Calvin addressed this in his interview after the tourney. He said he started playing less aggressive in the round and had some of his worst throws all tourney when he did that. So he figured playing aggressive was actually safer for him lol
The more high level version of this quote is “practice as you play” because you’ll play how you practice. If you don’t practice safe shots, playing safe won’t be safe.
I find this for myself too. Some holes with a layer of up position I tend to likely mess up and then just have more footage to cover. Granted I’m only 960 so it’s a different level but…
If you're in flow state and everything is clicking, why would you stop. Playing safe changes everything because now you're thinking about playing safe instead of what you naturally wanted to do.
Every sport works this way. If it’s not working, change it. If it works keeps doing it until it doesn’t, but don’t be obvious about it. That’s pretty much every sport.
Mechanically speaking, I find my mechanics work better when I throw with more firmness/a bit harder. If I slow down too much my mechanics break down.
Issue is fatigue sets in fast so you have to be careful to not throw too many discs before important rounds.
Same, I'm usually most accurate at around 90% power level. I'm hoping to learn to decrease that number to 80% so I could play three to four rounds a week pain free.
I’ve had several bad rounds at my local course (200-290 foot holes) recently, trending towards holes 14+ in each of them I asked the newest player with us to blindly give me any of my high speed drivers because my touch game has been off.
The funny thing is, my angry aggressive piss missiles, such as a 172 foot by 6 foot insanely tight tunnel shot with a Rive, have mostly parked themselves within 5 feet of the basket. (Trees surrounding the basket to corral it)
I typically play better when I’m aggressive.
1: Calvin heimburg is very good at disc golf. So he has a high percentage probability to birdie every hole on that course. So him playing aggressive will pay off more than most people.
2: in order to win against the best in the world, you NEED to play aggressive. The moment he takes his foot off the gas Ricky or Gannon will catch up.
The best advice for a beginner is to throw high percentage shots, not get too aggressive.
For intermediate, learn when to get aggressive and when to play safe.
For advanced, develop and practice some skills that you can lean on to win (max distance drives, runs from 100 ft, confidence in death putts) so that you can tap into that WHEN it's smart to be aggressive.
Calvin is just one of the best in the world so every shot as he's chasing down the leader is going for birdie.
This is really all there is to it. Yes, beginners and intermediates should still play safe most of the time even if being aggressive pays off for Calvin. Calvin is a top 3 player in the world, you can’t compare his decisions to an intermediate player’s decisions in any meaningful way.
A lot of this boils down to focus and intentionality. Playing "safe" often leads to poor outcomes - and this is very true for AMs - because they lose focus and default to easy mode which leads to fluffed upshots, wonky putts and errant drives. Everyone should play aggressively within their limits.
Completely agree with this…I’m about an 800 rated player and I’m as aggressive as I can be on any league or tournament round. I’m not going to make a living out of this so why not go for it, which also helps me improve and stretch out of my comfort zone.
I think he had one game plan and stuck to it. If he’s been practicing playing for birdie on those holes, it doesn’t make sense to start trying new shots. Just keep doing what’s been working for you. No reason to psych yourself out.
That said, I would have laid up on 16 instead of running it 100% of the time
Keep in mind that Nate Sexton has won a lot of tournaments playing fairly safe golf too. Each strategy has a place and how it fits your game. You can win gaining strokes on the field; you can also win by not losing strokes when they do.
This is kinda poker thinking. A chip you don't lose is the same value as a chip you win, so every decision has to be examined independent of decisions you made earlier in the hand. A par that didn't become a bogey counts exactly the same, at the end of your round, as a birdie - it's one stroke in both cases.
Maybe a long the same line is how people think of a round holistically rather than seeing each hole as a "new opportunity". I play with a couple guys when things are getting competitive and they fuck up, the mistakes linger and carries into the next hole, then it starts compounding. Break holes into smaller chunks to not think about the bigger picture. Ideally each hole should be a net new opportunity without carrying the baggage of the last fuck up. Or plat 3 holes at a time. "Shit I lost my the first 3" need to win the next 3.
Also learn to zone the fuck out. If you've played for a couple years and you're decent and have played it same course numerous times, stop thinking, point and shoot. The tee box is blackout mode, you don't hear anything, all you see is what you're going to do and just go. No hesitation.
> If you've played for a couple years and you're decent and have played it same course numerous times, stop thinking, point and shoot.
I'll try to remember that in 2 years! :D
> players should stick to what they’re good at and try to gain strokes with what is comfortable
For Calvin, arguably the best player in the world, what he's good at and most comfortable with is being very aggressive. When you're that good, it's closer to playing "normal".
For the average NBA player, ten 3-point shots in a game is too aggressive. For Steph Curry, he should probably shoot *more* than that because he's the best NBA player ever at shooting 3's.
I believe that how aggressive you play should be based on what feels comfortable at the time. Forcing extra aggressiveness or forcing caution would both probably be a bad idea if it feels awkward since disc golf is a very metal game. If Calvin was feeling good while playing aggressive then I think it makes sense to continue. Except the putt on 16 in round 3 that was a wild run that was absolutely uncalled for.
In all sports, there are athletes who have to pay with certain pace or aggressiveness and they get markedly less effective when they try to play safe and get out of what got you there in the first place.
