There’s a hole at Milo McIver \u2014 hole 5 on the East course \u2014 where water guards the right side on the approach. The smart play is obvious: stay left, have a longer approach, take your par. The hero play is threading a line that cuts closer to the water, saving maybe 30 feet on your approach shot. The hero play looks cool when it works.
I’ve played Milo probably 200 times. I know this hole intimately. I know the smart play. And at least once every few rounds, I still go for the hero line. And sometimes I find the water. And every time I do, I stand there annoyed at myself, knowing I did exactly the thing I tell other people not to do.
Course management is the gap between knowing what’s smart and actually doing it. I’m better at the knowing part than the doing part. This article is my attempt to convince both you and me to play smarter.
The Math That Should Change Your Decisions
Here’s a question I ask people when they’re frustrated about their scores: what did you shoot on your three worst holes?
Usually it’s something like 7, 8, 6. Let’s call it +11 on three holes. The other fifteen holes? Maybe +5 combined. So more than half of your over-par strokes came from three disasters.
Now ask: what happened on those holes? Almost always it’s the same stuff. Went for a gap and hit first available tree. Tried to carry water and didn’t make it. Had a bad drive and tried to make up for it with a risky second shot that made everything worse.
Blowup holes come from aggressive decisions that don’t pay off. One disaster is worth multiple missed opportunities. A triple bogey on one hole erases three birdies on other holes. The math is brutal.
Which means: preventing disasters is mathematically more important than creating opportunities. At the amateur level anyway. Pros can afford more aggression because their success rate is higher. Ours isn’t.
The Shots That Actually Hurt You
Missing a birdie putt from 45 feet doesn’t really hurt you. You were never supposed to make that. It’s a bonus attempt. Miss it, tap in for par, move on. No damage done.
Going OB trying to cut a corner? That hurts. Now you’re rethrowing or taking penalty strokes, you’re probably getting bogey at best, maybe double. One aggressive decision, two or three strokes gone.
The shots that blow up rounds aren’t the difficult ones \u2014 they’re the unnecessary ones. Shots where a safer alternative existed and you ignored it because the risky option felt more exciting or more possible than it actually was.
I know this. I still make dumb choices sometimes. Ego is powerful.
The Ego Thing
Let me be honest about why I \u2014 and probably you \u2014 take stupid risks on the course. It feels good to go for it. It feels boring to lay up. When you hit the hero line, you feel like a real disc golfer who just pulled off something impressive. When you lay up, you feel like you’re admitting you’re not good enough.
This is ego. It’s not logic. And ego is the enemy of good scores.
The best players play within themselves. They take the shot they can execute 80% of the time, not the shot that works 30% of the time. They accept par when birdie isn’t really there. They swallow their pride and take the safe out instead of the flashy one.
It’s not exciting. It doesn’t make highlight reels. But it wins tournaments and lowers scores and builds consistency. At the end of the round, nobody remembers that you laid up on hole 5. They just see your score.
The Questions I Should Ask But Often Don’t
Before any aggressive shot, there’s a mental checklist I’m supposed to run through. I don’t always do it. But when I do, my scores are better.
Question one: what’s my actual success rate on this shot? Not what I hope it is. Not what it would be if I execute perfectly. What’s the real number, based on how I’ve thrown this shot before? Be honest.
If the answer is less than 70%, the shot probably isn’t worth it. Because 30%+ failure rate means almost one in three times you’re making your situation worse instead of better.
Question two: what happens if I miss? If missing means I’m still in play with a longer approach, that’s not too bad. If missing means OB, water, penalty, or a worse position than I started with \u2014 that’s serious downside.
Question three: what’s the safe alternative? And what’s the likely outcome from there? Sometimes the “safe” option isn’t actually that different from the risky option. Sometimes it’s way better on expected value.
If I’d run through these questions at hole 5 at Milo that one time, I’d have realized: success rate maybe 50%, miss means water and penalty stroke, safe alternative gives me a 40-foot-longer approach that I’d probably still make par from. The math says lay up. I didn’t. Water.
The Disaster Recovery Mistake
Here’s a specific form of bad course management that gets me more than anything: bad drive into trees, then trying to “make up for it” with an aggressive second shot that makes everything worse.
The logic feels sound in the moment. I’m already in trouble. I need to get back to par. So I need to do something special to recover. Which means taking a risk.
But the math doesn’t support this. You’re already down a stroke. The question is whether you finish the hole one stroke over par or three strokes over. A conservative pitch out to the fairway leads to bogey. A risky attempt to advance 200 feet through a tiny gap leads to… hitting another tree, still being in trouble, now facing bogey at best and probably double.
The pitch out feels like giving up. It isn’t. It’s limiting damage. It’s playing the odds. It’s accepting that one bad shot doesn’t have to become three bad shots.
I’m bad at this. When I’m in the trees, my instinct is to try something heroic. The smart move is almost always: get out. Get to the fairway. Take your medicine. Move on.
When Aggression Makes Sense
I’m not saying never take risks. Some situations call for it.
Late in a round when you’re behind and need to make up strokes \u2014 now’s the time for aggression. Playing safe when you’re down three strokes with four holes left doesn’t help you catch up. The math changes when the situation is desperate.
Practice rounds where you’re trying new things \u2014 go for it. That’s what practice is for. Learn what you can and can’t do.
Shots where your success rate is actually high \u2014 trust yourself. If you hit this line 80% of the time, it’s not really a risk, it’s just a shot.
The point isn’t “never be aggressive.” It’s “be aggressive when the situation warrants it, not when your ego wants it.”
What I’m Working On
Honestly, I’m still working on all of this. The gap between knowing the right play and executing the right play is real, and I fall into it constantly. I preach course management and then throw at a gap I shouldn’t throw at.
What’s helped: counting my blowup holes after rounds and being honest about what caused them. Tracking how many times I went OB from aggressive choices versus actual mistakes. Seeing the pattern in data.
What hasn’t helped: telling myself I’ll play smarter next time without any specific plan for how. Good intentions don’t survive the emotional moment when I’m standing over a shot that looks makeable.
It’s a practice thing. Like everything else in disc golf, it takes reps to build new habits. The habit I’m trying to build is: pause before risky shots. Ask the questions. Make a real decision instead of an instinctive one.
I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out. Until then, I’ll keep donating discs to the water at hole 5 occasionally. At least I know why I’m doing it now.