Stokely Stresses Simplicity: A Review of a Scott Stokely Disc Golf Clinic
Photo: Scott Stokely
On December 4th 2023, I attended an instructional clinic hosted by professional disc golfer Scott Stokely at a local course. Clinics are very common and are a popular way for professionals to make some extra money in the off-season. Despite their abundance, I had actually never attended a pro clinic before this one, so I am writing this article to share my thoughts about the experience. Honestly though, I wish I had been to another clinic previously so that I could compare and contrast!
I feel that I should have a quick disclaimer before getting into the depths of this review. As one reads this article, they should be aware that well before my attendance of this clinic, I was a big Scott Stokely fan, so my review undeniably contains some bias. But I will try to be as objective as possible and include negatives as well as positives.
I would absolutely say that Scott Stokely is one of my favorite pros. And for a myriad of reasons. I love that in the 2023 season, at 52 years old, he was over 1000 rated and even cashed at a couple of DGPT events. I love that he can still throw over 500 feet forehand and backhand at his age. I love his overall demeanor and attitude toward the game. Stokely is relentlessly positive and completely unpretentious. He is humble, self-deprecating, and open about his colorful past, but is also very honest and proud of his accomplishments which are significant and numerous. My opinion of Stokely is informed somewhat by his YouTube videos and social media, but is most prominently based on his autobiographical book, Growing Up Disc Golf. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is passionate about disc golf, it was an excellent read (an excellent listen in my case since I listened to the audiobook, read by Stokely himself). The book honestly surprised me with how personal, interesting, and well written it was. Frankly, before reading it I was, rather cynically, skeptical that a book written by a disc golfer would be much good. Especially considering the cheesy title, cheesy cover photo of Stokely showing off his disc golf tattoos, and known cheesiness of Stokely himself. Harsh I know, but those were my expectations going into the book. I was very pleased to be completely wrong. Sure, there were some cheesy parts of the book, as expected, but those parts never took away from the overall experience. Growing Up Disc Golf definitely solidified my status as a Scott Stokely fan.
The Review
The whole affair was very casual, which I liked. A couple weeks before the clinic took place, Stokely posted in the local disc golf Facebook group asking if there would be interest in a clinic. There was a hearty response, and so the event was scheduled, a location selected, and a sign-up link shared. The price was $25 for a 2-hour clinic. It was all very clear and easy.
The clinic commenced at 9am on December 4th, it was cold but sunny, almost all attendees were in jackets, warm hats, and gloves. There were about 40 to 50 people in total. After meeting in the parking lot of the course, the whole group meandered over to an open field and formed a semi-circle around Mr. Stokely. After some small talk and introductions, Stokely began to lay out the agenda for the clinic. He explained that there would be backhand, forehand, and putting sections. He also warned that we would be receiving a massive amount of information in the clinic and advised that if he was going over something we already knew or didn’t particularly need to work on, just ignore it! Stokely pointed out that it would be impossible to remember everything from the clinic, and if you try to remember everything, you might end up remembering nothing. So you’re better off just focusing on the few pieces of information that your game needs most. I was a little surprised when he first said this, but after his explanation I think it was very smart and pragmatic advice. I would say the theme that most permeated the entire clinic was simplicity, and Stokely’s above advice about latching onto what really matters was the first appearance of that theme. Stokely’s philosophy seemed to be that you play your best disc golf when you’re thinking as little as possible about every little motion you’re doing, hence the emphasis on simplicity and not cluttering your mind with a bunch of techniques and methodologies.
Photo: Jesse Andersen
Another common thread throughout the clinic was that everyone’s bodies are different, therefore everyone’s throws will look different. This is something that I don’t think is said nearly enough in the disc golf instruction world. Of course you can learn a lot from studying the throws of the pillars of disc golf form, the Drew Gibsons, Paul McBeths, and Hailey Kings, but to try and make one’s throw look exactly like theirs is impossible, because nobody possesses their exact bodies except them. It can be productive to watch footage of these pros and try to understand what they are accomplishing with their form and what they are doing right, but to attempt to compare your throw to theirs and think that you are doing something wrong because it doesn’t look exactly like theirs is misguided. Stokely alluded to this idea many times throughout the clinic, always emphasizing the importance of throwing from “where you’re the strongest,” which can be different for every person.