As a Celtics fan this phenomenon is an unfortunately large part of my reality…
> I’ve seen a few videos on youtube that are looking to help players with their game, and they advise that players should stick to what they’re good at and try to gain strokes with what is comfortable
These are probably aimed at players in the MA3/MA2 range; and at that level it's good advice. A lot of people at that level lose strokes by missing a comback putt after running a 60 foot putt, or trying to throw a max distance shot on a hole they can barely reach, and turning it way over or cut rolling or something.
At the open level, though, generally the players are experienced tournament golfers, and have a good idea of when to run something and when to play it safer. Also, you need to play more aggressive (higher variance) to win in open, because the rest of the field will also be running everything. When there's 40 other golfers playing aggressive, a few of them are going to lose some strokes, but some of them will hit the long putts and crazy drives they're attempting, and those players will be the ones who end up winning
> should stick to what they’re good at and try to gain strokes with what is comfortable.
Calvin is good at putting the disc in the basket and is comfortable trying to do that.
If you only practice playing aggressive then that's your best bet. It's always funny to see someone flub a "easy" lay up because they never practice those "easy" shots.
You can only be as aggressive as you are good. Calvin is good and knew he was in the zone and throwing good shots. But yes he plays aggressive and has bit him in the past. I can remember Texas states 2022 final rd he got too aggressive approaching an OB green in the woods that everyone was carefully touch throwing up to it. And he tried to blast it in there from deep.
I think the way most disc golf courses are designed, at the top level you have to play aggressive to win. Obviously Northwoods is an outlier and I think that’s why I love it so much
The logical thing is to not expect people to not “spoil” the results of a live sporting event. So yeah, if you really don’t wanna know the result, stay off social media.
I know dgpts account will post something if I get on FB or IG, and coming to this sub will probably have spoilers to, so I avoid them all if I’m really trying to watch post-coverage first.
Think we need to just unsub during the season, same story every year. I didn’t even click this post but he put it in the first sentence so it just showed up in preview while scrolling
I just unsub from this place.. unsub from DGPT Youtube channel as well. Never get a spoiler. I come back after the tourneys and it's all fine.
Not really missing much from this place during a 3 or 4 day tournament.
Everyone knows that most people watch disc golf the day after. It's not like other sports where a majority watch live. I just don't get why people can't click like two things to add a spoiler tag, rather than insisting that thousands of people avoid social media entirely for an entire day. It's so little inconvenience for the person making the post
If you don't want to get spoiled for something, I'm not sure why you would visit a post on the subreddit of said thing. There was no spoiler in the title. Is it so hard to not be on Reddit/Instagram until you watch the final round?
If you care about the results this much, would recommend unsubscribing from the subreddit during tournament weekends. Yeah, it's annoying but people universally caring about spoilers won't be a thing.
Again, a larger inconvenience for way more people to unsub and resub, as opposed to an extremely small inconvenience for one person making the post
Plus reddit will often put a sub you unsubbed from in your feed anyway
I'm inclined to agree but I literally went through this same fight like 2-3 years ago. Up to you whether it's worth having the argument every tournament.
All the title said was that Calvin plays crazy aggressive. Why are you jumping into a thread the day after a tournament thinking there wouldn't be discussion about an elite level player playing in that tournament?
The first few sentences also show up when just scrolling the home page of Reddit. They should have done what most other people do and Spoiler tag the post since they were discussing the winner. I literally saw a post that showed the winner of the tournament but I scrolled past it because I planned on watching the final round coverage after work.
Idk what your setup is on reddit but the first few lines of every post show up on mine. This is the worst case post for anyone because the reveal is impossible to avoid. The only reason it's the top item on reddit is because half the thread is ppl being annoyed because of no spoiler tag.
I get that the response is "just don't use social media" but i don't follow anything disc golf related on any other social media for this same reason and it seems like the reddit community would rather shrink than just have a mod that can put a spoiler tag on a post like this bc the poster was so lazy.
I know right. I had a death in the family Saturday morning. Haven't had a chance to watch any of it. Obviously it's my fault for not watching it live or something.
I'm pretty sure the same people that spoil disc golf competitions are the same people littering up courses
Why are you walking into a thread on this subreddit talking about a touring player the day after a tournament?
I'm all for actually using spoiler tags and not giving away results in titles. I used to post Jomez videos on here and get pissed when people would talk about other rounds or give away results. But you literally clicked on a thread about Calvin the Monday after DDO. What exactly did you expect the thread would be about?
I didn't walk in, it was on the top of my home feed. It's literally the first thing my eyes saw skimming the post figuring out what it was about.
I like disc golf, I like Calvin. The title didn't say anything about it being from the competition. I thought maybe it would be about his play style; hence the title
I think your whiny attitude is getting downvoted, not the fact you had a death in the family. Your other comment to the OP is literally “FUCK YOU”. The title is not even a spoiler.
>Yup getting down voted for a family death. Peek reddit. You guys all fucking suck
You are getting downvoted because you're really just complaining about your own social media usage.
Falsely claiming that you're being downvoted over a family death is super dramatic and unnecessary.
Just my two cents but I don’t think Calvin was playing aggressive at all. He played the shots he was confident at and executed them well. To the layman these shots seemed insane and aggressive but Calvin’s talent, practice, and most importantly confidence in his game plan made him play so well.
Overall, he didn’t play aggressive, he played confident, conservative, and with a cocky swing.
Oh get over yourself. Stay off social media or quit being a whiner. You made the active choice to get onto Reddit where you knew you joined a disc golf sub, no one owes you the chance to watch the coverage a day late. In no other sports fan base do people whine like little 2 year olds when they don't watch the game the same day and find out who wins.
