Scott Stokely: Growing Up Disc Golf

Before he was a national disc golf champion, Scott Stokely was a latch-key kid, a troubled teen, an arrogant punk. Before his entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, he was a black-market dealer, an addict, a fugitive from justice. Scott would become a devoted teacher, a dedicated advocate, a team leader, and one of the toughest competitors in the history of disc golf. But first, he would have to grow up.

The story begins in 1976, when a seven-year-old Scott discovers the world’s only disc golf course, Oak Grove Park in Pasadena, California. There he quickly falls in love with the sport and becomes a junior member of the world’s first disc golf club, the Oak Grove Gophers. Soon he begins to compete. Over the next 25 turbulent years, the one constant in Scott’s life will be disc golf, as his career develops from child prodigy into a decade-long successful professional disc golf tour.

During those years, the sport of disc golf will itself come of age, growing from obscure infancy through adolescent growth pains to respectable adulthood. See this history through the eyes of a man who lived it, beginning with the early “Wild West” highlights all the way through its establishment as a professional sport. Scott’s story covers decades of stars, legends, and misfits of the frisbee family, hundreds of tournaments, and tens of thousands of miles as he tells about his highs and lows, successes and failures, and every aspect of life on the disc golf tour.