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Arnold Q&A: Brad Schick, disc golf
2015 ARNOLD SPORTS FESTIVAL
Saturday March 7, 2015 10:03 AM
Brad Schick, 37, grew up in Westerville thinking first he might have a future in baseball. But the disc golf bug — microbial back then — bit him and he rose to become one of the burgeoning sport’s elite players. He makes his living in educational sales, but as he will show in competition today at the Ohio Expo Center as part of the Arnold Sports Festival, he takes the game seriously, with 101 tournament wins and just over $100,000 in winnings.
Question: You first tried the sport as a youngster with your dad, but when was the first time you flung a disc with a competitive mindset?
Answer: In high school, that was all I was doing in the summer, playing every day, and I was totally hooked. I started traveling around, playing in as many tournaments as I could, though there weren’t that many back then, maybe one a month. Now the sport is totally booming. There is a tournament usually within two hours or so from here every weekend.
Q: Why has it taken off?
A: For one thing, there are more courses now. But it helps that it is super cheap to play. You can go play a round in an hour, an hour and a half. More people are finding out about it, and now schools are picking it up, K-12. There are college club teams having huge tournaments. It seems to have a growing appeal.
Q: When was the moment you realized you were very good?
A: The Brent Hambrick Memorial is a tournament here, I won that a couple of years ago, and it had some of the top players in the world. Being in the hunt is one thing, but winning is something else. Knowing that I wasn’t putting in as much time, because of my job, as some of those guys do but that I could still compete and win showed me I have the ability.
Q: Does gaining sponsorship from DiscCraft validate your talent?
A: When I was growing up, I kind of had that on my bucket list, to someday be sponsored. So there you go.
Q: What is the strength of your game?
A: I would say it is my scrambling and short game. I’ve never been a big distance guy (though his average 400 feet off the tee is more than adequate) … but you can never replace course management, much like regular golf.
Q: And you use more than one disc in a round?
A: I usually carry about 15 discs in my bag. I’ll have, like, two putters; one’s a little more beat up than the other; one flies a little straighter. Usually the newer a disc is, the more stable; the wind seems to affect it less. And I’ll have, say, three drivers, all of which fly a little bit differently, which I can utilize based on the course and weather.
Q: You spoke of your breakthrough win earlier; do you lean on that for confidence from time to time?
A: I put that in the back of my mind if I am going up to a long putt and getting a little nervous. The thought being, “You’ve done this a million times. Just put yourself back in that moment and let it go.”
— Tim May
tmay@dispatch.com
@tim_MAYsports
Results
Go ahead, click me.
Story:
Arnold Q&A: Brad Schick, disc golf
2015 ARNOLD SPORTS FESTIVAL
Saturday March 7, 2015 10:03 AM
Brad Schick, 37, grew up in Westerville thinking first he might have a future in baseball. But the disc golf bug — microbial back then — bit him and he rose to become one of the burgeoning sport’s elite players. He makes his living in educational sales, but as he will show in competition today at the Ohio Expo Center as part of the Arnold Sports Festival, he takes the game seriously, with 101 tournament wins and just over $100,000 in winnings.
Question: You first tried the sport as a youngster with your dad, but when was the first time you flung a disc with a competitive mindset?
Answer: In high school, that was all I was doing in the summer, playing every day, and I was totally hooked. I started traveling around, playing in as many tournaments as I could, though there weren’t that many back then, maybe one a month. Now the sport is totally booming. There is a tournament usually within two hours or so from here every weekend.
Q: Why has it taken off?
A: For one thing, there are more courses now. But it helps that it is super cheap to play. You can go play a round in an hour, an hour and a half. More people are finding out about it, and now schools are picking it up, K-12. There are college club teams having huge tournaments. It seems to have a growing appeal.
Q: When was the moment you realized you were very good?
A: The Brent Hambrick Memorial is a tournament here, I won that a couple of years ago, and it had some of the top players in the world. Being in the hunt is one thing, but winning is something else. Knowing that I wasn’t putting in as much time, because of my job, as some of those guys do but that I could still compete and win showed me I have the ability.
Q: Does gaining sponsorship from DiscCraft validate your talent?
A: When I was growing up, I kind of had that on my bucket list, to someday be sponsored. So there you go.
Q: What is the strength of your game?
A: I would say it is my scrambling and short game. I’ve never been a big distance guy (though his average 400 feet off the tee is more than adequate) … but you can never replace course management, much like regular golf.
Q: And you use more than one disc in a round?
A: I usually carry about 15 discs in my bag. I’ll have, like, two putters; one’s a little more beat up than the other; one flies a little straighter. Usually the newer a disc is, the more stable; the wind seems to affect it less. And I’ll have, say, three drivers, all of which fly a little bit differently, which I can utilize based on the course and weather.
Q: You spoke of your breakthrough win earlier; do you lean on that for confidence from time to time?
A: I put that in the back of my mind if I am going up to a long putt and getting a little nervous. The thought being, “You’ve done this a million times. Just put yourself back in that moment and let it go.”
— Tim May
tmay@dispatch.com
@tim_MAYsports
Results