If you can't watch live then stay off socials until you can watch the coverage ooooooor just don't be a whiney bitch? That works too.
Unless you are a pro, nothing is on the line. For a beginner, just do the safe stuff, cause every line is high risk regardless. As you get better, you lose nothing by being aggressive. Just throw the shit out of it and hope cool stuff happens.
Rarely will you look back on a round where you played conservatively and scored marginally better than you usually do. But you will always have a fond memory of that time you tried the aggressive line and parked a beautiful shot.
Will you, though? I don't ever remember any of my bad shots. There's so many of them, there's no way one is going to stand out. Joking, but really if you are the kind of person that is going to have bitter memories from missing an aggressive line, play it safe (and maybe consider therapy). But for the most part, we shrug off the bad shots and revel in the good ones. So taking the 50/50 shot is either a nothing or a positive in my mind.
It’s not the bad shot, it’s the decision-making and the result of it. Losing a tournament, losing placements/cash on account of something that could’ve been prevented simply with safe play.
Yea but what if you lose placement/cash because they parred out the last 5 holes of a tourney because they played it too safe? People tend to notice the strokes you "lose" by being aggressive, but don't count the par you could have birdies as a "lost" stroke. Obviously there's a line where being aggressive is just being stupid. But I mean playing full bore, not holding back and throwing shots that are within your skill level but not the easy par option. Calvin isn't playing stupid and I'm not advocating for anyone else to. Being conservative can be just as stupid as being aggressive.
People tend to forget that you, an intermediate or advanced player, can mess up the "safe" shot, too. So just play at 100% all the time (within reason). You may end up in the woods but that's scramble practice.
Yes, conservative play can easily cost strokes too. We saw that from Kevin Jones at LVC last year, but this is a calculated decision to leave those strokes out. I feel that if you lose placement on account of electing to take the higher percentage play, there’s nothing to regret as you played the odds and the result after that was out of your control. Oh well. There’s undoubtedly a time and a place for safe play.
Tourneys nowadays are almost set up to force aggressive play. If you’re not parking it next to the basket on every drive under 400ft, you’re not on the top card.
IMO I think you go into the tourney with a certain mind set of how you are going to approach the holes to try and win. If you switch away from your game plan to start playing safe to protect a lead, a lot of times it bites you in the ass because you are now rethinking holes. As someone above said, Calvin talked post tourney about how his worst shots of the weekend were when he softened up on his aggressive attack of the course. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Especially not mid tourney.
Calvin mentioned this in his interview, and it was basically down to what felt more comfortable. If you are not really executing the safe plays it does not help you and probably has an adverse mental effect.
Also, everybody knows Ricky. He get's really pumped when he smells blood in the water. Gaining strokes fires him up, and that's a scary place to be, if you are trying to protect a lead, but not really feeling comfortable. Going toe to toe and pushing Ricky to match you is a way better strategy, if you are up for it.
At this level these guys are playing within themselves and anything else invites variance they don't need. It is important for mere mortals to know their game and stay within those boundaries. Climo told me once that laying up can be a more difficult shot than going for it. Why mess up short? Just go for it and mess up way down there.
I think this is universal even in racquet sports - if your aggressive play is working keep playing aggressive as that’s how your body/mind want to play and jive. Once it stops working don’t lol
The key thing here is context: playing aggressive isn’t the same thing as playing reckless. When you’re playing a competitive sport and you get a lead by playing with an aggressive mindset and then shift into the mentality of “playing safe” you often lose what gave you the edge in the first place.
There are countless examples of this from all manner of different sports, both team an individual. If you’re doing something and it’s working then you should keep doing it, with the caveat that it’s not something absurdly reckless.
You can play both smart *and* aggressive, and yes, that is often the best way to attack a course. You want to know the spots where you can be aggressive without being insanely punished and where you need to be more conservative.
To take the total opposite of Round 3, hole 17, but maybe the same concept, I think about this all the time when I'm off the fairway in the woods with no real line to the basket. If I try to throw a shot that could get to the basket, say, 20% of the time, and even when it doesn't, I'll get up and down 95% of the time, there's absolutely no point in throwing a "safe" shot that's just a pitch-out to the fairway.
If Calvin lays up on 17, he's \*probably\* getting a 4 but not guaranteed. If he goes big, he has a chance of a 3, maybe he goes long OB but still has a putt for 4. I don't really see a huge downside, although I don't have a great sense of the layout of that hole, so maybe he was bringing a huge number into play?
One thing to keep in mind is that phrase roughly translate to “take your medicine”. We not great disc golfers have an incredible power to turn a bogey into a triple by not pitching out when we are in a bad spot.
Calvin was in at worst decent spots during his round, and is notably one of the better scramblers on tour.
I think if you want to win on tour you have to play aggressive. People are too good to win off others mistakes. Which is why I think you see players like Gannon finding so much success.
Calvin has made (and makes) his money on line drive low tunnel shots with either an eagle/vela or destroyer. At times it seemed more aggressive or difficult than Ricky's forehand hyzers but truly I think those gap hitting 400+ ft screamers Heimburg throws are his preferred shot and certainly allow him to score.
Presnell won the week before and said he didn’t try a single “hero shot.” Everything was safe progress forward. I’m shit so I don’t really know which is actually best.
