Drive Speed (mph)?

Just curious if anyone knows the actual speed of their drive or an average drive (in mph or km/h) just after release?

You could just measure the distance of the drive and divide it by the airtime (ave. speed), but that number would be much lower than the speed of the disc right after it leaves your hand.

Anyone ever get the chance to clock their drive with a speed gun? That would be sweet!

[Terry "the Pirate" Calhoun]

At PDGA Worlds, I think in 2004 in Des Moines, there was a booth set up so that people could throw drives and get their speed checked. If I recall correctly, my backhand drives were in the high 50-mph range and I got up over 60 mph with a forehand.

At the time I could throw about 325' backhand and never threw forehand at all, because my forehands were totally wild and uncontrollable. But the slight difference in speed makes sense, now that I can throw a forehand, because I can definitely get a tiny bit more distance from forehand now than I can from backhand.

[Matt Dimick]

i played baseball forever before i started playing disc golf. most baseball teams (high school and college) just get used radar guns from police stations. So if you had a radar gun it would be easy to catch the speed of a disc using one. I know a couple years ago down in bowling green they had a disc speed station before the tournament. I didnt throw, but maybe someone on here did and can provide some insite on that.

charles lignos said:

how do they clock the speed of a baseball? it seems like you could use a similar device for a disc.

[Ben Calhoun]

I think I got to 74 mph at that Worlds, but can probably beat that now.

[Pop Arounleut]

We had a gun set up sim to the ones used for clocking baseballs during an ice bowl a few yrs back. If I recall correctly, the higher speeds that we were getting was around 75 mph. However, there were several times where there was no data on the gun. We presumed that was bc a disc is so flat so it was tough to get the radar to "hit it" to get a proper reading.

[Lyle O. Ross]

Theo Pozzy did an extensive study on speed vs. distance back in 2000. Granted it is dated but it was an excellent study. I can't for the life of me find it but I'm sure Theo would provide the info if someone asked him. As I recall, Speed does have an impact but he found that some slower throwers were getting as much distance as faster, i.e 40 miles per hour could be as affective as 70. And if my memory serves me, that was the speed range for drives too. That is Pros were throwing between 40 and 70 miles per hour (consistent with Hero's post).

If I recall, the conclusion was that spin was more important for distance than flat out speed...

If anyone locates the Pozzy study please post it here. This is a link to a discussion of Theo's study without the data... darn it! You will see that this poster concludes that only speed is necessary, while mentioning a discrete group of outliers where spin is the key to distance. It could well be that good speed with average spin gets you long, as does good spin with average speed...

http://hushedcasket.com/node/272

[My_Hero]

Lyle O. Ross said:

Theo Pozzy did an extensive study on speed vs. distance back in 2000. Granted it is dated but it was an excellent study. I can't for the life of me find it but I'm sure Theo would provide the info if someone asked him. As I recall, Speed does have an impact but he found that some slower throwers were getting as much distance as faster, i.e 40 miles per hour could be as affective as 70. And if my memory serves me, that was the speed range for drives too. That is Pros were throwing between 40 and 70 miles per hour (consistent with Hero's post).

If I recall, the conclusion was that spin was more important for distance than flat out speed...

If anyone locates the Pozzy study please post it here. This is a link to a discussion of Theo's study without the data... darn it! You will see that this poster concludes that only speed is necessary, while mentioning a discrete group of outliers where spin is the key to distance. It could well be that good speed with average spin gets you long, as does good spin with average speed...

http://hushedcasket.com/node/272

Spin wins. While i wasn't even close to the fastest thrower clocked, i was one of the longest throwers.

.

[James Crawford]

Spin wins. While i wasn't even close to the fastest thrower clocked, i was one of the longest throwers.

.
Which is why I think it would be awesome to try and get Disc Golf on Time Warp, because then maybe with their high speed cameras they could find out how much rotation on the disc occurs as it leaves a distance throwers hand.

[Mike Inscho]

I 2x that.

If anyone hasn't bumped the Time Warp "Get Disc Golf on T.V" ....you should do so. That would be freaking cool.

[Kaiser]

off topic I know... but when the idea of getting Time Warp to look at disc golf, I really didn't think that we had a chance of getting it on there due to the numerous other high speed related things around the world. However with the newer information on this post, I think it would be worth their wild to give this a try. Granted they may have more fun capturing bullets, rockets, and things of that nature, but this actually provides a good insite on the physics behind a disc in flight and how each aspect can generate a different effect. Arm speed at release compared to snap at the end. Which is really the source behind the distance? Does one have a greater effect on flight than the other and what is the best combination of the two* to produce the best distance result ( * or more if someone finds other physics forces, which could include things such as drag produced by the disc, lift generated, gravitational forces, etc)

Crap... I lost where I was going with this........ you get the idea... anyone else?

[Josh Taylor]

I was just trying to find average drive speeds but this discussion has gotten much more interesting. The issue of speed vs. spin/snap and combinations for max. distance (I teach jr. high science now but once upon a time I was a physics major).

As I said earlier I think I definitely use a higher spin/speed ratio than others which, if the posts here are correct seems to be a good thing!

Another advantage of empasizing spin/snap over speed (I find) is better control. Control and shot placement go up, without sacrificing distance, if you are able to back off the speed and use more snap instead.

[Russell Gore]

That is some interesting stuff there Mike! Never ceases to amaze me, what you can find on the internet. So by the way this reads the cheap radar gun probably wasn't off by much. The guy said he only paid about 50 bucks for it at a sporting goods store. I figured it was most likely way off, guess it wasn't.

Mike Inscho said:

Interesting to know Russell !, I'll be keeping my eye on this thread because oddly enough, I was just thinking about how fast a disc travels off of your hand the other day. I saw this link..

http://www.aracnet.com/~stuart/disc_report.htm

Look for Appendix B toward the bottom of the page and it talks about having a disc speed of 70 -75 mph to reach over 400ft with a disc. Interesting read.

[Mike Inscho]

Not a problem. Anything to help you and many others to find the answer.