New Study Examines the Moneyless Rise of Disc Golf
By Josh Woods ~
Three years ago, I quietly jettisoned my sociological research agenda on terrorism and immigration and began thinking about the growth of disc golf and other emerging sports. The two-part question that has held my curiosity longest is this one:
Is the popularity of disc golf growing, and if so, why? Continue reading “The Disc Golf Revolution Will Not Be Televised (But It Will Be Fun)”
Josh Woods ~
I am terrible at cocktail parties. I rarely say the right thing when meeting new people.
But don’t get me wrong. I’m not someone who looks down on small talk. I can chat about sports, the weather and Caribbean vacations all day long.
The problem is, when encountering strangers, the topics of careers and hobbies invariably arise.
“What keeps you busy?” Someone might ask.
For me, there’s really no way to answer this question truthfully without staring into a blank, confused face. Continue reading “The Sociology of Disc Golf? Yep, that’s a Thing”
A new method for studying the sport
By Josh Woods ~
I’m not a fan of phrases like “close, but no cigar” and “close only counts in horseshoes.”
They make it sound like close is a bad thing. As if anything short of first place, anything other than perfection, anything besides certainty is a grave defeat.
Even Reese Bobby’s celebrated absurdity – “If you ain’t first, you’re last” – was debunked by Reese himself at the end of Talladega Nights.
Black-and-white thinking doesn’t work well as a sports mentality, and it’s even worse for science. Scientific research never leads us out of the grey, not entirely. At best, we merely increase our confidence in fundamentally questionable propositions. Continue reading “What We Know and Don’t Know about Disc Golf”
A brief look into the psychology and sociology of disc golf.
By Josh Woods ~
The other day my seven-year-old daughter asked me, “Why do people get married?”
I gazed into her curious brown eyes, knowing that my answer would not satisfy her. “Because they want to,” I said.
“Why do they want to?” She chirped, of course.
“Because it makes them happy,” I said.
“Why does it make them happy?”
I tried to explain that people get married for different reasons, that not everyone wants to, and that the reasons for getting married usually depend on where people live, when they live, and what the people around them think about marriage.
“I’m going to be a zombie bride for Halloween,” she said. And that was that. Continue reading “Why Do People Play Disc Golf?”
By Josh Woods ~
The other day I was working on a Where’s Waldo puzzle with my daughter when my mind began to drift to where it so often drifts.
Gazing at the strange assortment of people in the puzzle made me think of disc golf. It is amazing what you can find while walking through a crowded course on a Friday afternoon, or perusing disc golf handles on social media.
Viewing the sheer variety and complexity of disc golf culture, I find it hard to look away. Continue reading “Rise of an unknown sport (Part 1)”
It’s spring 1990. Mike Plansky is standing in a municipal park near Palo Alto, California, crouched like the Karate Kid with a footbag resting on the back of his neck. With an undulating motion, he rolls the multi-paneled pigskin up his spine and over his head. Dropping on gravity’s rainbow, the footbag suddenly stalls, impossibly, on the toe of Mike’s black and white Vans. Then, with a fluid jerk of his foot, he passes the footbag to his friend. Continue reading “Disc golf and the construction of happiness”
Parked 