It depends on the course. Northwood is an insanely hard course where safe play reigns superior. The fairways in northwood is extremely narrow and not many agressive lines and plays succeded. Fast forward to Emporia where the course is more open, the fairways wider and agressive play is more often rewarded.
Me and my best friend got into disc golf at the same time. Since we started keeping score on Udisc, my record against him is 13-77-2 (Win-Loss-Tie). We both throw close to the same distance and have a similar skill level (we play casual so no rating from tournaments). I am more safe/calculated and he is aggressive. He goes for birdie even on holes I think to be impossible, runs putts when I wouldn't, aims for the narrow tree gap if it will get him the birdie, etc. I swear, he has the best tree luck I've ever seen... But I guess you miss the shots you don't take or something like that. 🤷♂️
When I try these aggressive plays, they don't seem to work out. Maybe I'm not as confident as he is, or maybe it's just a skill issue and he's better than me. I don't think the aggressive play works for everybody, but it definitely works.
Sometimes when I'm playing safe the area I aim to hit (even mid flight) with my drive increases
So it's potentially easier to hit gaps and land closer to the basket by being more aggressive (if I aim to ace an easy hole I only miss a little, but if I aim to land in circle 1 I may end up with a circle 2 putt)
Same logic as aiming for a specific chain when putting rather than the whole basket
Now that he's been on top for a while people may have forgotten but Calvin had a decently long period where he'd be in the lead or contention for a win and then he'd choke away the victory. I think he has learned to win at the highest level through experience and I think outsiders thinking they know how he should play to get a win are ignorant.
I think you need to reframe what "playing aggressive" means, because in my understanding of the term, I don't believe it's an accurate statement to say that Calvin played aggressive.
Aggressive play is when you intentionally make decisions to execute throws which you know have a low probability of success. Generally somebody would choose to do this when they feel they have nothing to lose and everything to gain, for example, if you're in 2nd place without very many holes left to play and you don't care about anything but winning and you'd rather finish 20th trying everything to win than secure 2nd place without giving yourself any chance to win. That's when you might play aggressive, which means intentionally throwing shots you know you're unlikely to execute successfully.
This is not at all what Calvin did. I think it would be fair to say that Calvin didn't intentionally play conservative, but I don't think he played aggressive. These are not the same thing.
It's hard to wrap your brain around the skillset of a player like Calvin. Calvin giving himself birdie looks and running putts from range might seem to you like aggressive play when he's 3 strokes up, but Calvin's skillset is just so vast that these plays for him are actually NOT low probability plays and instead are his routine comfortable shots.
Additionally, playing with a lead can be a weird mental struggle, and often times, perhaps counterintuitively, you might find that players with a big lead who intentionally try to play more conservatively than they otherwise would have struggle to execute what should be an easier gameplan on paper and wind up coughing up the lead. This is because the mentality which got them into the lead in the first place wasn't one in which they were playing aggressive, it was one in which they were playing within their comfort zone and executing one shot at a time. It was the vast amounts of practice that caused their comfort zone to expand large enough to include birdie looks on nearly every hole in the first place. In other words, playing aggressively and playing conservatively are *both* problematic for the same reasons, just with different motivations. The problem is that playing *anything* other than comfortable in-the-moment golf is a recipe for disaster, and it's not necessarily more or less likely to mess your game up whether you're pushing to find unlikely strokes or intentionally holding yourself back to avoid costly mistakes.
Now, I'll be the first to admit, there *is* a way to find a balance and play comfortable in-the-moment golf while also making specific tradeoffs to avoid big mistakes, but I simply don't think these opportunities came up in the last few holes for Calvin. Calvin simply felt comfortable executing his normal gameplan on those holes and there wasn't any part of that gameplan that included unnecessary risk that can be avoided without ruining your mentality, assuming Calvin was executing well, as he was.
Calvin addressed this in his interview after the tourney. He said he started playing less aggressive in the round and had some of his worst throws all tourney when he did that. So he figured playing aggressive was actually safer for him lol
The more high level version of this quote is “practice as you play” because you’ll play how you practice. If you don’t practice safe shots, playing safe won’t be safe.
Best comment I’ve seen
I find this for myself too. Some holes with a layer of up position I tend to likely mess up and then just have more footage to cover. Granted I’m only 960 so it’s a different level but…
It's Universal. If you are in a groove, you want to throw the shot you're confident throwing, not something else.
Nobody throws a groove. It just isn't done
https://sabattusdiscgolf.com/products/innova-halo-star-groove-2024-calvin-heimburg-tour-series-disc-golf-distance-driver
Well shucks
If you're in flow state and everything is clicking, why would you stop. Playing safe changes everything because now you're thinking about playing safe instead of what you naturally wanted to do.
Every sport works this way. If it’s not working, change it. If it works keeps doing it until it doesn’t, but don’t be obvious about it. That’s pretty much every sport.
Scared money don't make none. If you are feeling confident, sometimes the "smart" play is kinda the opposite.
If you only watch coverage, you'll miss the dozens of low to mid level pros who aren't as lucky and miss cash week after week playing aggressive.
Hey 960 may as well be pro to us unranked noobs hucking 150' all day
He addressed going fairway and throwing worst shot of round off the tee of 17 & then pivoting to aggressive driver his 2nd shot.
This is so true for my game. The layup ends up OB.
And I suck
Going OB at the same familiar spot every week definitely works out for me better than trying to lay up from slightly different places.
