Frisbee Golf? Puh-leese

By Ryan Finley,
Staff Writer

Simply put, not very many people my age (19) play golf. It’s too expensive, too long, and, frankly, too depressing. Very few of my friends would willingly pay 30 dollars to shoot a 120 and be the scourge of jokes.

One day last month, a friend of mine offered a financially safer solution: frisbee golf, a sport that adheres to all the rules of golf with one exception: you use a frisbee and aim it at a basket some 200 yards away. It sounded interesting.

So, I went…and took some Pepto-Bismol with me. It would be a long day.

We were a foursome, not counting the case of beer that we brought with us. The course, Balboa Frisbee Golf Course in San Diego, was awash in late summer damage. Dead grass and leaves paved the way to the “club shop”, if one could call it that.

It was there that I learned about the different frisbees for different shots: drivers, putters, the whole nine yards. Each frisbee (actually a solid plastic disk, much heavier than the kids-in-the-park variety) had been tested for weight, wind resistance, and other semi-technical variables.

• Past GolfArizona.com course reviews • Past articles by Ryan Finley

The first 9 holes were a blur. I remember hitting the same tree three times in the same hole. The overgrown fairways laid way to a square, free-standing basket roughly three feet around.

Underneath the ninth hole basket, a 16-year old kid puffed a joint and tried to show us how to cut down on the slice of the disk by holding our wrists straight.

If golf is the consumate gentleman’s game, frisbee golf is the activity of the lazy and stoned, the kind of people who use the cheap rates to sneak a drink or a puff while watching others wallow in their own futility.

After calmly showing us how to improve our respective games, the kid asked us if we could give him a beer as a tip. We gave him the whole case. To the people I was playing with, beer was reserved for the back of golf carts or the parking lot of a baseball game, not this.

For the sports-intelligent, frisbee golf is the antithesis of a day well spent. There was no dignity to the game that afternoon, no respect paid to other players, and, worst of all, no class. As a matter of fact, there was absolutely nothing enjoyable that afternoon…except maybe for my “frirst tee” remark.

I arrived home that evening only to break out my beat up old golf clubs and head off to the driving range.

After a brief apology to the golfing gods for taking part in the afternoon’s farce, I started hitting my frustrations away. “What’s an extra 25 bucks to play a round of golf”, I asked myself.

Upon further consideration, I took another swig of the Pepto-Bismol. “I just need to get another job,” I thought, suddenly aware of the costs of my obsession.

I wonder if the frolf course is hiring.