i cant believe what happened today!

     so i was playing my local course today and got to hole 7. hole seven has a walking path about 30 feet to the right of the tee that goes along the whole side of the hole and is considered o.b. the walking path is pretty popular with other non-discing park goers. so today off the tee i threw about 200 feet down the fairway and it curved right at the end (bad throw for this hole) and skipped o.b. when it skipped across the sidewalk it skipped about 15 feet from this old lady walking along the path. it wasn't intentional (obviously) and i shouted heads up as it turned her way and apologized after i seen it skip past her. i have seen this happen many times before, by either me or friends i am playing with, and on many different holes and courses throughout the country and every person has been more then cool about it. not this lady. she preceded to pick up my disc and start walking away with it. i see this(still on the tee-box 200 feet away)and start jogging towards her. when i got closer to her i started asking her (calm and nice still, probably because it was a little old lady)what shes doing with my disc and explaining to her that this is a disc golf course and we were playing a game and i didn't mean to throw it at her. she ignores me and just keeps walking. i am starting to get mad and yell at her that she cant just take my disc. when i get about 20 feet from her she stops and throws the disc down the cliff that is next to the walking path and into the river(coincidentally, it was my river she picked up). i snapped out when she did that. i started screaming at her at the top of my lungs. such  things as what the f*** is wrong with you?!?!?, why would you f***ing do that?!?!? your f***ing crazy etc. and she just keeps walking away and the only thing she says is "you put my life in jeopardy!!" i then preceded to tell her that if she thinks her life is in jeopardy because of a disc flying by her fifteen feet away then don't walk around a f***ing disc golf course!!! she kept walking, and i stopped following her and went to fetch my disc and finish out the round fuming the whole time.

     i am sitting at home and this is still bothering me. i cant believe this lady had the audacity to do that! i could understand if the disc hit her and she got mad( because it happened to me before) but i cant even justify it because it really didn't even come that close to her. is she really that miserable that she's gotta try to ruin the good time i am having? like, if you were walking around in the park and some kids were having a catch with a football and the one kid overthrows it to the other and it lands near you are you going to pick up that ball and take it??? no normal person would do that. i really hate people sometimes. anybody ever have something like this happen to them ever while they were playing?

 

[Wicked Dyes]

For one to me that sounds like a dangerous hole. From the tee could you see the lady walking? When ever I play I don't like to take any chance of hitting anyone. If I can see someone within range I really hate to throw. I'm not bashing you in anyway by the way but if it was I in the same situation as her and you could see me from the pad, I probably would have done the same thing. I know I have chucked discs back at people in the past when they have thrown on me ( I was halfway down the fairway on a 250' hole.

[Jeff Nichols]

I can't blame you for getting mad. I would have called the cops and filed a report on her.

[Chris McCoy]

No need to get the cops involved.  They have better things to do.

[xians421]

If she was 20 years younger, she might've picked it up and torn it in half. IJS

[Pete Maher]

its really not a dangerous hole you shouldn't come anywhere near the path if you throw correctly i just had an errant shot that went the complete wrong way, a complete fluke. and yes you can see her from the tee, her and the couple other people that were walking along the path but that doesn't matter because they weren't on the hole at all and if my drive didn't just completely shank right it would never have come into play. and those other people didn't make a big deal of it at all and the disc came just as close to hitting them as it did her. also, there is a big difference on shooting up on somebody's heels while they are playing a hole and accidentally throwing a disc out of bounds towards someone. course etiquette calls for you to wait till the group in front of you finishes their hole before your group starts playing. i also have done the same thing and thrown somebody's disc back at them or in the woods and yelled at them when they had shot on me while i was still playing the hole and is actually one of my biggest pet peeves.

[Wicked Dyes]

sorry man I must have miss understood.  I thought the walking path went all the way down the fairway 30 feet off the fairway.

[Pete Maher]

well yea it starts off about that close but the walking path curves right about 100 feet down the fairway while the fairway stays straight. its ok my friend kinda hard for me to describe to you i wish i had pics or something to help explain to you. i probably should have tried explaining it in more detail before but didn't want to type any more then i already did lol

[Bruce Brakel]

You did put her life in jeopardy.  If you had hit her with the disc and had knocked her down, she could have broken a hip.  And sometimes that ultimately kills old ladies. 

[Jim Coonradt]

We have something similar at our course. There is a walking path that circles the perimeter of the course. On a few holes (4-7) the path is on the right of the fairway. I have had a couple of discs get away from me over the years and come a bit too close to people for my liking. I have always yelled a heads up at the pedestrians when it happened. But I never had anything like that happen. And usually we are very careful not to throw when there are people in range. I truly wish that the City had never put a walking path in such close proximity to the course but we can't change that. We just have to deal with the situation at hand. I'm not sure what I would have done in your case. She didn't have any right to take your property (disc) in any case. She was probably someone who didn't like disc golf to start with and you just happened to be the catalyst for her actions. Anyway, in the end you got your disc back. Don't let this get to you. View it as an isolated incident. There are too many people out there who would rather escalate something than resolve it peacefully. Sometimes we have to share our space with others, like it or not.

[hg]

If anything, I would feel bad about having a throw go anywhere near her. What if it was your mom or grandma?Wouldn't you be super pissed if you knew a disc golfer threw with her in sight?

Bottom line: She isn't walking on the path with intentions of ruin someones round of disc golf. Odds are she doesn't give a crap about disc golf or even know what it is. She is just trying to get some exercise and when someone puts her life in danger...she acts accordingly. It would be different if someone just picked your disc up for no reason and chucked it down the cliff.

 

 

[Jim Coonradt]

Yes. A disc golfer feels bad if an errant throw comes too close to a pedestrian. But to say that you are putting someone's life in danger is a bit of an non truth and exaggeration. I know that a disc can cut someone's skin wide open. But a cut, no matter how much it bleeds does not equate to killing someone. Unless of course they bleed to death which seems a bit unlikely. As I said, we often have to share what we consider "our space" with people who think that it is in fact "their space". Pedestrians who walk next to a disc golf course need to recognize the inherent danger and be aware. Disc golfers need to be aware of pedestrians. It is indeed a two way street. She could have expressed her concern without doing what she did. And I probably wouldn't cuss out an old lady. In the end, neither action really accomplished anything at all.

 

There is also a big difference between throwing when you see someone directly on your line and accidentally shanking one towards someone. In the two times that I have shanked one near someone on the path (in probably fifteen years) I immediately yelled out to let them know that a disc might get close to them. They were well out of the way but my shot went way off course. If we waited till there was never anyone on the path we would not be able to play at all. You have to exercise good judgment.  We aren't out to kill people with discs. We are out to have a safe round. But once in a great while a disc can go off course. If the City isn't putting up fences to protect people then are they partially responsible? They put a path next to a disc golf course after all. It is a no win situation when this kind of thing happens. I have already heard some of the horror stories from other places.

[hg]

lol sorry Jim, I didn't mean to reply to your specific post. I agree....no win situation.