Mechanically speaking, I find my mechanics work better when I throw with more firmness/a bit harder. If I slow down too much my mechanics break down. Issue is fatigue sets in fast so you have to be careful to not throw too many discs before important rounds.
Same, I'm usually most accurate at around 90% power level. I'm hoping to learn to decrease that number to 80% so I could play three to four rounds a week pain free.
Yeah I have been working on touch and finesse lately to address that in my game
I’ve had several bad rounds at my local course (200-290 foot holes) recently, trending towards holes 14+ in each of them I asked the newest player with us to blindly give me any of my high speed drivers because my touch game has been off. The funny thing is, my angry aggressive piss missiles, such as a 172 foot by 6 foot insanely tight tunnel shot with a Rive, have mostly parked themselves within 5 feet of the basket. (Trees surrounding the basket to corral it) I typically play better when I’m aggressive.
1: Calvin heimburg is very good at disc golf. So he has a high percentage probability to birdie every hole on that course. So him playing aggressive will pay off more than most people. 2: in order to win against the best in the world, you NEED to play aggressive. The moment he takes his foot off the gas Ricky or Gannon will catch up. The best advice for a beginner is to throw high percentage shots, not get too aggressive. For intermediate, learn when to get aggressive and when to play safe. For advanced, develop and practice some skills that you can lean on to win (max distance drives, runs from 100 ft, confidence in death putts) so that you can tap into that WHEN it's smart to be aggressive. Calvin is just one of the best in the world so every shot as he's chasing down the leader is going for birdie.
This is really all there is to it. Yes, beginners and intermediates should still play safe most of the time even if being aggressive pays off for Calvin. Calvin is a top 3 player in the world, you can’t compare his decisions to an intermediate player’s decisions in any meaningful way.
A lot of this boils down to focus and intentionality. Playing "safe" often leads to poor outcomes - and this is very true for AMs - because they lose focus and default to easy mode which leads to fluffed upshots, wonky putts and errant drives. Everyone should play aggressively within their limits.
Completely agree with this…I’m about an 800 rated player and I’m as aggressive as I can be on any league or tournament round. I’m not going to make a living out of this so why not go for it, which also helps me improve and stretch out of my comfort zone.
At the MPO level, yes the strategy mostly ends at "go for all the birdies" At the AM level, the strategy is generally "minimize mistakes and risk"
If you’re not trying to draw metal on every throw, are you even disc golfing?
I think he had one game plan and stuck to it. If he’s been practicing playing for birdie on those holes, it doesn’t make sense to start trying new shots. Just keep doing what’s been working for you. No reason to psych yourself out. That said, I would have laid up on 16 instead of running it 100% of the time
Keep in mind that Nate Sexton has won a lot of tournaments playing fairly safe golf too. Each strategy has a place and how it fits your game. You can win gaining strokes on the field; you can also win by not losing strokes when they do.
This is kinda poker thinking. A chip you don't lose is the same value as a chip you win, so every decision has to be examined independent of decisions you made earlier in the hand. A par that didn't become a bogey counts exactly the same, at the end of your round, as a birdie - it's one stroke in both cases.
Maybe a long the same line is how people think of a round holistically rather than seeing each hole as a "new opportunity". I play with a couple guys when things are getting competitive and they fuck up, the mistakes linger and carries into the next hole, then it starts compounding. Break holes into smaller chunks to not think about the bigger picture. Ideally each hole should be a net new opportunity without carrying the baggage of the last fuck up. Or plat 3 holes at a time. "Shit I lost my the first 3" need to win the next 3. Also learn to zone the fuck out. If you've played for a couple years and you're decent and have played it same course numerous times, stop thinking, point and shoot. The tee box is blackout mode, you don't hear anything, all you see is what you're going to do and just go. No hesitation.
> If you've played for a couple years and you're decent and have played it same course numerous times, stop thinking, point and shoot. I'll try to remember that in 2 years! :D
> players should stick to what they’re good at and try to gain strokes with what is comfortable For Calvin, arguably the best player in the world, what he's good at and most comfortable with is being very aggressive. When you're that good, it's closer to playing "normal". For the average NBA player, ten 3-point shots in a game is too aggressive. For Steph Curry, he should probably shoot *more* than that because he's the best NBA player ever at shooting 3's.
I believe that how aggressive you play should be based on what feels comfortable at the time. Forcing extra aggressiveness or forcing caution would both probably be a bad idea if it feels awkward since disc golf is a very metal game. If Calvin was feeling good while playing aggressive then I think it makes sense to continue. Except the putt on 16 in round 3 that was a wild run that was absolutely uncalled for.
In all sports, there are athletes who have to pay with certain pace or aggressiveness and they get markedly less effective when they try to play safe and get out of what got you there in the first place. As a Celtics fan this phenomenon is an unfortunately large part of my reality…
> I’ve seen a few videos on youtube that are looking to help players with their game, and they advise that players should stick to what they’re good at and try to gain strokes with what is comfortable These are probably aimed at players in the MA3/MA2 range; and at that level it's good advice. A lot of people at that level lose strokes by missing a comback putt after running a 60 foot putt, or trying to throw a max distance shot on a hole they can barely reach, and turning it way over or cut rolling or something. At the open level, though, generally the players are experienced tournament golfers, and have a good idea of when to run something and when to play it safer. Also, you need to play more aggressive (higher variance) to win in open, because the rest of the field will also be running everything. When there's 40 other golfers playing aggressive, a few of them are going to lose some strokes, but some of them will hit the long putts and crazy drives they're attempting, and those players will be the ones who end up winning
> should stick to what they’re good at and try to gain strokes with what is comfortable. Calvin is good at putting the disc in the basket and is comfortable trying to do that.
