disc golf

Golf discourse

by GeorGiA FiSH er

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Disc golfers Ashley and Derek Sonderfan are parents to Landen, 6, and Duncan, 3—neither of whom is any stranger to a putter. Derek, who you might know as a musician for The Utility Players improv group, began disc golfing competitively in 2004, but says he’s happy to get last-place cash, if anything. “When I turn 40, and I can bump up into the old-man division, I’m looking forward to that so much, I can’t even tell you,” he said.

Ashley is a recreational player with eight years under her belt, and she golfed well into her pregnancies. “We’ve actually got a pretty good network of women playing locally,” she told me, but she’d like to see more female players overall.

I caught up with the family at the course adjacent to Sun Valley’s Ester Bennett Elementary School, where Ashley teaches first grade. Unlike larger facilities in the area, this one’s scaled down, so it works especially well for children and novice adults.

How’s disc golf as a family sport?

Derek: This is incredible for kids. One thing you have to bear in mind is he loves playing [gestures at Landen], and he’s a really good player for his age, but you get some of the parents out there who are like, “You have to play, you have to play,” and the kids will go wander around up on the hills. Parents have to be cool with their kids doing something else for 10 minutes, then coming back and playing. [Duncan] will get distracted. He’s 3, so the fact that the throws at all is awesome. But [Landen] takes it very seriously. He likes to actually better himself and work on throwing farther than he did last time, like, “Now I’m going work on my forehand. Now I’m going to work on my backhand.”

Ashley: It’s about being outside, about being able to set your own pace. And it’s good because different age groups will play in different kinds of ways. Right now, our children are small, so it’s more about spending time together and letting them set the pace. I’ve also played with older kids—third grade through middle school—and for those kids, it’s more about actually playing the game, about actually scoring and treating it more as a sport. But not everyone you go with or everyone in the family has to be playing intensely. … And with highschool-age kids and young adults, it’s more of a competition, so they’ll be out there practicing or training for particular strokes, or different kinds of shots. What I like is that for a family, it can be anywhere within that developmental range.

So is this particular course tailored to kids, or does it just happen to work well?

Derek: We used to play at Rancho San Rafael, which is a great course, but the holes can be 400, 500, 600 feet long, and for a kid, they’re just going to be miserable. They’re throwing 10s and 11s on the holes. At [Ester Bennett], each hole is between 100 and 200 feet, so [Landen] can make it in three or four strokes if he gets it right. That way it’s not so daunting for kids, or for any player, really. Why I love disc golf and why this course is great is that it’s for everybody. I’ve seen 80-year-olds play it. I’ve seen 3-year-olds play it. I’ve seen men, women. I saw one guy play an entire tournament, and he had a cane and couldn’t stand on his own, and he was leaning on the cane and throwing. ... The joke is that disc golf is the sport you play when your body breaks down. It’s good cardio. It’s good exercise, and it’s cheap. You just buy a couple discs, and most courses are free. This course is free.

What do you like about disc golf personally?

Ashley: Well, the first thing is, it’s outdoors, and a lot of things for women tend to be sports-stuff indoors. And the second thing is I can set my own pace. I can choose for it to be with a group, I can choose for it to be a social thing, or I can do it on my own.

How is it for women?

Ashley: I’ve always been an athlete, but [initially] I wasn’t going to take the full throws and really get my muscle behind it, and I went into it with this attitude of, “Oh, I’m no good at this,” and “I’m not going to get into it.” I don’t want to make a blanket statement—that’s not how all women go into sports—but it’s a trend I’ve seen when I invite friends out. Women just require a different social dynamic. … Before I ever played, I had the opportunity to follow a women’s group on the East Coast during one of their tournaments, and it was absolutely more of an individual sport. You’re competing with yourself more than with other players, and the women are very encouraging, very supportive of one another. They’re still competing, but they want to help each other get into the game.

Derek: There’s the Poppy Series, and as far as I know, it’s the first series in the world that caters just to women. [Reno player Gayle Baker] started it last year. We’ll have a tournament with like 120 people, though, and there’s five women, and it’s such a shame. This area’s really gone out of its way to reach out to women.

So when’s the first time one of your kids played? How old was he?

Ashley: Eighteen months. We have a little basket in our backyard.

Derek: Their natural inclination is to do this. I was sitting there when [Landen] was maybe a year old and I’d have a disk in his hand, and have him throw it, so he started throwing backhand really early. I haven’t really been teaching him rules, per se. I just want him to enjoy it.

What happens when you force a sport on a kid?

Derek: When you force anything on a kid, it’s going to deter them. You’re the parents. Once they hit 12, 13, the second you say, “Go do this,” obviously they’re going to say no. My friend has a 13-year-old who plays, and they’re very close, but still, he’s a teenager hanging out with Dad on the weekends. At this age, we should have them doing so many different things—soccer, baseball, gymnastics. ... Landen broke his hand last year, and he started learning how to throw lefties, just so he could keep playing.

What else should parents know?

Ashley: Well, you have to watch where [kids] throw their disks; they’re just throwing and throwing and throwing, and then you’ve got five out there. They find disks like they find socks. They don’t.

Are there kids’ competitions here?

Derek: There aren’t specifically kids’ competitions, but there are kids’ divisions ... and in the world championships, they have divisions just for kids. Ω

Disc golfers Derek and Ashley Sonderfan take their children, Duncan, left, and Landen to play disc golf as often as possible. Though the boys began learning to throw at just 18 months old, the family focuses more on spending quality time together than keeping score.