A few days ago I played a round with a random person I met on the first tee at my home course. He hadn’t ever played there before, so I figured I’d show him around. My home course is pretty tough with a lot of woods and I like to give a hand to folks playing there for the first time. Normally, that’s not a problem, it’s something I enjoy. But I knew we were in for trouble when I saw him throw his first shot.
It wasn’t his throw that concerned me as much as it was the disc he used. As soon as I saw it emerge from his bag I prayed he didn’t have any more like it. Unfortunately there were a lot of them. Turns out this guy was a big fan of black discs with black stamps. At least half of his discs were this color. This was going to be an issue.
I’m always curious as to why people pick the discs they do, so I asked him about his assortment of black plastic. Was it a goth thing? Did his discs sulk in a corner smoking cigarettes and listening to depressing music between rounds? Or were they more part of the death metal crowd? Did they like to go to concerts where they could scream and punch people? I really wanted to know.
He was very proud. Apparently it had taken quite a bit of work to put together the Spinal Tap Black Album equivalent of a disc golf bag (it just couldn’t be any more black!). He told me stories about how hard it was to find certain discs “all murdered out”. He spun tales of epic trades and hard fought Ebay auctions. He told me of private Facebook groups and auction pages. He certainly loved his all black plastic.
As you can imagine, we spent more time that round looking for discs than we did throwing. It got very frustrating very fast. At one point, while looking for his disc, I started to have flashes of an old Wesley Snipes movie, Passenger 57. In that movie, Snipes delivers what turned out to be his signature line of dialog, “Always bet on black”. While that might be sage advice when trying to Kung Fu your way out of a hijacking predicament, it turns out it’s awful advice for disc golf.
Wesley in the infamous betting on black scene from Passenger 57.
That ended up being one of the longest rounds I’ve ever played on my home course. What I can normally do in 1.5 hours by myself took well over 3. We let no less than 5 groups play through. I began to wonder if “murdered out” really meant “causes other people to want to murder you”. I’m normally not a violent guy, but those death metal discs certainly had me thinking about it!
So today’s lesson on building the perfect bag sort of comes from one of my favorite action heroes, Mr. Wesley Snipes. Unless it’s your putting putter, please, for the love of bad action movies everywhere, NEVER bet on black!!! Instead pick colors you can actually see and find in the woods. Choose black for your car, or your clothes, or your motorcycle helmet. Just not your discs!
I’m thinking that Snipes needs to make a new movie as part of his career comeback, “Disc Golfer 57”. In this new movie about a hijacked disc golf tournament, he will deliver his new catch phrase…. “Always bet on chartreuse.”. The villains will each meet their demise at Wesley’s hands while off in the woods looking for their murdered out discs.
Oh, and one more piece of sage wisdom from Wesley… Pay your taxes. Always pay your taxes.
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