Inspired by a post to r/discgolf I saw a while back, I thought it would be fun to poke around with how discs have changed through the years. I haven’t had a lot of time outside of my day-job to poke around with disc data, but here’s some plots for folks to explore.
Play around with the plots below. Each plot is interactive!
You can zoom in, click stuff, move it around. Try double-clicking on a disc manufacturer’s name to look at only their discs (e.g. double-click Discraft to see only their stuff).
Hover over a point in the plot to see more details about a particular disc (and zoom in so you can really see what you’re looking at).
To cut down on chaos, only companies with at least 30 molds are shown and points are horizontally “jittered” a bit for visual clarity. There’s a few catch discs in the database, but it’s the PDGA’s list of approved discs, so if you wanted to go throw an Ultrastar, I guess you could!
Rim Thickness
Among some of the thickest rims are popular discs like the Discraft Nuke, Innova Boss, and MVP Relativity.
There’s, of course, a strong correlation between rim thickness and speed.
Correlation between Speed and Rim Thickness
For this plot I used flight numbers from Infinite Discs (PDGA’s database does not include manufacturer or independent flight numbers and combining the two is a real pain with lots of name-matching issues).
It’s interesting to consider some of the outliers here like Latitude 64’s Fury or the Discraft Tracker being slim for their speed. On the other end, discs like the Discraft Sol or the Innova Ace are slow for their thickness.
To take this a step further, I calculated the residuals from a linear model for each disc. That basically means the more a disc doesn’t match the pattern we expect (that Speed and Rim Thickness correlate strongly) the larger its residual value will be. Below are two tables: 20 discs that are faster than we expect given their thickness, and 20 that are slower than we expect.
20 discs that are faster than expected
| Speed | Glide | Turn | Fade | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discmania Maestro | 4.0 | 2.9 | -0.1 | 1.9 |
| Innova Wedge | 4.0 | 3.1 | -3.1 | 1.0 |
| Discraft Archer | 5.7 | 4.8 | -3.3 | 1.0 |
| Millennium Polaris Lf | 9.0 | 5.0 | -2.0 | 2.5 |
| Innova Avatar | 5.0 | 4.1 | 0.0 | 2.0 |
| Prodigy M Model Os | 5.9 | 4.1 | -0.9 | 2.8 |
| Innova Sonic | 1.0 | 2.1 | -3.9 | 0.1 |
| Innova Zephyr | 1.9 | 3.2 | -0.1 | 0.0 |
| MVP Signal | 6.0 | 5.0 | -3.1 | 1.0 |
| DGA Blunt Gumbputt | 2.0 | 2.1 | 0.0 | 1.9 |
| DGA Powerdrive Gumbputt | 2.0 | 2.1 | -2.0 | 1.1 |
| Innova Makani | 2.0 | 7.0 | -2.0 | 0.0 |
| Galaxy Disc Golf Orbit | 4.9 | 4.0 | 0.0 | 2.6 |
| Yikun Kui | 5.1 | 4.9 | -0.1 | 2.3 |
| DGA Tremor | 6.0 | 5.0 | -3.9 | 1.0 |
| Discraft Rattler | 2.0 | 3.1 | -1.0 | 1.0 |
| Discraft Tracker | 7.9 | 4.4 | -0.5 | 3.3 |
| RPM Discs Temoko | 3.0 | 4.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Latitude 64 Bryce | 9.0 | 6.0 | -1.8 | 1.9 |
| Latitude 64 Fury | 8.9 | 6.5 | -2.1 | 1.3 |
20 discs that are slower than expected
| Speed | Glide | Turn | Fade | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Viking Discs Odin | 1.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Prodigy D Model Us+ | 1.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Prodigy D Model Us++ | 1.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Prodigy F Model Os+ | 1.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Viking Discs Fenrir | 1.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Element Discs Prototype 3 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 0.0 | 2.0 |
| Daredevil Woodchuck | 2.0 | 3.0 | -1.0 | 0.2 |
| Gateway Training Wizard | 3.0 | 5.0 | 0.0 | 2.0 |
| Innova Ace | 2.0 | 3.0 | -2.1 | 1.0 |
| Daredevil Bighorn | 2.1 | 3.0 | 0.0 | 1.0 |
| Discraft Sol | 4.0 | 4.8 | -2.9 | 0.4 |
| DGA Blowfly I | 2.0 | 2.1 | -0.9 | 1.9 |
| Reptilian Disc Golf Serpent | 2.0 | 2.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 |
| Latitude 64 Trident | 5.8 | 3.2 | -0.2 | 3.9 |
| Disc Golf UK The Duchess | 5.0 | 4.0 | -2.0 | 2.0 |
| Millennium Omega Driver | 3.0 | 2.0 | 0.0 | 1.9 |
| Prodigy F2 | 7.1 | 4.9 | -1.0 | 2.9 |
| Latitude 64 Xxx | 7.2 | 2.8 | 0.0 | 4.4 |
| Disc Golf UK The Baron | 4.0 | 3.0 | 0.0 | 2.5 |
| Yikun Crossbow | 4.0 | 2.0 | 0.5 | 4.0 |
It’s perhaps no surprise that these sort of outliers are not all that popular of discs…But, they may make for some interesting molds to try out for utility discs!
Let’s look at depth…
Depth
Depth is sort of a weird one to consider - but my favorite putter, Gateway’s Wizard (I specifically bag this Grateful Dead stamp), is surprisingly deep compared to lots of other discs!
Anyway - I hope that was interesting to explore. Head over to the disc database page if you want to check out even more attributes of discs.