One of the most important things to do when finding your line and your landing zone is to take airspace into account. Air space is a 3 dimensional space, your disc is going to fly through this on its path to the basket. The hope with this blog is that you take a look at courses you regularly play, and that if a hole is troubling you you can find some new airspace.
I’d like to take a look at Hole 1 of the Hawk course and examine some of the airspace you’re going to find. The basket is 211 feet away about 15 feet behind and slightly left of the rock.
If you throw a RHBH you’ll see that the right side of this fairway is pinched in a little bit. The trees that are close on the right hand side kind of block a hyzer shot at this basket. The airspace on this hole is on the left hand side. See how the trees are further to the left early on? That means that you should be throwing a turnover shot or a forehand shot on this hole. The other thing that’s blocked in this line is the overhand shot. The branches are thick from 10 feet in front of the tee all the way to the basket. I like to throw a turnover putter shot here, because I believe the left side of the fairway is easier to hit consistently. If I miss high I still come down in the fairway.
If you’re looking for a way to find airspace here’s a great way to look at it. Put a line through the middle of where you’re looking.
I cut through the middle of the basket down to the teepad. You can see that the blue section has significantly more area of air space than the green area. You’ll get more birdies throwing on this side.
Let’s look at Hole 2 of the Eagle course and compare airspace.
This is a much more difficult shot because of the added change in height. Let’s ignore that for a moment and ignore the basket hiding in the center of the frame. The Eagle’s basket is 50 feet behind that and in the trees. Let’s look at the airspace together.
If you’re a righty sidearm player or a lefty backhand thrower it’s tempting to shoot for the red airspace. You’d just have to hit that gap and then your drive is in the open field. Just look at the size of the airspace though. The red airspace is much smaller than the blue airspace. Blue has more branches on the right side of the path which is why it’s not a perfectly square box. The distance to the airspaces are the same so if you’re trying to get the better score, go for the bigger airspace.
The last one I want to look at is Hole 11 on the Eagle.
I’ve made the red area a “No fly zone” this time. You don’t want your disc going anywhere in there. Low and you hit the hill and roll down. On the right and left are trees that your disc will hit and then roll down the hill or leave you with a bad shot. I see lots of players try to hit this airspace with a big right to left hyzer shot. They’ll often hit the trees that are guarding the pin on the right. The only airspace available is above the basket and slightly to the right.
If you’re able to throw a putter like an Aviar, or a Rattler, or a midrange like a Buzzz or a Mako3 then you can float from high to low and land on top.
So let’s go over what to look for in Airspaces
- Split the hole in half at the tee, which side has more room? That side is your friend.
- Trees and even small branches mean that it’s not free airspace for your disc. Contested airspace will knock your disc down regularly. Sometimes you’ll get through, more often you won’t.
- Look for high and low. In example 1, Hole 1 the Hawk, lower is better. On the other 2 examples you need to look for higher up airspace.
Let me know what you guys think about finding airspace. Have you been doing it all along unconsciously? Let me know if it helps out your game in any way. I like to check my airspace on any hole that isn’t wide open.
May your discs miss all the trees,
Andrew Streeter #70397
Header Photo Credit: freeze_your_flight on Instagram