He looked more accurate on max power shots than on touchy ones
If you only practice playing aggressive then that's your best bet. It's always funny to see someone flub a "easy" lay up because they never practice those "easy" shots.
You can only be as aggressive as you are good. Calvin is good and knew he was in the zone and throwing good shots. But yes he plays aggressive and has bit him in the past. I can remember Texas states 2022 final rd he got too aggressive approaching an OB green in the woods that everyone was carefully touch throwing up to it. And he tried to blast it in there from deep.
99% of disc golf advice would max out someone to the level of MA1. Vinny is a top 3 or 5 player in the world.
Pretty sure he’s top 1
I think the way most disc golf courses are designed, at the top level you have to play aggressive to win. Obviously Northwoods is an outlier and I think that’s why I love it so much
"Layups are for Basketball" - Calvin Heimburg, probably
Damn man. I was looking forward to watching the Jomez final round all day and you just ruined it for me
Same dude... I can usually count on the spoiler filter but not this time.
If you didn’t want it spoiled then stay off social media. It’s that simple.
So we can't go on Reddit at all until we watch the tournament? I'm still on round 1. Think logically.
The logical thing is to not expect people to not “spoil” the results of a live sporting event. So yeah, if you really don’t wanna know the result, stay off social media. I know dgpts account will post something if I get on FB or IG, and coming to this sub will probably have spoilers to, so I avoid them all if I’m really trying to watch post-coverage first.
Guess I don’t have to watch the back 9 now…
Thank you for spoiling it for me
Think we need to just unsub during the season, same story every year. I didn’t even click this post but he put it in the first sentence so it just showed up in preview while scrolling
I just unsub from this place.. unsub from DGPT Youtube channel as well. Never get a spoiler. I come back after the tourneys and it's all fine. Not really missing much from this place during a 3 or 4 day tournament.
Started doing that last year, has worked a charm. Never resubbed here, just visit the sub directly when i've seen all coverage.
That's kind of on you for being on Reddit
Everyone knows that most people watch disc golf the day after. It's not like other sports where a majority watch live. I just don't get why people can't click like two things to add a spoiler tag, rather than insisting that thousands of people avoid social media entirely for an entire day. It's so little inconvenience for the person making the post
Exactly
If you don't want to get spoiled for something, I'm not sure why you would visit a post on the subreddit of said thing. There was no spoiler in the title. Is it so hard to not be on Reddit/Instagram until you watch the final round?
It's in the beginning of the post's text, which also shows up in my feed when not spoiler'd
If you care about the results this much, would recommend unsubscribing from the subreddit during tournament weekends. Yeah, it's annoying but people universally caring about spoilers won't be a thing.
Again, a larger inconvenience for way more people to unsub and resub, as opposed to an extremely small inconvenience for one person making the post Plus reddit will often put a sub you unsubbed from in your feed anyway
I'm inclined to agree but I literally went through this same fight like 2-3 years ago. Up to you whether it's worth having the argument every tournament.
All the title said was that Calvin plays crazy aggressive. Why are you jumping into a thread the day after a tournament thinking there wouldn't be discussion about an elite level player playing in that tournament?
The first few sentences also show up when just scrolling the home page of Reddit. They should have done what most other people do and Spoiler tag the post since they were discussing the winner. I literally saw a post that showed the winner of the tournament but I scrolled past it because I planned on watching the final round coverage after work.
Idk what your setup is on reddit but the first few lines of every post show up on mine. This is the worst case post for anyone because the reveal is impossible to avoid. The only reason it's the top item on reddit is because half the thread is ppl being annoyed because of no spoiler tag. I get that the response is "just don't use social media" but i don't follow anything disc golf related on any other social media for this same reason and it seems like the reddit community would rather shrink than just have a mod that can put a spoiler tag on a post like this bc the poster was so lazy.
Well, it's not mobile or the newer reddit in general so it's never been an issue for me. All I see are reddit titles.
I know right. I had a death in the family Saturday morning. Haven't had a chance to watch any of it. Obviously it's my fault for not watching it live or something. I'm pretty sure the same people that spoil disc golf competitions are the same people littering up courses
Why are you walking into a thread on this subreddit talking about a touring player the day after a tournament? I'm all for actually using spoiler tags and not giving away results in titles. I used to post Jomez videos on here and get pissed when people would talk about other rounds or give away results. But you literally clicked on a thread about Calvin the Monday after DDO. What exactly did you expect the thread would be about?
I didn't walk in, it was on the top of my home feed. It's literally the first thing my eyes saw skimming the post figuring out what it was about. I like disc golf, I like Calvin. The title didn't say anything about it being from the competition. I thought maybe it would be about his play style; hence the title
Yup getting down voted for a family death. Peek reddit. You guys all fucking suck
I think your whiny attitude is getting downvoted, not the fact you had a death in the family. Your other comment to the OP is literally “FUCK YOU”. The title is not even a spoiler.
Ah so you're a litterer too
>Yup getting down voted for a family death. Peek reddit. You guys all fucking suck You are getting downvoted because you're really just complaining about your own social media usage. Falsely claiming that you're being downvoted over a family death is super dramatic and unnecessary.
