STOP Trying To Throw Far [Over 350'] UNTIL YOU DO THIS!!

Welcome back to the end of disc golf. Today, I want to talk about adding more distance and why that's something you should do, but it shouldn't be your main focus. Cuz honestly right now, we're going to talk about throwing farther versus putting better. And I don't want to just talk about it. So, I'm actually here on the 18th hole at the Open at Tallahassee. The sun just decided to really come out, which is an 805-ft par 4. This dog is trying to kill me right now. Wheezing like he wants to attack me right now. And while we play, I want to explain my rationale of just getting better at putting and why that's helped me to get to the place that I am in disc golf and to the next level. But, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't focus on distance at all. It just shouldn't be your primary focus at the beginning of your disc golf career. If you haven't watched or you don't remember the Open at Tallahassee, this is Tom Brown Park in Tallahassee, Florida. The finishing hole right here is 805-ft through this tightly wooded gap all the way down there. You can probably see the basket. It is elevated and there's a bunch of trees guarding the basket about 150 to 180 ft out. Now, you think at 805 ft, this hole was just birdie-ville. Like everybody was getting it because pros have 400-plus ft of distance. That's no problem. If you actually look at the average scoring on hole 18 on the last round there, average It averaged 4.5. So, if you par it, you're gaining half a stroke on the field. Round two as well, it scored 4.5. In round one, it scored 4.54. So, if you take a four here, you're gaining half a stroke on the field as a whole. Not a lot of birdies were had. So, I'm going to send out two drives. And it's going to It might take me a couple tries to be completely honest with you. This isn't one of the hey, I'm showing you my actual score. This is an example video. So, one of them is just going to be my actual drive if I was trying to birdie this hole, which in a tournament I probably would try to birdie the hole. But, looking at that, I maybe want to play it for par. I don't have 450 ft of power. I Right now, I'm right around 400-410. We got a headwind. So, I'm just going to send out one of my Orbit Graces real fast and see if I can knock out about 380 to 400 ft of distance. Oh, man. Knock down. Get the arrive. Should have brought another arrive, too. That was the shot if it was lower. So, I just threw four drives. One of them was all right, but when I'm focusing on that distance and power, I lose a little bit of accuracy. So, if instead of focusing on throwing max distance, I threw a fairway driver or if you're throwing a distance driver 300 ft, the main thing that I think that you should be focusing on to score better in disc golf until you're actually shooting in the mid-900s, is hitting gaps and putting better. We're going to throw my birdie strike just up this gap. Just try to knock out 300 ft. Literally nothing crazy at all. It could be a mid, but I don't want to throw a mid because that is an advantage of someone who throws slightly farther is being able to slow start throw slower speed discs. And if you're throwing or right around 280-320 ft, your fairways and your drivers are probably flying about the same for you cuz you can't get a driver up to speed anyways. I'm going to throw an Air Kukri Dynasty then, actually. Super easy, simple shot through the gap. Lot of headwind, so it's lifting it. And that is absolutely not in a position to birdie. I want to show you how by only trying to throw 300 ft and focusing on your putting, you'll be able to take strokes even on a pro tour level field because sometimes when you have more power, like I tried to rip out a bunch of those shots, especially on this little gap here, I lost a little bit of accuracy. I did have an all right shot that probably got it a little bit farther than that just simple fairway driver shot. But, focusing on hitting gaps and putting better is going to be way better for you not only on these super long 805-ft holes where you can just throw to a landing zone and take a par, but two things that I want to say with that. One of them, if you can't reach this hole for a birdie, like even in my head, I probably shouldn't even be thinking about this as a birdie cuz it takes two perfect max power shots. And that's probably not going to happen. But, if I think about this as a par five, which is what I had to do in my last tournament, there was a really tightly wooded hard par four that was 730 ft, but the first 400 of it was like stupid wooded. So, I treated it as a par five and when I got a four or a five, I was very happy. But, the real key with learning to throw far versus putting is that a lot of people are going to focus on throwing far out the gate. And that's a really bad thing to do because you're not going to be focused on putting. And putting is a much easier skill to get great at because with throwing far, you're going to have a much larger recovery period and rest that you need to take as you try