How Far Should You Throw a Disc Golf Disc?

How far should you throw a disc golf disc? Rough estimates put new players at 75-225 feet (23-69 m) with a driver, casual players at 250-350 feet (76-107 m) and advanced amateurs at 350-450 feet (107-137 m). Those ranges are retailer estimates, not measurements. The number that matters is your own average, measured over several throws, backhand and forehand separately.

The rest of this article covers where the typical numbers come from, how to measure your own, and what to do with it once you have it.

Before we dive in, we want to make it clear that distance does not equal a good score. Throwing 300 feet precisely is likely going to be better than throwing 450 feet with a 50 % fairway hit. Whatever your max distance is, you should not never stress about it.

Typical distances by skill level

Two retailers publish distance ranges by level, and they don’t agree. Radius Disc Golf puts a brand-new player at 150-225 feet. DiscGolfSet puts a new beginner at 75-150 feet. Neither says how they got their numbers or whether they mean a best throw or an average one. Treat the table below as a rough guide.

Sources: Radius Disc Golf, “How far should you throw?” (June 2026) and DiscGolfSet, “Disc golf distance for beginners” (2026). Both are retailer estimates without published data behind them.

The gap between the two is the useful part. If two lists can’t agree on whether a new player throws 100 or 200 feet, the list won’t tell you much about your own game. Your own measured number will.

How far does the average disc golfer throw?

The closest thing to real data is the Infinite Discs State of Disc Golf survey from 2019. The largest group of respondents, about 31 %, reported 301-350 feet (92-107 m). About 27 % reported 251-300 feet and 22 % reported 351-400 feet. The numbers are self-reported, and nobody measured the throws.

A few things to know before you compare yourself to it:

• It’s self-reported. Players typed in a number. Nobody walked out with a tape.
• It mixes up average and max. The article says players were asked about their “average throwing distance on drives”, but describes the results as “maximum” distance.
• We don’t know how many answered. The article says “thousands of players” and gives no exact count.
• It’s from 2019, and it has no split by skill level, rating or backhand/forehand.

Only 2.1 % reported 451-500 feet and 0.5 % said over 500 feet. So even in self-reported numbers, 450+ is rare.

Source: Infinite Discs, “State of Disc Golf 2019: Average Throwing Distances”, Todd Durrant, May 2019.

Why most of us think we throw farther than we do

Ask a player how far they throw their main driver and you usually get a round number. That number is often their best throw ever, not a normal one.

It makes sense. You remember the drive that caught a tailwind, landed flat on a hard fairway and rolled another 40 feet. You don’t remember the ten that faded out at 290. Over time the best one becomes “my distance”, and that is the number that ends up in a survey or in a conversation on the tee pad.

The problem shows up on the course. If you think a 360-foot hole is in range, you pick your fastest driver, throw as hard as you can, and often end up scrambling for par from the rough. If the hole is really 30 feet out of reach for you, a controlled fairway driver and a clean approach is usually the better plan.

How to measure your real distance

Take one disc to an open field, throw it at full effort at least 3 times (5 is better), measure where each throw ends up, and write down both the average and the longest throw. Do backhand and forehand in separate sessions. That average is your real distance with that disc.

Step by step:

1. Find an open, flat field. No trees to hit, room to throw past your best distance. A football field or an empty park works.
2. Pick a calm day, or note the wind. A tailwind can add a lot. If it’s windy, throw across the wind, or write down the direction so you know what the numbers mean.
3. Warm up first. A few easy throws. Your first cold throws will be short or off line and drag the average down.
4. Mark your throwing spot. A cone, a bag or a disc on the ground. Throw from the same spot every time.
5. One throw type per session. Backhand today, forehand another day (or a separate block). Mixing them gives you a number that fits neither.
6. Pick the discs you actually carry. Two or three is plenty. Measuring every disc in the bag in one go wears you out, and the last ones come out short.
7. Throw each disc at least 3 times. More throws give a steadier average.
8. Count every throw. Including the one that turned over or skipped left. Only re-throw if something outside your control happened, like the disc hitting a person or a post.
9. Measure where the disc ends up. Write down each distance or use the discaddie max distance feature.
10. Write down the average and the longest throw separately, per disc and per throw type.

You can measure with a long tape measure, a laser rangefinder or a GPS app on your phone. A tape is the most exact but slow. A rangefinder is quick if you have something to aim at. A GPS app is the easiest, but know its limits: GPS.gov says smartphones are typically accurate to within 16 feet (4.9 m) under open sky, and worse near trees and buildings. That error can be there at both the throwing spot and the landing spot, so a single measurement can be off by several meters. Over several throws it evens out a bit, which is one more reason to use the average.