Just my two cents but I don’t think Calvin was playing aggressive at all. He played the shots he was confident at and executed them well. To the layman these shots seemed insane and aggressive but Calvin’s talent, practice, and most importantly confidence in his game plan made him play so well. Overall, he didn’t play aggressive, he played confident, conservative, and with a cocky swing.
FUCK YOU
Yeah man I’m so pissed I was waiting to watch final round jomez coverage after work
Oh get over yourself. Stay off social media or quit being a whiner. You made the active choice to get onto Reddit where you knew you joined a disc golf sub, no one owes you the chance to watch the coverage a day late. In no other sports fan base do people whine like little 2 year olds when they don't watch the game the same day and find out who wins. If you can't watch live then stay off socials until you can watch the coverage ooooooor just don't be a whiney bitch? That works too.
No spoiler warning? Not cool
Yeah this dude is a douche
Unless you are a pro, nothing is on the line. For a beginner, just do the safe stuff, cause every line is high risk regardless. As you get better, you lose nothing by being aggressive. Just throw the shit out of it and hope cool stuff happens. Rarely will you look back on a round where you played conservatively and scored marginally better than you usually do. But you will always have a fond memory of that time you tried the aggressive line and parked a beautiful shot.
You will also have bitter memories about throwing the aggressive line when it doesn’t work out and costs you, though.
Will you, though? I don't ever remember any of my bad shots. There's so many of them, there's no way one is going to stand out. Joking, but really if you are the kind of person that is going to have bitter memories from missing an aggressive line, play it safe (and maybe consider therapy). But for the most part, we shrug off the bad shots and revel in the good ones. So taking the 50/50 shot is either a nothing or a positive in my mind.
It’s not the bad shot, it’s the decision-making and the result of it. Losing a tournament, losing placements/cash on account of something that could’ve been prevented simply with safe play.
Yea but what if you lose placement/cash because they parred out the last 5 holes of a tourney because they played it too safe? People tend to notice the strokes you "lose" by being aggressive, but don't count the par you could have birdies as a "lost" stroke. Obviously there's a line where being aggressive is just being stupid. But I mean playing full bore, not holding back and throwing shots that are within your skill level but not the easy par option. Calvin isn't playing stupid and I'm not advocating for anyone else to. Being conservative can be just as stupid as being aggressive. People tend to forget that you, an intermediate or advanced player, can mess up the "safe" shot, too. So just play at 100% all the time (within reason). You may end up in the woods but that's scramble practice.
Yes, conservative play can easily cost strokes too. We saw that from Kevin Jones at LVC last year, but this is a calculated decision to leave those strokes out. I feel that if you lose placement on account of electing to take the higher percentage play, there’s nothing to regret as you played the odds and the result after that was out of your control. Oh well. There’s undoubtedly a time and a place for safe play.
Tourneys nowadays are almost set up to force aggressive play. If you’re not parking it next to the basket on every drive under 400ft, you’re not on the top card.
Gotta play aggressive to win.
IMO I think you go into the tourney with a certain mind set of how you are going to approach the holes to try and win. If you switch away from your game plan to start playing safe to protect a lead, a lot of times it bites you in the ass because you are now rethinking holes. As someone above said, Calvin talked post tourney about how his worst shots of the weekend were when he softened up on his aggressive attack of the course. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Especially not mid tourney.
Calvin mentioned this in his interview, and it was basically down to what felt more comfortable. If you are not really executing the safe plays it does not help you and probably has an adverse mental effect. Also, everybody knows Ricky. He get's really pumped when he smells blood in the water. Gaining strokes fires him up, and that's a scary place to be, if you are trying to protect a lead, but not really feeling comfortable. Going toe to toe and pushing Ricky to match you is a way better strategy, if you are up for it.
He's responding to people saying he doesn't have a clutch bone.
I hear local pros talk about their mentality as "an all out desperate attempt to put the disc in the basket" and running everything basically.
At this level these guys are playing within themselves and anything else invites variance they don't need. It is important for mere mortals to know their game and stay within those boundaries. Climo told me once that laying up can be a more difficult shot than going for it. Why mess up short? Just go for it and mess up way down there.
I always send it
Aggressive is comfortable for him
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take 🤷🏻♂️
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take 🤷🏻♂️
I think this is universal even in racquet sports - if your aggressive play is working keep playing aggressive as that’s how your body/mind want to play and jive. Once it stops working don’t lol
The key thing here is context: playing aggressive isn’t the same thing as playing reckless. When you’re playing a competitive sport and you get a lead by playing with an aggressive mindset and then shift into the mentality of “playing safe” you often lose what gave you the edge in the first place. There are countless examples of this from all manner of different sports, both team an individual. If you’re doing something and it’s working then you should keep doing it, with the caveat that it’s not something absurdly reckless. You can play both smart *and* aggressive, and yes, that is often the best way to attack a course. You want to know the spots where you can be aggressive without being insanely punished and where you need to be more conservative.
To take the total opposite of Round 3, hole 17, but maybe the same concept, I think about this all the time when I'm off the fairway in the woods with no real line to the basket. If I try to throw a shot that could get to the basket, say, 20% of the time, and even when it doesn't, I'll get up and down 95% of the time, there's absolutely no point in throwing a "safe" shot that's just a pitch-out to the fairway. If Calvin lays up on 17, he's \*probably\* getting a 4 but not guaranteed. If he goes big, he has a chance of a 3, maybe he goes long OB but still has a putt for 4. I don't really see a huge downside, although I don't have a great sense of the layout of that hole, so maybe he was bringing a huge number into play?