to throw far, the technique of it is much more important. So, once you develop any sort of just decent putting technique or one that works for you and you just practice and you focus on getting more spin and putting farther and farther, if you are deadly from within 40 ft or you can just make all of your inside the circle putts, doesn't quite matter if you can throw 400 or 300 ft. You're going to score better than the majority of people even on MA1 cards, which is where I've been playing for a while because if you just straight up focus on distance and throwing 400, 450, 500, I have some people that I know who do that, but they miss 20-ft putts. So, if they're getting a look, but they're missing everything outside of 20 ft, I mean, it doesn't really matter that they're getting looks or if they threw 150 ft shorter, threw an upshot under the basket, made the putt. Here's where we got with our Dynasty. I want to just double-check and make sure that we're not too far. I don't think we are, but okay, this is saying that we threw this 330 ft. Just to make the point even more, I'm actually going to back us up about 60 ft. So, way back here. This is right here. It does give us a little bit more open of a look, but it's also 50 ft further back. So, I think one of my drives actually did land me about 400 ft, which should give me an upshot in not quite in this headwind, which is another problem, but that tree right now is 340 ft away from us. We're not even really trying to get all the way to that tree. The main thing is we have a big old open field out there that we're able to play to. I know that if you're throwing max 300, you're not just throwing straight hyzers, so I'm not going to play a straight hyzer. I'm going to play a slight flex shot because that will have some more variability in it. And I try to just get another 300 ft and then we have one last upshot and we focus on where we're trying to put this. So, for me, it's trying to put it in this gap so that I can have a straight shot towards the basket. Let's see if we can do it. I don't even think that's 300. I threw that pretty soft. It's actually right next to that tree, so I can range how far that went. Oh, exactly. It's 298 ft away. Now, let's go to our actual far drive and try to get the birdie and see if there's any difference at all. Okay, so this one didn't even get out fully cleanly, but I think Yeah, we're probably only about 360 ft. 390. That actually leaves us 450 into the pin. And this is where if I can't throw 400 or 410 and actually hit my line, I might leave myself with a 40-ft look. And if I'm practicing putting, that should be something that I'm able to get up and down for birdie. But, even from here, trying to do something way too aggressive, which is what I would probably want to try to do cuz I want the birdie here, could leave me out of bounds. It could make me hit a tree and have a scramble upshot instead of a simple upshot from our other throw. So, I'm going to try to get this up inside the circle or at least close to it. I don't know if I have the juice right now, especially keeping the ceiling so low, but I'm going to give it one or two shots. Look for a throw-in. That's better. Get that one over. Miss that tree. Okay. It's down there. It's just hard to get all the way down there. A roller would honestly probably be the best shot to get all the way down there and curl back towards the basket, but I don't have a good roller. So, one of those might be in circle two, maybe two of them. And I know this is a par four, so I do want to also talk about par threes that are {quote} {unquote} outside of your range and why I still think that you should practice putting over practicing distance. And it honestly all just comes down to the fact that if it's a 380-ft hole or 400-ft par three, that's something that I might feel confident reaching now as I've slightly worked on my distance and I'm wanting to work a little bit more. But, distance is something that to me came a little bit more naturally from my athletic background and from having just good coordination in general. So, if it doesn't come easy to you and you look at a 400-ft hole and it's a par three, even up to like the MP levels, especially local MP, not the the majority of the field isn't getting that hole. So, you might lose strokes to some people, but if you're looking at fighting for the cash line or just winning MA1 or MA2, those aren't holes that you need to get. Like you don't need to get those holes until the pro tour level. People just aren't birdying 400-ft holes. It's not that easy, which is why I said practicing putting because you're going to kill yourself to try to add that extra 50 to 100 ft of distance instead of just working on your putting because right now, I'm feeling dialed within about 35 to 40 ft. Everything inside the circle, I'm feeling very confident with. And if you can get to that place, if you have a 350-ft hole, you only need to be able to throw 320 ft accurate and you're inside the circle because the circle's 33 ft and if you land on the short side, you're still inside the