I was first introduced to disc golf in middle school by a friend of mine who lived next to Garfield park. This was back when it used to have wooden 4x4s instead of baskets. A few years later in 2015, I played the disorganized object course at Riverside park with my Innova 3-disc starter set, but I wasn't especially in love with the game yet.

Between 2015 and the summer of 2020, I probably played no more than 3-4 rounds with that starter set and a couple of my friends. I got turned off to the game sometime in 2018 when one of my buddies hit my mom in the back of the head with a disc at Garfield park. That sort of soured the sport for me.

Then, early in the summer of 2020, I was longboarding with a childhood friend around Millennium Park, and it was here that we discovered the Johnson Park disc golf course. The place was packed and the terrain looked challenging and fun, so we ended up running over to Meijer and grabbing another Innova starter set and playing the course. We quickly took a liking to the game, and shortly after did our first disc upgrade at Dick's sporting goods. I bought a red DX Thunderbird and he got a Blue Champion Beast.

Disc golf seemed like a great hobby. It was affordable and I loved to be outside, but I didn't fall in love with the game until a mid summer day at Johnson park. It was maybe my 3rd time playing the course and I was solo, but then a group of 3 guys who were there for league asked if I wanted to play along with them. This was my first time playing with people who really had skill with the game. Their throws were extremely impressive, and they even talked me up a bit, telling me I had "long arms" that could throw far and that I could even play tournaments and win money someday.

I was flattered but not especially convinced. I mean, this was a yard sport, and I had no interest in getting hyper competitive with it, but I humored them. I ended playing the full 18 with them and they gave me a bunch of tips and helpful advice for getting better at the game. One of them even gave me a Discraft heat with a purple flame logo on the front of it. This was the disc that got me addicted. 

We were on hole 8 at Johnson park; a 300', downhill shot with a gap through bushy trees roughly 220` down the fairway. It was my turn on the pad and I threw the heat, but something felt different. The disc came off my hand perfectly, like a laser towards the gap. It flew further than any disc I had ever thrown, and watching it fly gave me the an unmistakable dopamine rush. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had thrown my first ever hyzer flip. This is the shot that would play in my mind for the next few months as the sport captured me. 

Hyzer's Disc Golf and Smoke Shop in Allendale was the closest disc store to Johnson. The owner was an avid player and force in the local community. He sold me a Discraft Stratus and a Christmas edition Innova Star Archon, and also explained what the numbers on the discs meant and what hyzer's and anhyzer's were. This was the first ever "disc shop" I'd been to, and though this store was much more of a smoke shop than disc shop, he had all sorts of tournament discs and special runs hung up on the wall that I couldn't help but gawk at. Few were for sale, and though and I would soon graduate to shopping at Great Lakes disc, Hyzer's will hold always special place as one the first disc shops I'd been to.

Great Lakes Disc is where my disc golf hobby became an obsession. The store was like no other. A small, rectangular room with maybe 300sq ft. of space, filled with racks of colorful discs stretching all the way to the ceiling. This was the absolute best place to find deals on used plastic. I burned hours in that store the first few times I went, thumbing through hundreds of discs in what felt like the library of Alexandria for disc golf. It was almost always busy too. This is where I got info about local leagues, PDGA numbers, tournaments, disc manufacturers, and just how popular the game was in Grand Rapids.

I ended up getting my PDGA number in 2021 with a friend that I met at Jonhson Park so we could get our rating at sanctioned Brewer League. (his number was just one away from mine, 179421. Someone squeaked in between while we were signing up.) We played league together a ton that summer, always playing Brewer Gold's, which were wildly long for our skill level. We averaged between +10 and +16 over par, and it was absolute blast. 

Since then, I've probably logged well over 1000 hours in this sport between putting, practice rounds, and tournaments. Jonhson park is my most played course at what I estimate is over 200 rounds. I've been to courses all the around Michigan and Indiana and plan to keep growing the list of courses I've been to. 

I plan to update this disc golf biography more in the future, along with the list below of all of the courses I have played.