If Only We Could Always Throw Easy...

There’s a quote attributed to Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax—something like: “I never threw harder than when I stopped trying to throw hard.”

The actual quote, however, was something that Dodgers coach Norm Sherry said to Koufax. He had advised Koufax, “Don’t try to throw it so hard. Just put it in there and let them hit it.”

Sherry’s advice spurred Koufax to find an easier, more reliable throwing motion—something that transformed him into a legendary pitcher. As Sherry told Koufax after watching him adopt a smoother throw, “I don’t know if you realize it, but you just now threw harder than when you were trying to.”

Essentially, Koufax found great pitching success after he learned to throw with a more relaxed delivery. As pitching coach Brent Strohm explained of Koufax, “When he was the best it was effortless, when he did muscle up he had adverse results.”

What Koufax learned was that a smooth throw could generate plenty of power on its own. The technique itself would do the work. That was a big change from the early days of his pitching career, when he was always “trying to get out of trouble by throwing harder and harder and harder.”

It’s an enviable skill—the ability to throw really fast, with little apparent effort. We see this kind of skill in other sports, too. Think of the smooth golf swing of Fred Couples or the easy swish of basketball player Steph Curry.

In disc golf, we all want to throw far. But all too often, we try to “muscle it.” And that extra “oomph” sabotages an otherwise good throw. Even when we deliberately try to throw in a relaxed manner, we sometimes still tense up and “rip it” right at the end. And the result is a poor throw.

It probably goes against human nature to lighten up and relax at a moment of peak exertion. Whether it’s tennis, baseball, disc golf, whatever, we reach that moment of attack and want to “kill it.” Certainly in disc golf, we want to get a good run-up and then drill the disc out into the countryside.

The key consideration, though, should be consistency. Jack Nicklaus once said that, if he needed to hit a really long drive, he deliberately slowed down his backswing even more than usual. He did so in order to help stay in the moment—to maintain tempo and not give in to the obvious urge to muscle the shot.

There’s an interesting moment during the recent OTB Skins Match in the Go Throw Tour’s 2025 Persimmon Ridge Championship. On the par-four 15th hole, Calvin Heimburg tees off third, after Kevin Jones.

Heimburg has just watched Jones drill an absolutely blast of a backhand drive. In fact, Jones’ shot finishes so far down the fairway that host Luke Humpries observes: “I’ve probably watched 500 drives on this tee. I’ve never seen anybody there.”

When Heimburg steps up to throw, it’s possible he’s trying to equal Jones’s shot. Heimburg certainly has the power for it; he’s known for crushing long-distance backhands.

But when Heimburg runs up and throws, something goes wrong. At the end of his throw, he sort of careens across the tee pad and stumbles. His shot darts down low and left, hitting some trees at the start of the fairway.

It’s possible that Heimburg slipped on some debris on the tee pad, and that’s why he stumbled. But watching the throw, it does look like he’s rushing things slightly—trying to really clobber the throw. And it’s that bit of extra muscling that throws off his rhythm.

Heimburg is one of the greats in professional disc golf. So this is not a criticism of him. Realistically, this is just a reminder that everyone—even the pros—sometimes throw errant shots.

Probably most throwing errors in disc golf come from rushing things. That’s why it’s so important to plant the front foot, and then throw. When we try to muscle it, however, we end up rushing things; we shift into the arm throw before the front foot is firmly planted.

It’s very hard to get into a zen mindset in any sport. But it’s worth trying to find a “sweet spot” in one’s technique. It’s the perennial quest for effortless power—something that’s certainly helpful in disc golf.