Disc Golfer - Summer 2013

It Was 30 Years Ago Today: how One Seismic year Shook Disc Golf

Joe Feidt 2013-05-22 00:45:32

In disc golf’s colorful history one year stands out for wrenching changes that would fuel early growth: 1983. The United States was slowly coming out of a long period of economic recession and high inflation. Good times were coming: a roaring stock market, rising employment, and some big growth years for disc golf. Disc golf was in a blue funk then. The novelty of the Disc Pole Hole had worn off. Don’t get me wrong, we were having a ton of fun playing on the few courses that existed, but the growth of courses and the influx of new players was stagnant. Also, we had nothing uniting tournaments around the country; we were off in our various insular worlds doing our own thing. Local events were often unorganized and unpredictable. Leagues and state tours were just getting started, and few of us were venturing beyond state lines to play tournaments. Disc golf entrepreneurs were as rare as ace runs. Talk about primitive, we were wearing tight shorts, no shirts, bandana skullcaps, and knee-high white socks with stripes. Fashion being somewhat cyclical, look for that style returning some time in the future. Or not. One of the few disc golf entrepreneurs then was the PDGA founder, “Steady” Ed Headrick. As well as directing the PDGA, he was running his business, the Disc Golf Association, out of a shop in Lakeport, California. He was busy filling orders for his Midnight Flyer golf discs, leaving less time to sell courses, the most pressing need at the time. Some context. Back then Ed was like the eccentric, almost- famous uncle that you wanted to get to know. He was way older than us but related to us easily. It seemed like he was always joshing with us, teasing us, challenging us. Who knows why, but he was interested in what we were doing, what discs we liked to throw, what courses we liked. We respected Ed but also were somewhat wary of him because he had a temper. It seemed as if we were constantly annoying him. Fortunately, he would forgive and forget us as if nothing had ever happened. Ed mellowed out years later, morphing into the beloved white-whiskered, white-wearing Father of Disc Golf many of us picture. We shared an uneasy truce then and it wasn’t complicated; we needed Ed for discs and baskets and he needed us for access to new players, new markets, and most importantly, the kinetic energy and sense of fun the young possess. Ed fed off that energy. He could be cranky at times, but he loved people, especially the growing disc golf family. Let’s look at five big developments that shook up disc golf in that wild and crazy year. All involved Ed in one way or the other. We didn’t sense those first tremors that were coming; we didn’t know how profoundly things were going to be turned upside down that year. If we had been looking at a glass of water on a table, we would have seen the first ripples pulsing outward. Shock Wave: First Pro Tour Tees Off Looking back, we can clearly see the ground under our disc golf world was starting to tilt. Fellow time travelers, let’s zoom in on the first rumblings of the first tectonic shift that started in Los Angeles in August 1982. (No worries, nothing sliding into the sea.) We’ll visit a raucous meeting of Ed’s regional pros—his sales reps—just before the start of the first World Championships. Ed gathered them to try to convince them of the benefits of lighter-weight discs. He arranged for a speaker, a psychologist, to lecture the pros about the intrinsic beauty and benefits of light plastic; nobody was buying it. The meeting was dragging on, it was warm and sunny outside, and everyone was itching to get out of that room and throw some discs. Many of us had been lobbying Ed to consider allowing popular non-Wham-O golf discs such as Jan Sobel’s Puppy and AMF Voit discs. No way was Ed budging on this issue; he decreed it would be Wham-O discs only (mostly Ed’s Midnight Flyers) at that first Worlds. Period. The meeting dragged on, and finally Ed asked if there were any more questions. He didn’t seem to notice a guy sitting in the front row waving his hand. Most of the other regional reps didn’t know who this polite, well-groomed, earnest young man was. Finally Tom Monroe (who everyone did know) blurted out, “Hey, Ed, why don’t you let Smethers talk?” Ed finally acknowledged the guy in the front row. Ted Smethers got up and drew a map of the United States and outlined his ideas of how a national pro tour might work, with early spring tournaments in the South migrating north in the summer. Ed listened intently and liked what he heard. He promptly selected Jim Powers from Philadelphia and Stan Korth from Oklahoma