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| The story of the evolution of disc golf looks much like a jigsaw puzzle with many individual pieces scattered about, each representing an important step in the assembly of the sport. Not until those individual pieces are connected do we see the final picture that will become the game of disc golf, as we know it today. |
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No one knows for sure who first came up with a game involving throwing a disc of some sort, but the first |
| piece of the puzzle came in 1926 with what’s generally accepted as the first documented instance of playing a game with a flying disc. In Bladworth, Saskatchewan, Canada, Ronald Gibson and a group of his Bladworth Elementary School buddies played a game they termed “tin lid golf”. They played the game on a course set up on the grounds of their school by throwing tin plates at targets that included trees and fence posts. The kids played the game throughout their elementary school days but as they grew older they went their separate ways and the game came to an end. |
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There are many individual stories from the 1920’s and continuing through the Great Depression of kids |
| on the East coast throwing and playing catch with tin plates. The popularity continued to spread across the country during World War II as soldiers from out East were sent to military bases in California. During these years similar games like Ronald Gibson’s “tin lid golf’ came and went and even though none had any real staying power it did show the common fascination kids had with throwing flying discs at makeshift targets. |
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The first step toward the modern era of disc golf came at the |
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| end of World War II. In 1947 Warren Franscioni owned a home heating company in Southern California and was struggling to keep food on the table. Warren hired his buddy Fred Morrison and together they decide to make a little money by taking on a new project. Seeing that the tin plates being thrown by kids at the time were easily damaged the men realized they needed a new material. Ultimately two major events of the time came together to shape the destiny of disc golf. First, in the aftermath of the war, the use of plastic was just coming of age and available to the general public. Secondly, because of the hysteria created by rumors of aliens crashing to earth in a flying saucer at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, things in the shape of flying saucers became all the rage. |
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Warren and Fred formed a company they called Pipco (Partners in Plastic) and started trying to sell their |
| new plastic “flying saucers”. They set up demonstrations at fairgrounds and showed off the much-improved flight of the new plastic wonders. Unfortunately people were suspicious of the vast difference in flight time between the new plastic saucers versus the older tin plates and even thought it was due to an invisible wire. The plastic ‘flying saucers’ just didn’t sell, so as a gimmick Warren and Fred decided to give them away with the purchase of an invisible wire for just $1! That didn’t work either and by 1953 Pipco had gone bust and the two partners went their separate ways. Fred Morrison later slightly redesigned their ‘flying saucer’, renamed it the “Pluto Platter” and opened a new shop in Los Angeles called American Trends to promote the revamped design. |
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Everything changed one day in 1955 when Fred was out throwing one of his new designs and was |
| noticed by two men, Rich Knerr and Spud Melin, the co-founders of a new toy company called Wham-O. They saw the potential for a national sensation and purchased the license for the Pluto Platter. In an attempt to market the new addition to their company they toured college campuses to generate interest and spread the word. It was on one of those visits to Yale University that history was to be made. While there, Rich and Spud found a group of students who had been playing a game with tin pie plates that had been passed down from the late 1920’s. The pie plates the students used were from a New England company that would go out of business in 1958, the same year Fred Morrison received his patent for his new “Flying Toy”. Rich and Spud discovered the students would yell out the name of the pie tin company any time the plate was thrown in harms way, much the same as yelling “Fore” in the game of ball golf. It turned out the name of the pie tin company was the Frisbie Baking Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut! Wham-O played off the name slightly and the “Pluto Platter“ was dead and the modern Frisbee was born! |
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The game of disc golf struggled to gain a foothold following the 1958 release of the Frisbee. The main |
| reason was the introduction of the game called “Guts”. “Guts” was created by the Healy Brothers, introduced in 1958, and marketed as the original game designed specifically for the Frisbee. What started out as a |
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recreational game at the Healy Brothers annual Fourth of July picnics soon gained in popularity. By 1964 it had evolved into the annual “International Frisbee Tournament” (IFT) and came to be thought of as the super bowl of Frisbee exhibitions. Through the years leading up to 1964 the game took on an almost cult-like status with Frisbee enthusiasts. It was considered sacred and left little room for the growth of any other game with the original “Frisbee” generation.
An example of the difficulty disc golf had in gaining a foothold among Frisbee players came in 1960, when the Copar Plastics Company based in Chicago attempted to market a game they dubbed “SkyGolf”. Unfortunately for the Copar Company and disc golf in general, the Frisbee culture was just starting out and the game didn’t take hold. |
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One of the biggest pieces of the disc golf puzzle came into play in 1964 when a man, trying to sell |
| his idea for a new kind of hydrofoil water ski, knocked on Wham-O’s door hoping for a sale. Wham-O wasn’t interested in the water ski idea, but they were impressed by the man’s offer to quit his high paying job as VP/General Manager of a water heater company and work for free for three months as head of the research and development (marketing) department at Wham-O in exchange for a job later if they liked his work. As it turned out Wham-O was losing tons of money storing Hula Hoop tubing and were looking for any new ideas to save money. Wham-O agreed to the man’s terms and the first step he took was to sell all the unused plastic tubing to a meltdown company. This idea saved Wham-O a fortune! The next step for the would-be inventor was to dig up the mold for the original “Pluto Platter” and create his own version of the flying disc, complete with sparkle. He added a new gold foil label and black ring, stamped “Pro” on it and shot a big time TV commercial to market the disc. At the same time this was going on this same inventor also created the Super Ball, and in a very short time the Frisbee and the Super Ball became two of the top ten crazes in the world! Who was this inventor? The man’s name was “Steady” Ed Headrick, and became known as the undisputed father of the modern Frisbee. |
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Just as the Frisbee began exploding in popularity an |
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| interesting event took place that could have jumped disc golf into the mainstream but for some reason was overlooked. In 1965 George Sappenfeld, a recreational counselor home on break from college, was out hitting golf balls one day when he realized the neighborhood kids could play the game of golf with Frisbees. He wrote a letter to Wham-O describing his vision of a game that was very similar to today’s version. He asked Wham-O to help him with a Frisbee contest he was planning for his recreation program. They sent Frisbees as well as Hula Hoops to use as targets. The following year George convinced “Steady” Ed to include a Frisbee golf event in the “All Comers Frisbee Meet” (the soon to be named IFT) that “Steady” Ed and |
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| Wham-O were planning at The Rose Bowl fields in Pasadena.For some reason Wham-O didn’t pursue the idea of disc golf after the event and that was the end of their involvement for the next seven years! |
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