This is the first instalment in Simple Pleasures, an occasional Quillette series about some of the new joys that our writers have discovered as a result of the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Writers interested in contributing may contact Quillette at [email protected].

The fourth (and final) season of NBC’s cosmic comedy The Good Place, which became available for Netflix binge-watching in late 2020, was hit-and-miss. But it delivered enough quality lines and subplots to keep many of us watching until the tear-jerker conclusion. These included a multi-episode arc centered on Brent Norwalk, a one-time privileged Princeton graduate (as he keeps reminding everyone) who demonstrates his peevish, self-absorbed nature through a bratty shtick on a celestial golf course. Golf also figures in the novel that Norwalk authors, Six Feet Under Par: A Chip Driver Mystery, which he describes as “half spy novel, half murder mystery… half submarine adventure, half erotic memoir, and half political thriller. It’s also half golf tutorial, and half commentary on society.”

But there’s another golf motif in the show—this one involving Chidi Anagonye, a former professor whose moral pronouncements guide other characters through the philosophical problems they confront in the afterlife. In episode three of this final season (Chillaxing), Chidi briefly casts off his heavy philosophical air and takes off for the golf course. Except he’s not playing regular golf. Instead, he’s off for a round of disc golf—the variant, first popularized in the 1960s, which adapts golf principles to frisbees. (In fact, “frisbee” is a misnomer, because it’s a registered trademark refering to a circular plastic toy, as opposed to the smaller, denser, more precisely contoured discs that are used by disc golfers. But everyone who doesn’t play the sport calls them frisbees, and I’ve given up correcting them.) And while this disc-golf reference represents only a fleeting part of the show’s plot, the appearance of the chillaxed disc-golfing Chidi set alongside Norwalk’s tantrums on the links does serve to nail the very real difference between golf and disc-golf cultures.

Traditional golf is expensive and time-consuming. It’s played mostly by older, wealthier individuals who drive out to some private course (assuming they don’t live in a gated, purpose-built “golf community”) and motor around in ridiculous little cars, pausing occasionally to summon a course attendant to serve them liquor and chips, while a small army of menial workers ensures that the fairways and greens have the appearance and texture of AstroTurf. Disc golf, by contrast, requires nothing more than a bunch of elevated metal baskets (these being the targets) spaced about a hundred meters apart (though often more, in the case of a challenging course), and an equal number of teepads, which, even at the high end, basically just consist of a slab of poured concrete. You can play it in a field, a desert, or a beach—even in a forest. An entire nine-hole disc-golf course can be created for as little as $3,000, or about a third the price of a single high-end golf cart. And because even a well-thrown disc typically won’t go half as far as a well-hit 1-wood (or do as much damage if it hits a person or building), disc golf courses can be easily nestled in as a shared-use amenity within campuses, public parks, campgrounds, and mountain trails.