Brian Shultz's sister wanted a grandfather clock that had belonged to the siblings' late grandmother. The clock was in Abilene, Texas, Shultz was in Austin, and the sister was about 1,400 miles/2,250 kilometers away from him in Los Angeles.
"Shipping companies wanted like $2,000, plus we had to build a box for it ourselves, and they wouldn't assume any liability for what happened to it in the box," Shultz said. "So I measured the back of my Prius, I measured the clock, and I was like, 'Alright, if I sit one click away from the front, all the way up by the steering wheel, I think I can fit the clock.' So I drove it out to L.A. like that with my buddy Justin in my passenger seat, and...we just played disc golf everwhere."
That road trip in March 2023, which included driving up to northern California and back down to Las Vegas, saw Shultz catch the course collecting bug. He set a goal to visit 300 new disc golf courses within the year. Though he said that number felt "absurd" even to him at the time, he'd go on to more than triple it.
His UDisc tally for the year was 939 unique courses, which included just one course with less than 18 holes, giving him the all-time highest single-year total by anyone tracking rounds with disc golf's most popular app for course-finding, scoring, and stat-keeping. He said that some of the facilities he visited offered multiple courses listed only as different layouts in UDisc, and his personal reckoning for the year puts him at 941.
To our knowledge, this isn't just a UDisc record but likely the world record for unique disc golf courses played in a year.
How & Why Did Shultz Set the World Record for Disc Golf Courses Played in a Year?
Playing over 900 disc golf courses in one year isn't possible if you're working a typical schedule. Shultz largely took the year off other than being the one-man production team for his pastor father's Sunday church broadcasts on Zoom, which he could do remotely. He lived on fairly modest compensation for that work along with ample savings, which were the product of his lucrative profession running residential wiring, living with his parents, and frugal spending habits.
"I only buy essentials: Food, gas, disc golf discs – just what I need to survive," Shultz said.
Still, the scale of Shultz's course collecting ambitions meant 2023 wasn't as carefree for him as you probably imagine.
"The entire month of October I didn't sleep in the same place two nights in a row," Shultz recalled. "I was just sleeping in my car at disc golf courses, driving, playing. Wake up at sunrise, play a disc golf course. Drive to another disc golf course, play that one. Rinse and repeat until sunset and then find a Planet Fitness, take a shower, get some food, drive to another disc golf course, go to sleep. Wake up at sunrise, play that one. And just do that every single day."
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Shultz's accomplishment is that for the first two-thirds of the year, his goal remained at 'just' 300 new disc golf courses. For reference, fewer than 0.05% of over 1 million disc golfers with UDisc have logged rounds at 300 or more courses.
By early September, he'd notched about 280 thanks to the clock odyssey, a work trip turned disc golf extravaganza in Colorado in April, playing while driving to spectate the Disc Golf Pro Tour's Portland Open in June, and an excursion to North Carolina in July. When he made plans for September to see friends in both Salt Lake City, Utah, and the country's top city for disc golf accessibility, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, he started dreaming bigger.
"My initial goal of playing 300 new courses was almost realized, and I was like, 'Man, I'm going to crush that,'" Shultz said.
Since his October was wide open, he decided to head to the northeast and work his way down the east coast during leaf season after visiting St. Paul. This leg of the journey gave him a chance to play in states he never had before and made it so he'd played disc golf in 47 of the 48 contiguous U.S. states (he got to all 48 before the end of year). It also led to the interaction that pushed him to drive his course count up to world record heights.
Shultz says he rarely strikes up conversations when he plays as he's focused on completing rounds as quickly as possible, but something possessed him to comment about how difficult a fairway was to a pair at a course in West Virginia. They chatted a bit, and it came out that one of the other players had a goal to play in all 50 states, and Shultz asked him where he'd been so far.
They started comparing notes on courses they'd visited, and one they had in common was the Ponds at Lakeshore between Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan, which is also home to a disc golf store called The Throw Shop. Always in a hurry to play more, Shultz hadn't gone to the shop, but the disc golfer he was talking to had.
"He told me the guy at the pro shop was the world record holder for the most disc golf courses played in a year: 700," Shultz said. "I just stared at him blankly and said, 'Really? You don't say.'"
Though Shultz didn't know it at the time, the "guy at the pro shop" was Ben Calhoun, who, along Gregg Hosfeld, was the first to reach 1,000 unique disc golf courses played as an all-time tally in 2008.
Shultz had been planning to continue course collecting until mid-November with an aim of reaching 600 courses, but this new information made him reset his benchmark. Once he did, he was off to the races. From October to December, he played an average of over 200 courses per month to reach his final total.
The Most Memorable Moments from Setting the World Record for Disc Golf Courses Played in a Year
Though there was quite a bit of stress and many restless nights sleeping in his car in parking lots, Shultz wouldn't have undertaken this journey without a deep love for disc golf. His passion for the sport came through when we talked to him, especially when he described the events that most stuck out in his mind.