to launch it. Ted said he wanted to help too. After the meeting, Jim and Stan said they wanted nothing to do with it. Ted said he’d do it. When Ted returned to his mobile home in Little Rock where he was living with his wife Susan, he went back to work at his day job with Arkansas Power and Light (Entergy). In the cool evenings that fall, he began to slowly build a list of every course in the country and pair up a course pro with each one. “No computers, all of it was done on paper. I bought a cork board map of the United States and put a stick pin on every disc golf course I could find,” recalls Ted. That summer, as results from the first tour began to trickle into his mail box, Ted kept a notebook of players’ names by region; it became the first PDGA tournament database. “I sat down with Tom [Monroe] a couple of months before the match and we decided on a cutoff and began doing invitations to the upcoming Huntsville, Alabama, Worlds. We still had to open it up some, but for the first time we had a qualification system.” Shock Wave: Players Finally Get to Vote We’ll get back to Huntsville in a moment, but first let’s check out the first-ever vote by the players that happened in the late spring and early summer. The vote was a critical one that over the next 30 years would profoundly affect disc performance, public safety, and product manufacturing. Back in the day, the term heavy plastic referred to Frisbees pumped up with glow material to make them heavier and allow them to fl y farther. Thanks to Jan Sobel, another early disc golf entrepreneur from California, disc technology was steadily moving in the direction of smaller and heavier. Whizbo, as Jan was known, had recently invented a 21-cm disc called the Puppy that was selling like crazy. The hottest Puppies were round bricks heavier than 180 grams. We lusted after the heaviest ones; no disc was considered too heavy. Throwing heavy plastic was all the rage because the heavier they were, the better they cut through wind. If you had enough arm, they really flew. Ed invented the process of pumping up disc weights and he had been selling his heavy Midnight Flyers for years. Now he was starting to seriously consider safety. Getting hit by one of those airborne bricks did not feel good, people! Out of the blue, that spring he mailed ballots to the players asking us to vote on weight and size restrictions of golf discs. Out of the 2000 (or so) he mailed, 269 were received by the June 30 deadline. The most votes (91) came in for 8 grams per centimeter. The next most popular choice (67 votes) was 8.5 grams. The final weighted average came out to 8.3178 g/cm. With Ted’s suggestion, Ed rounded it to a maximum weight limit of 8.3 g/cm. Players also approved a 200-gram weight limit and a 21-cm minimum diameter. At the time these first technical standards were controversial and became the latest issue to complain about. Some players were just howling mad: How could the PDGA screw up the sport like this?! Who are they to tell us what kind of discs to throw?! Looking back it’s amazing how these size and weight limits caused such an uproar then. What’s equally amazing to me is how well these technical standards have stood the test of time. All remain in force today without controversy. To this day I have no idea how we were so smart and prescient to create these almost perfect weight and size limits, but somehow we did. You’re welcome, people! Shock Wave: Champion’s Eagle Soars Remember the buzz earlier this year when you first heard about the new Prodigy discs? That’s what it was like 30 years ago when all of sudden, out of nowhere, a new disc company called Champion Discs started shipping its new Eagle. They only had one model but it was a darn good one. Word spread fast about this new “beveled-edge” disc. We were all amazed at how fast it came out of the hand and far it flew. Today, if you can find one, it looks like a clunky old approach disc, but to us then it was a Prodigy D1. Today’s new kid on the block Prodigy Discs has street cred with top players—young and old—behind it. Thirty years ago Champion had similar credentials: 1982 PDGA World Champ Harold Duvall and runner-up Dave Dunipace were the owners and disc makers. Soon Tim Selinske joined them as their sales guy (more cred). Today that little 1983 startup is the biggest disc golf company on the planet: Innova Discs. The story behind the Eagle is intriguing: Dunipace spent the Fall of 1982 melting down old discs, adding the hot plastic to the rims of old discs, and shaving the rims into sharper-edged discs. “I started with any disc I could find: Vectors, Wham-O 70 molds, Fastbacks, Puppies, and 40 molds. I used a knife, a soldering iron, a file, and