Among the more active communities to discuss disc golf on the internet is the subreddit r/discgolf. I frequent the sub and see a lot of posts with folks asking about the “best disc” or for “disc suggestions” for their bags. This got me thinking - can we streamline this and get right down to what Reddit thinks are the best discs?
To do this, I used the package RedditExtractoR to pull comment data from posts to r/discgolf with search terms like “best disc”, “recommend”, or “suggest”. I then filtered down to all of their individual words and matched that against a database of disc names from alldiscs.com and the PDGA’s approved disc database.
For the R nerds, the code and walkthrough is available here. For everyone else, here’s what I found.
Reddit’s Top 20 most discussed discs
Discs ranked by their number of mentions in recent r/discgolf comments about the “best disc” or disc “suggestions” or “recommendations”. Scroll down to see the top 10 for each disc type.
| Speed | Glide | Turn | Fade | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Innova Teebird | 7 | 5 | 0 | 2 |
| Innova Aviar | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Discraft Buzzz | 5 | 4 | -1 | 1 |
| Discraft Zone | 4 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Innova Leopard | 6 | 5 | -2 | 1 |
| Innova Firebird | 9 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| Innova Roc | 4 | 4 | 0 | 3 |
| Latitude 64 Pure | 3 | 3 | -1 | 1 |
| Innova Destroyer | 12 | 5 | -1 | 3 |
| Discraft Comet | 4 | 5 | -2 | 1 |
| Latitude 64 River | 7 | 7 | -1 | 1 |
| Innova Nova | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Dynamic Discs Truth | 5 | 5 | 0 | 2 |
| Dynamic Discs Truth | 5 | 5 | -1 | 1 |
| Innova Valkyrie | 9 | 4 | -2 | 2 |
| Gateway Wizard | 2 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| MVP Spin | 2 | 4 | -2 | 0 |
| Innova Boss | 13 | 5 | -1 | 3 |
| Innova Wraith | 11 | 5 | -1 | 3 |
| Axiom Discs Envy | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| Dynamic Discs Judge | 2 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
Popular discs are popular
No great surprises here in who is highly ranked - some of the most popular discs on the market are among the most talked about! Reliable midranges like Discraft’s Buzzz and Innova’s Roc show up as some frequently suggested discs, alongside solid fairway drivers like the TeeBird and Leopard (shown here as a a midrange due to alldiscs’s ranking). The Aviar comes up far more often than other putters. The Zone shows up in 4th which seems about right given it’s a great disc (I bag two in my bag of only 15 discs!), but I wonder if it’s a little overrepresented by people just saying the word “zone”.
I found it somewhat surprising how low distance drivers were in the list. The Destroyer is the most discussed distance driver and it only shows up in 9th place. With the Boss and Wraith also in the top 20, only Innova distance drivers make the cut.
I was happy to see that my favorite putter, Gateway’s Wizard, made the top 20 That mold feels amazing in the hand and I love the feel of the SS hemp and glow plastics. This summer I bought a pack of the SS Hemp Wizards with Grateful Dead stealie stamps. Oh yiss.
The top 10 discs of each type
To get a little more chart action going, let’s take a look at the top 10 discs in each category.