Mention any disc golf course on the planet to Kyle Harrop of Vista, California, and there's around a one-in-five chance that he's played it.
Harrop is #1 on the leaderboard for unique courses played all-time on UDisc, disc golf's most popular app for course finding, round scoring, and more. At publication, he'd logged rounds at 3,195 disc golf courses (about 20% of just over 15,000 disc golf courses in the world) in 23 countries and on four continents (he's missing South America, Africa, and Antarctica). He was ahead of second place by over 100 courses.
We reached out to Harrop to learn what sort of lifestyle and mindset allowed him to achieve his record. The jack-of-all-trades at an aerospace and defense company turned elite craft beer brewmaster who answered had many qualities we expected (e.g., a penchant for epic collections and list-keeping) and some we didn't (e.g., his unusual career path and unexpected feelings toward his #1 spot on UDisc). Below you can discover what Harrop shared with us about himself, his course collecting, and most memorable experiences from his disc golf travels.
A Life Tracked in Spreadsheets
"My whole life I feel like I've been collecting things," Harrop told us.
It's not just "things" that appeal to Harrop, however. Yes, he has a collection of 70 surfboards that includes a coveted Skip Frye he waited years for, around 350 pairs of sneakers (a modest number considering he once had closer to 800), and well over 300 hats, but he also gathers experiences.
He's visited every major league baseball stadium, all NBA arenas except the Celtics' TD Garden where a California-born Lakers fan like him is loathe to enter, all 50 states, almost 2,000 breweries, and 1,241 of the restaurants featured on the show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. And that's not an exhaustive list of his lists. You'll find that in his meticulously-maintained digital files.
"I guess I track my life in a spreadsheet is what it comes down to," Harrop said.
That habit started in his late teens and became the norm after he finished grad school.
"People get a kick out of it," Harrop said. "My wife likes the organization. She won't ever admit it, but when family of hers or friends ask, 'What should I go do?', it's one click away and they have a full itinerary."
Fourteen well-paid and travel-filled years in aerospace at Fortune 500 company Northrop Grumman allowed Harrop to quickly expand his various collections, and his last five years as a full-time brewer haven't slowed him down.
He frequently globetrots for tap takeovers and other events as well as creating beers with fellow brewmasters. One of the beer industry's most prodigious collaborators, he travels to different breweries at least once a month to create special releases with their teams. Fittingly, many of Harrop's creations are coveted by beer collectors as he brews small batches of specialty suds that have put his operation, Horus Aged Ales, among the world's top 10 microbreweries on leading beer review platform Untappd.
When Harrop's not brewing some of the world's best-rated beers or checking out culinary highlights during his trips, he's likely sampling the local disc golf courses.
Finding Disc Golf
Harrop discovered disc golf at the same time he began collecting major league baseball stadiums. Over 20 years ago at age 18, he was in Arizona to see a Diamondbacks game and his accomodation offered a view of Shelly Sharpe Memorial Disc Golf Course in Vista Del Camino Park.
"I noticed people throwing Frisbees at these metal baskets with chains in them, so I curiously went down and asked what they were doing," Harrop recalled. "They said, 'Oh, this is disc golf, and this is one of the first courses in our area,' and I got the whole history behind it."
When Harrop got back home to California, he found a disc golf course in nearby Manhattan Beach. He began playing with a base plastic starter set but soon purchased premium plastic discs at the shop Discovering the World. A baseball pitcher from his early youth through his college years, Harrop had a powerful forehand and said that today he can throw up to 475 feet/145 meters with it.
On His Record for Most Disc Golf Courses Played on UDisc
Once Harrop began working at Northrop Grumman, he had every other Friday off and built up his course collection by taking weekend disc golf trips with friends.
"But where it really started is going on trips for aerospace – Texas, all over the east coast – and playing while there," Harrop said.
Each new course he played – like nearly everything he experiences – went into one of his many spreadsheets. A fairly late adopter of UDisc, Harrop only started transferring his personal list of courses played to the app last year.
"It was a royal pain but UDisc is finally caught up with everything from the past two decades," Harrop said.
Easing course finding was his main motivation to undertake the task.