Discaddie’s Max Distance drill in Practice does this with your phone’s GPS. You pick backhand or forehand, choose the discs, lock your throwing position on the map, then walk to each disc and tap Measure. It runs 3 rounds and shows your average and best throw per disc. Other apps can measure throws too. UDisc has a guide to getting accurate GPS measurements that is worth reading whichever app you use.

Max or average: which number to plan with

Plan with your average. It’s what you can expect from a normal full-power throw with that disc. Your longest throw shows what’s possible when everything goes right: clean release, good angle, maybe a bit of tailwind. If a hole needs your best throw to reach, you’re playing for a throw you don’t hit most of the time.

The longest throw is still worth writing down. It tells you where your ceiling is right now, and if the gap between your longest and your average is big, that usually means your throws aren’t consistent yet. If the average climbs over a few months, your form is getting better. A single long throw doesn’t tell you that.

In short: the throw you remember is usually your best one. The number to plan with is your average.

Backhand and forehand are two different numbers

Your backhand and forehand distances are almost never the same, so measure and save them separately. If your backhand goes 330 feet and your forehand 290, that 40-foot gap matters on every hole where the forehand is the natural line. You want to know that before you’re on the tee pad guessing.

Some things that make the gap:

• Different motion. The forehand is a shorter, wrist-driven motion. Many players learn backhand first and get more distance out of it, and some players are the other way around.
• Discs behave differently. A forehand tends to put more torque on the disc, and on average it gets less spin than a backhand, so a disc that flies straight backhand can turn over forehand. Many players use more overstable discs for forehand. That changes which disc goes the farthest for each throw type.
• Different holes need different throws. A right-handed backhand fades left. On a hole that bends right, a forehand or an anhyzer is often the line. That’s exactly where you need to know your forehand number.

Measure both, and don’t assume one from the other. If your forehand is the weaker number, this breakdown of Gannon Buhr’s forehand splits the throw into five steps, each with a check you can run in a field.

Why a distance driver doesn’t always go farther

If your fairway driver goes as far as your distance driver, or farther, that’s normal for a lot of players. High-speed discs need arm speed to fly as designed. Without it, they fade out early and land short. If yours turns over instead, your speed has outrun your spin. See spin vs speed.

The PDGA’s guide to flight numbers says it directly: “throwing fast discs like drivers before you have sufficient arm speed will make your shots shorter, and less accurate.” (PDGA, “What do the numbers on a disc golf disc mean?”, 2024.) This is where measuring pays off. You see in your own numbers which disc actually goes farthest for you, instead of going by the speed number on the rim.

What to do with your number

Once you have an average per disc and throw type, use it in three places.

Picking a disc on the tee. Pick the disc whose average is closest to the distance you need. If the hole is 280 feet and your fairway driver averages 275, that’s the disc. Your 12-speed driver with an average of 300 might reach, but it’s harder to control.

Deciding if a hole is in range. If your backhand average is 290 feet, a 340-foot hole is two shots for you. Plan the drive so it leaves a comfortable approach, instead of throwing as hard as you can and hoping. A 260-foot hole, on the other hand, is a real birdie chance.

Choosing what to carry. If two discs have the same average and do the same thing, you only need one. If a disc never beats your fairway driver, it probably doesn’t need to be in the bag.

Measure again every couple of months, and when you add a new disc. Numbers change as your form changes.

Using your distances in Discaddie

In Discaddie, each disc in your bag has a backhand and a forehand distance. You can type them in yourself, or let the Max Distance drill fill them in. After a session, the drill shows your average, your best throw and the distance saved on the disc. If a disc’s average from the session is higher than the saved distance, the app asks if you want to update your bag with the new average. If your average came out lower, the saved number stays, so if your distance drops you’ll need to edit it by hand in Bag.

The Caddie then uses those numbers. When you plan a shot on a hole, it suggests the three discs from your bag whose saved distance is closest to the length of the shot, for the throw type you picked. That only works well if the numbers are real, which is the reason to measure them.

Distance is only part of the score, though. If you want strokes back quickly, most of them are in C1. See our putting drills with scoring. To train the distances you just measured, see how to practice disc golf alone with a plan.

If you want to throw farther and not just know your number, this video with Drew Gibson on Brodie Smith’s channel goes through the technique: How To Throw Far with Drew Gibson (Really Far).

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