JOHOR BARU: You toss a flying disc to a target 100m away, keeping score like in golf, and the player with the lowest score wins. That’s disc golf, or frisbee golf to some long-time enthusiasts.
And this sport is making its debut as a demonstration sport at the 2025 SEA Games in Thailand.
There is hardly any barrier to entry – all you need is a simple frisbee, a course mapped out beforehand, and lots of enthusiasm to walk from one target basket to another.
It’s a serious sport with a global governing body, the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA), formed in 1976.
Here in Malaysia, the sport is taking off and it’s not difficult to see how such a minute-to-learn-lifetime-to-master game might soon catch fire across the country.
In Johor Baru, curious passersby regularly approach players at Bukit Indah Recreational Park’s public disc golf course and others around the city; a chat and perhaps a gifted disc gets many coming back for more.
After getting bitten hard, one enthusiast moved from Singapore in 2023 to be closer to Johor Baru’s five public disc golf courses (Singapore has just one permanent public course).
Next month, Johor will host the Southeast Asia Disc Golf Championships (a B-tier pro-am event) from Jan 18-19, featuring pros such as defending champion Manabu Kajiyama of Japan, American veteran Scott Stokely, and this region’s top-ranked male and female players, 16-year-old Jean Poignee and Jenna Tan Jiaxin, 33.
The event will also mark the return of Redha Fahmi Radzuan, 32, from four years of self-exile from the sport, with dreams of playing at the SEA Games and helping make it a full medal sport in 2027 when Malaysia is the host.
Jenna, Jean and Redha are all Johor-based, which is no coincidence.
Disc golf began flourishing here when Jenna returned to her hometown Johor Baru in February 2018 with her American husband, Eric Grover, to find that there wasn’t a single public disc golf course in Malaysia.
Disc golf had brought the couple together – their first date was to a disc golf course near Jenna’s college in Ohio – and former American football pro Grover only started playing to spend more time with his father.
“I was bored, to be honest,” said Grover, 45.
“There aren’t any American football pickup games to join in Johor, and I don’t know football or badminton. The nearest disc golf course was in West Coast Park in Singapore, two hours away by bus and MRT.”
After two visits to that temporary course, the couple set up their own “pop-up” in Bukit Indah Recreational Park in May, christened Roundabout Disc Golf Course.
Grover posted an open invitation on Facebook and went to Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) to recruit students playing ultimate frisbee, a sport already big in Malaysia.
One of the students who impressed Grover was Redha, who had honed his disc craft over years of ultimate frisbee playing. By the end of 2018, the couple would hold their first informal tournament in Bukit Indah and build three other courses – only the second in Pelangi Indah remains.
Around Christmas 2018 on his fourth course, the now defunct Bale Disc Golf Course in Leisure Farm, Grover was approached by a curious 11-year-old. Armed with gifted discs and a father who shared his newfound sporting interest, Jean began playing frequently on the Bale.
The course near his home and in his backyard on portable baskets which dad Dominik bought.
Within a year, Jean’s potential became apparent to both his father and Grover, his mentor.
In 2019, Jenna and Grover found a local welder to make sturdier, more permanent baskets – paid for out of their own pocket, later accepting contributions from the growing Johor Baru community of players – and went on to build over a dozen public courses around the city with four remaining – the fifth public course was built in 2023 by a separate group of enthusiasts.
Word spread to Kuala Lumpur where some disc golf enthusiasts were already playing on their own pop-ups and Grover’s efforts in Johor Baru helped inspire the building of public courses in the capital.
Grover helped set up the Bukit Jelutong course, currently listed as closed on udisc.com, while the fast-growing KL community with informal leaders like Adeno Ong, built two in Ara Damansara and Lake Valley.
KL currently has two public disc golf courses with baskets and three other “object courses” where targets are marked out on trees with ribbons, for instance.
“If disc golf is well received at the next SEA Games, it will help turn it into a full sport for the 2027 Games in Malaysia,” said Redha, adding that friends and fellow players like KL’s Adeno Ong helped convince him to start playing again.
Redha, who is also a cleaning service owner, started training five times a week last month at the Pelangi Indah course near his home.
While Redha credits Grover with bringing him into the game and setting up courses all over Johor Baru, he appears to be heading in a different direction.
His hope of representing Malaysia at the SEA Games depend on the Malaysian Flying Disc Association (MFDA), recognised in 2015 as the national sports body overseeing all flying disc sports.
The MFDA are affiliated with the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF), the international sporting federation “responsible for world governance of flying disc (frisbee) sports”, according to their website.
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