"I love the app; I use it religiously," Harrop said. "What I love about it, too, is I'll land somewhere, and I can check 'unplayed' and filter, and it'll show me everything within 100 miles [160 kilometers] if I want and then I just drive there. Literally just link up to an Apple Map and go."
Something Harrop was unaware of when he started transferring his prodigious list to UDisc was that his rapid climb up the rankings in all-time courses played would raise eyebrows among other top disc golf course collectors using the app. He only found out he was #1 when the player currently ranked #5 reached out to him.
"I didn't even really know," Harrop said, chuckling. "I didn't know how to look at it to be honest. Then udiscbanor hit me up just to reach out and get to know each other, and he told me how all that was looking. I was surprised. I know people who've been playing longer than me and a lot, but I guess not to the extent I did."
Though he thinks it's fun to be #1, Harrop claims he has "zero ego" about his position and doesn't plan to change his habits to defend it. Unlike some course collectors who take trips to areas with high concentrations of courses with the aim of quickly bringing up their tallies, Harrop puts his work first and then sees what disc golf his destinations offer.
"I'm not traveling for disc golf," Harrop asserted.
Most Memorable Experiences & Favorite Courses
When asked for the standout moments from his extensive disc golf adventures, Harrop pointed mostly to encounters with wildlife. At Alaskan courses he encountered a grizzly bear and a moose. During a round at the highly-regarded Harmony Bends, he was chased by a venomous snake when retrieving a disc from a creek bed.
"The creek didn't have much water in it at the time, but my disc was sitting in there," Harrop said. "I had just grabbed my disc and out of the corner of my eye I saw it coming at me really quick. I ran and jumped up the bank. It went all the way up the bank and to the flat ground. It was not cool at all."
A great disc golf memory not involving local fauna happened in New Zealand. A brewing collaboration put him in the country at the time of its national championships, so he decided to play in them – just his second tournament ever. Despite having no time to practice the course and essentially going straight from his plane to the event, Harrop made second round lead card along with two well-known U.S. pros, Luke Humphries and Major winner Corey Ellis. While his second round didn't go as well, he did make a putt on camera that went a bit viral in disc golf circles (when you think it's over, it's not over):
Of course, we also wanted to find out which courses of the thousands he has played stuck out to him as the best. His favorite U.S. course is Fox Run Meadows at Smugglers' Notch Resort in Vermont, one of two courses at the resort that have been among the top 10 of the World's Best Disc Golf Courses for the past two years. Other standouts in North America include Mauka Disc Golf in Hawaii – among the world's best disc golf courses at active traditional golf facilities – and Canada's top disc golf course, Hillcrest Farm.
But Harrop's favorite disc golf experience ever was at Heinola DiscGolfWorld in Heinola, Finland. Along with Kippasuo Pro, which is designed for advanced players and was the world's #2 disc golf course in 2024, it has a putting course, a kid-friendly pitch-and-putt course, and a course for intermediate players.
"I was in Helsinki, and it was their midsummer celebration, and I drove up north to play that," Harrop recalled. "Just pulling in the parking lot and seeing three courses off the bat – it's like a theme park for disc golf. I don't know how else to describe it."
Harrop's Real Goal
Given the drive some players have to collect huge numbers courses quickly, Harrop's time as UDisc's top course collector is likely limited. An example of what we mean can be found in how just last year a player recorded rounds at 939 unique disc golf courses, taking just 365 days to amass 30% of the total it took Harrop over 20 years to reach.
But, as we already know, Harrop is unconcerned about losing his #1 rank. He's much more interested in enjoying and helping disc golf and those who play it. For instance, he's created beers with elite pros like Albert Tamm (who's become a friend of Harrop's) and Gavin Rathbun and used the proceeds to donate disc golf baskets to communities building new courses.
Most of all, Harrop wants to keep enjoying the game he first fell for as a teenager.
"I'd say my goal is to play disc golf as long I can and keep my body able to do it," Harrop said.
Though he'll keep collecting courses whenever he travels, Harrop gets in most of his rounds these days at a track he's built at his home. His most frequent playing partners are his eight-year-old daughter Willow and his four-year-old son Wilder.