sandpaper,” recalled Dave. The disc was so popular so fast that it took us all by surprise. Some said it was too sharp-edged, too fast, too potentially dangerous if you got hit with one. Popular demand ruled and over the summer it became THE long-distance driver you had to have in your bag along with some of Ed’s good old Wham-O Midnight Flyers for approach shots, and a Jan Sobel Puppy for a putter. Discraft’s foray into serious golf discs would come the next year with its Phantom. That summer the Eagle met the new PDGA guidelines, was able to get the PDGA stamp of approval, and we were all throwing them. Now the only question was: Would we be allowed to throw them at Worlds. Shock Wave: Power Grab by the Players A controversy was beginning to brew in the PDGA kettle. For this we travel way back and revisit Tom Monroe and his young protégé, Lavone Wolfe. The dynamic duo had volunteered to run the Worlds in their hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. These guys had plenty of experience running tournaments and didn’t feel they needed much help from Ed. Instead of asking him for anything, they were telling Ed what discs would be legal to throw, what competitive format would be used, who would be invited, and on and on. Like most of the players then, Tom and Lavone threw and loved the new Eagles and Puppies and were intent on opening up their Worlds to all legal discs and to players of all ages and both genders. We can only surmise that Ed did not appreciate having his authority challenged. (If only we could ask him.) At that moment he was still the alpha dog of disc golf. This overt defiance by the Huntsville boys must surely have bothered him. He was accustomed to being in control and no doubt was reluctant to let these youngsters tell him how his PDGA Worlds would be run. Another development concerned him too: Ed knew some influential players, led by future Hall of Famer Doug Newland #016, were starting up a player-run organization to rival the PDGA. It would be called the U.S. Disc Players Golf Association. If Ed was going to stonewall Tom and Lavone, they were well prepared. They had created not one but two logos to be stamped on their PDGA Worlds discs—one with the PDGA approved stamp and one with the new players’ organization, the USDPGA logo. If Ed balked on permitting all makes and models of discs, they would use the USDPGA logo. It was a bold power grab and it succeeded. Ed agreed to allow all legal discs, and embraced the new open format of women and agebased divisions. (Ed won Senior Grandmasters that year and readily accepted the new divisions.) We were all “pros” then, at least in name; the concept of amateur divisions would come years later. Shock Wave: Ed Turns Over the PDGA to the Players All of which leads us to maybe the most consequential earth shaker of disc golf’s wild year. Shortly after Huntsville, Ed sent out a newsletter chock full of all kinds of information: the new technical standards we had just voted on, a letter from Susan Smethers thanking women and seniors for participating in the first pro tour, the Huntsville results, and lots more. Almost buried in it was the startling news that Ed would be relinquishing leadership of the PDGA to the players. “I will continue as director of the PDGA for one year to assure the members it is organized on sound business principles and that the best interest of the sport is served,” he wrote. “After one year, a new director will be elected.” Why did Ed decide at that moment to let go of the PDGA? Was it pressure from the players’ competing organization? Was it the successful Huntsville Worlds run by the players themselves for the first time? Did he see Ted Smethers as a viable new leader for the PDGA? Maybe he had grown tired of squabbling with the players and doing everything himself to keep the PDGA going. Likely it was a combination of those strong crosscurrents buffeting disc golf in that crazy year. In one year, from late summer 1982 to late summer 1983, Ed just let it all go and gave his thumbs-up to a bold new member-run PDGA. In the same time span Ted Smethers advanced from a little known Little Rock regional pro to the promising new leader of a 2,000-member organization. With the help of volunteers and a new board, Ted forged the PDGA into a self-funding, true player-run organization. At the Rochester Worlds in 1984, when Ed symbolically handed over power to Ted with a handshake and a green bottle of Genesee Cream Ale, the transition from Ed to the players was completed. Turbulent times lay ahead, but as we cheered Ed and Ted in Rochester, the PDGA’s future appeared as bright and peaceful and full of promise as a warm spring day.

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