The PDGA celebrated 1500 different disc golf molds on May 2nd of 2022. It’s crazy when you think about how many different discs there are. You could throw a new mold disc every single day of the year for 4 years. And it’s not stopping there, more molds are being produced every single month.

Here’s the process to get a disc approved by the PDGA. It takes time and costs money, so doing it is a serious endeavor and investment. That doesn’t include the time and money that are needed to develop a disc.

How many possible disc flight number combinations are there?
Well let’s look at the math. I love math.
There are 14 speeds, 6 glides, 7 turns, and 6 fades.

There’s 3,528 possible unique flight numbered discs that could be made!

We have lots of overlap though, even between companies. Both the Nova and Classic Aviar are 2/3/0/0 but they have different flight paths and very different grips. And I don’t want to suggest that any company is a “copycat”. I think it’s great when a company realizes that they aren’t offering something another one does.

I’ve already written a blog about the most popular turn and fade combo. It’s -1 turn and 3 fade for drivers.

No need to go down that rabbit hole. Back to the title of the blog.

Are there too many molds?

I thought back to all the discs I’ve ever thrown during a round. As far as I can recall I’ve thrown plenty of different molds. Here is what I remember throwing.

62 Innova molds
43 Discraft molds
16 Discmania molds
11 Prodigy molds
6 ThoughtSpace Athletics molds
4 MVP molds
3 Latitude 64 molds
2 Westside molds
1 Gateway molds
1 Axiom molds
1 Lightning Discs molds

Over my 12 years of playing I’ve thrown 150 different molds in competition and casual rounds. Kind of awesome that it divides perfectly into 10% of the discs made. I’ve barely dipped my toes in the water of disc golf molds.

I wonder if anyone has thrown even 25% of all disc golf discs made. And not just thrown them once or twice but really knows how they throw.

The way that I checked was using the PDGA Approved Discs list, then filtering by the companies that I remember throwing.

Do I want to throw all 1400 more?

Not really. There are so many discs out there, that it would take me a lifetime to find all of them. But if there were 1400 on a table in front of me and I had a full bottle of Ibuprofen and 12 hours to kill, sure.

We’ve got a demo program here at trainzwholesale. I keep mentioning it in blogs in the hopes that people read it and try it out. It’s a chance for you to try out some of the discs we sell here without buying them first. Don’t spend 18 bucks on a disc that you might not like. Try it out for a round (for free) and then see if you still want it.

I don’t think there are too many molds out there. Disc golf should continue to evolve from its still very early beginnings.

If I look back at the 1977 Worlds it’s easy to see that they needed beveled edge discs. I wonder now what disc golfers need now, and in the future. As the DGPT seems to gravitate towards golf courses for viewership, it may make sense for companies to make a better roller disc for their pro players.

So let’s get more molds into disc golf. We have more players than ever, competing at more events and playing more courses. There are hundreds of thousands of players who have different hand sizes, throwing motions, and needs.

May your discs miss all the trees,
Andrew Streeter #70397