This ACD Plays Disc Golf, a Sport Both Goofy and Technical

Chris Bradley freely admits he’s not a conventional sports guy, but when a neighbor mentioned “this golf thing” about a decade ago, it caught his attention. That would be disc golf, which uses Frisbees and baskets instead of balls and holes. The appeal, Bradley said, is the wide range of abilities and intensity the sport can cater to. “It's goofy enough to go out there and just kind of have a blast doing it,” he said. “But there's enough technical skill needed that if somebody gets hooked on it, there's a lot of technique that you can learn.” Bradley, associate creative director at South Carolina advertising agency FerebeeLane, started playing casually and got hooked—but, as with many hobbies, life got in the way. “It fell off as my career accelerated, and kids and all that kind of stuff,” he said. Then Covid hit in 2020 and, like millions of Americans, Bradley was looking for something to do while working from home. “I had periods during the day where I couldn't stay in my basement anymore; I needed to get out and do something,” he recalled. He already had the equipment, and the sport is free to play at public disc golf grounds. At the same time, “society was picking up on it as a great thing to do.” Get In, Creatives. MarketMaker’s CEO Is Flying Like many outdoor activities, disc golf exploded in popularity during the pandemic. According to UDisc, the app for all things disc golf, the number of courses worldwide has doubled since 2017 to 15,205, while the number of games tracked on the app rose from 4 million in 2019 to 12 million in 2020 and nearly 22 million in 2023. Besides new players, Bradley found something else in his return to disc golf. After going through the motions of “compulsory” sports competitions in school, he finally saw potential in himself to succeed. “I'm not going to be a marathon guy at this point, at my age. Traditional golf feels like the ship has long since sailed,” he said. “I got interested in this idea of, ‘OK, [disc golf] is fun; this is something I think I could get better at too.’” He now plays two to three times a week, with a choice of about nine courses within a 30-minute drive in his hometown of Greenville. He’s also a member of the Professional Disc Golf Association and competes in tournaments every other month, which puts him on teams with people who are, largely, more conservative than his own worldview. These interactions, Bradley said, bring a lot of value to the work he does. “Being a creative, it's taking an empathetic view, right? It's the ability to step out of your own shoes and into somebody else's. “In these competitive situations, I meet a lot of really good people who are much more nuanced and much less polarized than I probably would assume.”

Off the Clock

This ACD Plays Disc Golf, a Sport Both Goofy and Technical

FerebeeLane's Chris Bradley wasn't a sports guy—until he was

Eva Kis

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