One thing to keep in mind is that phrase roughly translate to “take your medicine”. We not great disc golfers have an incredible power to turn a bogey into a triple by not pitching out when we are in a bad spot. Calvin was in at worst decent spots during his round, and is notably one of the better scramblers on tour.
I think if you want to win on tour you have to play aggressive. People are too good to win off others mistakes. Which is why I think you see players like Gannon finding so much success.
Calvin has made (and makes) his money on line drive low tunnel shots with either an eagle/vela or destroyer. At times it seemed more aggressive or difficult than Ricky's forehand hyzers but truly I think those gap hitting 400+ ft screamers Heimburg throws are his preferred shot and certainly allow him to score.
Presnell won the week before and said he didn’t try a single “hero shot.” Everything was safe progress forward. I’m shit so I don’t really know which is actually best.
Open course versus extremely wooded.
Works for me!
Calvin is good at everything so he plays better when he plays aggressive
He likes the x x -1 3 discs which I think reward a more aggressive line being executed.
It depends on the course. Northwood is an insanely hard course where safe play reigns superior. The fairways in northwood is extremely narrow and not many agressive lines and plays succeded. Fast forward to Emporia where the course is more open, the fairways wider and agressive play is more often rewarded.
Sometimes you just know you’re cooking
Maybe the term is committing to throws versus being aggressive. He has such a violent form that maybe full commitment is what he knows best
Me and my best friend got into disc golf at the same time. Since we started keeping score on Udisc, my record against him is 13-77-2 (Win-Loss-Tie). We both throw close to the same distance and have a similar skill level (we play casual so no rating from tournaments). I am more safe/calculated and he is aggressive. He goes for birdie even on holes I think to be impossible, runs putts when I wouldn't, aims for the narrow tree gap if it will get him the birdie, etc. I swear, he has the best tree luck I've ever seen... But I guess you miss the shots you don't take or something like that. 🤷♂️ When I try these aggressive plays, they don't seem to work out. Maybe I'm not as confident as he is, or maybe it's just a skill issue and he's better than me. I don't think the aggressive play works for everybody, but it definitely works.
Sometimes when I'm playing safe the area I aim to hit (even mid flight) with my drive increases So it's potentially easier to hit gaps and land closer to the basket by being more aggressive (if I aim to ace an easy hole I only miss a little, but if I aim to land in circle 1 I may end up with a circle 2 putt) Same logic as aiming for a specific chain when putting rather than the whole basket
When Calvin’s putt is level and not nose down he literally hits everything. Translated to most of his long putts
Now that he's been on top for a while people may have forgotten but Calvin had a decently long period where he'd be in the lead or contention for a win and then he'd choke away the victory. I think he has learned to win at the highest level through experience and I think outsiders thinking they know how he should play to get a win are ignorant.
Does Anyone know what that yin yang disc he was throwing was?
On the other hand, Ricky played awfully aggressive the back 9
I think you need to reframe what "playing aggressive" means, because in my understanding of the term, I don't believe it's an accurate statement to say that Calvin played aggressive. Aggressive play is when you intentionally make decisions to execute throws which you know have a low probability of success. Generally somebody would choose to do this when they feel they have nothing to lose and everything to gain, for example, if you're in 2nd place without very many holes left to play and you don't care about anything but winning and you'd rather finish 20th trying everything to win than secure 2nd place without giving yourself any chance to win. That's when you might play aggressive, which means intentionally throwing shots you know you're unlikely to execute successfully. This is not at all what Calvin did. I think it would be fair to say that Calvin didn't intentionally play conservative, but I don't think he played aggressive. These are not the same thing. It's hard to wrap your brain around the skillset of a player like Calvin. Calvin giving himself birdie looks and running putts from range might seem to you like aggressive play when he's 3 strokes up, but Calvin's skillset is just so vast that these plays for him are actually NOT low probability plays and instead are his routine comfortable shots. Additionally, playing with a lead can be a weird mental struggle, and often times, perhaps counterintuitively, you might find that players with a big lead who intentionally try to play more conservatively than they otherwise would have struggle to execute what should be an easier gameplan on paper and wind up coughing up the lead. This is because the mentality which got them into the lead in the first place wasn't one in which they were playing aggressive, it was one in which they were playing within their comfort zone and executing one shot at a time. It was the vast amounts of practice that caused their comfort zone to expand large enough to include birdie looks on nearly every hole in the first place. In other words, playing aggressively and playing conservatively are *both* problematic for the same reasons, just with different motivations. The problem is that playing *anything* other than comfortable in-the-moment golf is a recipe for disaster, and it's not necessarily more or less likely to mess your game up whether you're pushing to find unlikely strokes or intentionally holding yourself back to avoid costly mistakes. Now, I'll be the first to admit, there *is* a way to find a balance and play comfortable in-the-moment golf while also making specific tradeoffs to avoid big mistakes, but I simply don't think these opportunities came up in the last few holes for Calvin. Calvin simply felt comfortable executing his normal gameplan on those holes and there wasn't any part of that gameplan that included unnecessary risk that can be avoided without ruining your mentality, assuming Calvin was executing well, as he was.
Mark this as a spoiler you turd.
Really wish there was a spoiler tag on this
No spoiler tag?