of buddies together and complete as many 18 hole rounds as you can during the week. Complete the entire course, keep the repetitively throwing at one or 2 baskets rounds for your other 2 field days. Imagine what your skill level will be like after 12 solid committed months like this.
4. Track your progress – keep a journal of your field days. Write down what went well, what didn’t. How you felt, was your energy low but you still made several 3oo ft shot with a mid-range. Did you struggle upwind/downwind? Was your accuracy just not there or could you land your Mako on a dime? Committing to type improves your memory, recall, and understanding of what you are learning. Try it and see if it makes sense.
5. Putt Days – Add a putting only day to your schedule. Either on your own turf, or at a club. If you have a basket you can go anywhere if its portable. 30 mins of regular putting 3 days a week will make you a monster acer. Even have a small cheap basket and putting it on a shelf or the wall at home and throwing mini discs will help your aim.
Add at least a 10-20 min segment into your field work days and don’t just practice distance and tee or fairway drives. No point hitting a 400 footer if you can’t make the basket from 15 feet.
6. Have a plan – Have a field day goal. Are you going to rep out 100 putt shots? 50 fairway drives? 100 drives off the tee? Can you land all your discs withing a 10 m radius? Pick a spot and throw.
Or see if you can hit 300 ft with your mid-range or beat your distance pb. Grab a rangefinder any you’ll have your distances worked down to a “T”. Mark where a 300 ft should be with your bag, a mini disc or something else to landmark the spot.
Pack your bag before hand and jot down what you’d like to do that day. Mark them off like you are using a scorecard as soon as you complete them.
If you have a basket you can “par” your hole. See if you can bogey or double bogey it.
7. Get Up Close & Personal – get to know your discs more intimately and try new lines with them. If you can master the flight trajectories of your discs, and who knows even invent new ones peculiar to you, you will win more games.
If you are struggling with certain shot types now’s the time to practice them.
8. Get Professional Critique – Know-it-alls can’t take constructive criticism. If you think even a pro has no room to improve you’d be mistaken. Done right, constructive feedback will improve your game. Grab a buddy or a phone stick and record your progress. At least if you are too shy to ask for feedback you can replay your own videos and study your form.
Model your practice routine after this from Spin TV and you’ll soon be tapping em in like the pros.
In this post you’ve learned the importance of field work and how you can optimize your practice sessions to develop you as a player. All outside the course as well. There is no better way to develop than getting rounds in on the course, but you can develop quicker and fix a lot of issues by repping, over and over again.
Hammering out the finer issues will help your decision making on the course. If you know what your disc is going to do and how to throw it because you’ve spent hundreds of hours practising you will turn into a much better player.
Here are some articles from my disc golf university series that will help you master some tricky shots.