The Unlikely Early Ace
The very first course Shultz played on his journey to L.A. with his friend Justin was Rocky Hills in Ovalo, Texas. Playing in the west Texas plains, high winds aren't uncommon, and Shultz estimates that they were sustained 30 mile-per-hour/48-kilometer-per-hour winds with gusts as high as 60 miles per hour/97 kilometers per hour when he and his pal took on Rocky Hills. On one hole he said he watched what he thought was an unflippable overstable driver turn and never come back long after leaving his hand.
But the conditions made something special happen for Justin on a short hole with an island green. When he released his throw, it didn't seem destined for greatness, but the disc somehow traveled dead straight while flying at chest level throughout its flight. Just when the duo thought the disc would get thrashed far out of bounds by the wind, it hit the base of a mound the basket was on.
"He gets an awkward flare skip, and the wind catches the disc and gently lays it in the basket," Shultz said. "The owner of the course had just come over...and he has tournaments out there a lot, and he said nobody had ever reported acing the hole."
Even though it wasn't his own hole-in-one, it's significant to Shultz that his wild 2023 journey started with such an unlikely bit of fortune.
Playing Through a Living Legend
The last contiguous state Shultz crossed off his list to reach all 48 was Florida. That's the home state of Ken Climo, the player with the most Professional Disc Golf World Championship and Major titles in history. Though Climo doesn't compete at the upper echelons anymore, he still plays disc golf regularly.
Shultz was a bit startstruck when, while playing what he knew to be one of Climo's typical haunts (Cliff Stephens Park in Clearwater, Florida), he saw the legend himself in a group ahead.
"He still throws stupid far with such low effort," Shultz said. "But, yeah, literally playing through Climo – that was kind of neat."
A Floating Prius in Moab
Moab, Utah, is a small town between the stunning National Parks of Arches and Canyonlands. Out in those red rock desert environments, you'll find Base Camp Adenture. It's among the world's best disc golf courses and most wishlisted courses in the UDisc app. When Shultz's travels took him to Utah, the course felt like a must-play – even if that meant rugged offroad driving with a front-wheel drive Prius.
To be fair, Shultz wanted to rent a more suitable vehicle, but he happened to be in Moab during Jeep Week, so there was absolutely nothing available. It meant, too, that once he decided to risk the journey with his hybrid compact, he got plenty of disbelieving looks from fellow drivers.
"I remember this one guy just shaking his head and mean mugging me," Shultz said. "I was the one idiot driving a white Prius out there, and it stood out like a sore thumb. It was monumentally stupid."
The most harrowing part of the journey came when he encountered a river that flowed across the road.
"I watched the two Jeeps ahead of me go through, and these guys have like 18 inches [46 centimeters] of ground clearance, and the bottom of their cars splash into the water," Shultz said. "I've got six to eight inches [15-20 centimeters] if that!"
Worried about the battery in his hybrid getting wet, Shultz almost turned around despite being very near the course. But then good sense kicked in.
"I weighed the pros and cons of trying to go across: 'I could lose my car, but I could play a cool disc golf course...so it seems the pros outweighs the cons here,'" Shultz said.
With one of the Jeep drivers stopped on the other side watching to see what he'd do, Shultz floored it and sent his Prius into the river. Almost immediately, he started floating downstream. There were posts in the water that seemed like they would stop him from floating endlessly down the river, but that didn't help the fact that Shultz's car was, in his words, "literally a boat."
Somehow, though, Shultz's front tires managed to catch some land on the river's opposite bank, and the car dragged itself out of the water virtually unscathed.
"If it'd been rear-wheel drive, I'd have been screwed," Shultz said.
Luckily the course met and exceeded Shultz's expectations, and he thinks going through the odyssey he did to reach it only made the experience more special.
Trying for an Official World Record
Shultz is compiling evidence to submit so that his world record will officially be recognized by Guinness. That international authority currently lists the world record for most disc golf courses played in a year as just 54. That could be due to the level of evidence they require to prove playing unique courses.
Here's what Shultz said Guinness has asked him for:
A log book including the dates, times and location of each round must be maintained throughout the attempt and this should be submitted, along with signed scorecards for each course. The scorecards must be signed by at least one playing partner and an official from the local disc golfing authorities. The official must also provide a statement stating that the participant completed each round.
"It's literally impossible to play the number of courses I did and have them all witnessed by one person and verified by a PDGA official," Shultz said. "Therefore, there is a chance they will not accept my record entirely."
But no matter what happens with the official recognition, Shultz knows the magnitude of what he did even if it "kills" him that he didn't make it to 1,000 due to battling a knee injury. He's also well aware that his experience was a privelege.
"Believe it or not, driving 58,000 miles [93,342 kilometers] in a year gives you a lot time to yourself and to think," Shultz said. "And I realized it takes someone with a very unique station in life to be able to do this – you have to have a lot of things line up for you."
Shultz also said that even if he doesn't make Guinness' book, he's planning to write one himself about his record-setting year of disc golf.
