The Ups and Downs in Your Disc Golf Game

Taylor Chocek, third round, fourth hole 2025 Northwest Disc Golf Championship

Fun fact for those who don’t follow solar astronomy: The Sun’s output isn’t constant. It ebbs and flows on both short-term and long-term cycles. In particular, the Sun’s flares and plasma ejections rise and fall in an 11-year pattern.

But what does that have to do with disc golf?

Most of us experience short-term and long-term fluctuations in our disc golf game. And there’s nothing more frustrating than when we get into a fallow period—when we can’t “find” our backhand, for example. Or when we suddenly start hooking our forehand—after weeks of throwing perfect forehands.

Obviously, if you play a round of disc golf when you’re tired, you probably won’t play your best. But what I’m talking about is different. You play great for a stretch of several days. And then suddenly, the next time out, you just don’t “have it.”

It’s a bummer that human beings that aren't computerized. If we were, every forehand we threw, every backhand, would be calculated and executed in precisely the same manner. We’d know the specific moves needed to throw a solid backhand—and would throw the exact same way every time.

But that’s not what happens.

One of the frustrating cycles that we go through has a lot to do with concentration. We know what we want to do when executing a throw. But we don’t always do it. We rush the front foot plant, or we start pulling the arm too soon, or we don’t fully turn our shoulder…

We can also slide into bad habits over a matter of days…or weeks. My backhand was pretty unreliable yesterday—after days of great backhand drives. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. It wasn’t until afterward that I realized I’d gotten lazy on turning my shoulder during the backswing.

It would be great to have a coach—someone who could watch our throws and say, “Hey, you’re skimping on that shoulder turn.”

But when we’re out there playing—and trying to observe ourselves—it’s hard to recognize what we’re forgetting to do. Or what we’re overdoing.

It’s not just those short-term patterns of mistakes, either. Sometimes, over a span of months, we slowly shift the location of where we plant our front foot, for example. And after a month or two, we’ve gradually but significantly altered one of the primary touch-points in our throwing routine.

It’s difficult to spot those kinds of changes. All we know is, “Jeez, something’s not right. I think I’m doing it correctly, but…”

Something else—we can play great for a few days and then have a bad round simply due to mental laziness, or getting too comfortable. It’s probably happened to a lot of people. We start taking our shots for granted—and suddenly fall into a rut of poor shots.

Disc golf takes a lot of focus and concentration. But it’s hard to create that concentration every time. We throw two or three great drives. And then on the next hole, we get too casual… We’ve been rolling along, nice and invincible—and then we throw a lazy, bad drive.

There’s even the simple fact of luck. It’s hard to stay in the zone and keep playing in the most optimum, focused mindset. In the third round of this past weekend’s Northwest Disc Golf Championship, Taylor Chocek started the day with three straight birdies. But then, her drive on the fourth hole crashed straight into the closest tree off the teepad. (See 30:20 into this DGN coverage.) It’s hard to stay on a roll; even the pros sometimes lose focus for a moment.

It’s difficult to keep throwing in the most precise and accurate way. The only thing that can sometimes help is to have a mental checklist—a few key reference terms for the steps needed in a proper shot. Review that list. Ask yourself, “Am I fully doing A then B then C…?”

If you’ve had a bad round, and are disappointed in how you played—if it’s nagging at you after you've finished—you’re not alone. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost your game. You're just going through the ebbs and flows that we all experience.

Resilience...