The backhand section of the clinic was first and was also the longest. I would argue that the backhand is the most complex of all the throws used in disc golf, and though he did not explicitly say so, I am confident that Stokely, and most other disc golf instructors would agree. So it makes sense that this section was the longest. Though much was said in the over 60 minutes spent teaching about throwing backhand, the entire section revolved around Stokely’s reduction of the throw to 5 steps. He said that over his years of teaching, he has managed to boil down proper backhand form to these 5 things and that if one can execute them correctly and in the correct order, everything else will take care of itself and you will have proper backhand form. Again we see the emphasis on simplicity. Personally, I was already familiar with the importance of each of Stokely’s 5 points, and I agree that they are the most important parts of the backhand, but there were still some pieces of information in the backhand section that I was not familiar with and that have surely improved my throw.
The forehand and putting sections similarly revolved around a small number of points that Stokely emphasized as the most important aspects of that respective throw. I definitely needed to hear his forehand instruction since I’ve been struggling with my forehand a lot lately. There were some things about the forehand throw that I was simply wrong about conceptually. Things about the nature of the throw.
Scott Stokely’s clinic is about developing the tools necessary to excel at disc golf. It’s about learning the fundamentals of proper throwing. I am a 920 rated player and I regularly put up 950+ rated rounds, so I largely have the tools necessary to play disc golf at a fairly high level. And that’s not to contradict what I just said above, because I certainly did learn some valuable things at the clinic, but my struggle (and many players’ struggle at my level) is less with the fundamentals of my throws and more with mental toughness, consistency, and the miniscule techniques that must be fine tuned in order to achieve consistency. Put another way, I was already doing Stokely’s 5 backhand steps for the most part before I learned them at the clinic. Though it’s useful to think of the backhand in these simple terms when learning the fundamentals, the fact of the matter is a backhand is more complicated than 5 things. And though in theory when those 5 things are executed properly, the rest of the blanks should fill themselves in, it just doesn’t always work that way. Stokely did not get into all these intricacies in the clinic. I don’t blame him for this at all, since we had only limited time and presumably had a very wide range of skill levels present. When questions were asked about more specific details of a particular technique, Stokely would invariably respond by reemphasizing points about throwing fundamentals. He would even apologize before responding and say, “Look, I know that it will sound like I’m blowing off your question here, but the answer is: just do the 5 things.” I want to be clear that I understand why he did this, and I am truly not criticizing him for it. It would be contradictory to say “These 5 things are everything you need to know to throw a good backhand. They are all you need to worry about,” but then as soon as someone asks a more specific question also say, “Oh and you need to know all this stuff too.” I am fully confident that Stokely acknowledges that his method is reductive and there are other intricacies that could be addressed, (and I am also confident that he would gladly get into them with you in a private lesson) but when teaching to over 40 people of all skill levels, you sort of have to cater to the lowest common denominator. It was important for him as a teacher to appear consistent and confident in his loyalty to simplicity, and his assertion that, “These are the things you need to know.” My point in laying all this out is that while I definitely got something out of the clinic, it was not as life-changing as it might have been for a player who had less of a grasp on the fundamentals. I wish so badly that I could have attended this clinic 3 or 4 years ago, because that player would have gained so much more than I did.
I want to take a quick sidebar here and apologize for the vagueness in describing Stokely’s actual tangible instruction. I am in a weird position writing this review because I want to be specific about things that I learned in the clinic, but at the same time, it is not overly dramatic to say that everything taught in the clinic is proprietary information. Scott Stokely has developed his disc golf curriculum over many years and tons of work, and it is how he makes his living. So it doesn’t seem right that I should share all the finer details of the instruction that I had to pay to receive. Besides, this article is about the experience and quality of the clinic itself, it is not meant to be instructional.
All said and done, I would highly recommend a Scott Stokely Disc Golf Clinic to every disc golfer. I think that a sub-900 rated player who needs help learning fundamentals would benefit the most, but I would recommend the clinic to higher level disc golfers as well. Especially if there is one particular part of your game that needs a lot of work. Like if you nearly exclusively throw backhand and want to develop a forehand, or vice versa. I can almost guarantee that even if you have the fundamentals down, you will learn something of value from the clinic. Or perhaps you think that you have the fundamentals down only to find out from the clinic that you do not!