circle. You can make that putt and get that birdie over someone who's throwing 350 ft, but it's not quite as accurate. They spray it right or left. They have a 25-ft putt and they doink it. So, working on your putting is so much more important in my opinion. And this is as someone who like I don't have elite level distance yet. I'm working on that during this off-season. But, all the tournaments that I have won have been because I putt very well. Even my first tournament just 3 months into playing, I shot 970 average and won that tournament all because I had practiced putting and my putt was on. I was only throwing about 340 ft, but I shot a 970-rated tournament. So, here is the last shot. This is a little difficult for me cuz I know we're pretty close. We're probably about 200 ft. I don't know what disc to throw though to give the best example. 245 ft. So, I don't know. If someone is throwing 300 ft, are you throwing a mid here? Are you throwing a fairway driver? This is where you just got to throw what you're accurate with. And for me right now, I'd probably be throwing either a mid with a low ceiling or just my Discmania EXO Tactic. Literally sitting at the base of that thing right there because it's what you're accurate with and you know your distance and get accurate with what you have, but easy 300-300. I mean, it is elevated, so you could miss that putt, but I'm only 10 ft out. But, here, I'm not even saying that like if you can't throw 300 ft that you shouldn't work on distance or if you can't throw 400 ft and want to that you shouldn't work on distance. I'm simply saying that if you're not putting lights out inside the circle, you should probably allocate a lot of your time towards putting better if you're trying to get the best score. If you just want to throw far, just learn to throw far. Like you know, that's different. But, if you want to get the best disc golf scores, which is what I want to do training for the pro tour. I am working on my distance this off season, probably about 25% forehand, about 60-ish percent backhand, and the rest 15% is upshots, and just making sure that my putting stays dialed and gets even more dialed. Okay, I'm honestly pretty stoked with one of these drives. It's not like parked by any stretch of the imagination, but this I do have a look for birdie. The elevated basket does give me a little scare, especially with all this freaking wind right here. The problem with this, too, is our par is right here. That's the 10-m mark. Our easy par right here. Boom. And that takes half a stroke on the field. This right here, if I want the birdie, I kind of need to run this, but even at the pro tour level, people are laying this up. The sensible thing is a simple layup. Just throw it where you were. Try to get on the one of the on one of the steps if you want to, but the run is more fun. Also, just to see if I can, this was the first drive that we made with the Dynasty, where we threw the Dynasty on all three shots, cuz simple 300-footers is all we need. I think we're just inside the circle. See if we can still get it. Oh. Got to practice my elevated basket putting, apparently. But I promise you, if you're looking to score better than your cardmates, if you're just a casual player, or if you're looking to play tournaments, which I know a lot of my audience wants, and I'm grateful that I can inspire some of you guys to do that. Distance is important. I'm not going to say that it's not. I'm not going to say don't try to get more distance. I am going to say allocate your time appropriately. If you can't make 20-ft putts eight to 10 out of 10 of them, and you can't make 30-ft putts five to seven out of 10 of them, don't practice your distance with all of your time that you're spending on disc golf. Practice your putting. Get a practice basket. I have a link to one down in the description. I get a little affiliate kickback, but however you can practice putting, please practice putting first, because I promise you, it's always more impressive whenever I played with somebody who putts really well versus when you throw far. There've not been a lot of cards that I've been on recently where people throw farther than me. More so than that, there have not been people who putt better than me for the most part, and when there are, I'm way more impressed by that, and I also get comments when I'm putting lights out of people who are like, I just literally think everything's going in off your hand, because that's way more impressive. So, please learn to putt better, and I have this video right down here that can totally help you out. It's everything that I know that I've learned to putt well and to have a couple circle one 100% tournament rounds. And honestly, the biggest reason why I say to do that so much is it's just easier, especially if it's wintertime by you right now. It's just so much easier to practice your putting than it is to practice your distance if you don't have a field or a net. And you don't have to know so much about form, you just need to get your form dialed. Please subscribe. Soon. Okay, love you. Bye.