Yukon man’s love of disc golf brings girlfriend, business, world title
Sport

BY DAVID ZIZZO Comments 17
Published: November 10, 2009

After trees and a ravine swallowed attempts by other leaders, it was Joe Rotan’s turn. His lefty drive arced over highway traffic before making a sweet "hyzer” back to the right, landing feet from the pin.

Joe Rotan displays the Innova Champion Aero, the first disc designed specifically for disc golf. Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman

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Disc golf courses

→Worldwide: 3,000.

→U.S.: More than 2,300.

→Texas: More than 200.

→Oklahoma: 51.

→Tulsa: 16.

→Oklahoma City, Norman and Edmond: 3 courses each.

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"I kind of think that shot won the world championship for me,” Rotan said.

With that victory in Kansas City last summer, Rotan, 41, had made his mark in the sport disc golf, that has been his passion for more than a decade. The Yukon man claimed the advanced master’s division of the Amateur Disc Golf World Championships sponsored by the Professional Disc Golf Association.

Disc golf, once known as "Frisbee” golf, began around 1970, almost 50 years after Yale University students first began tossing inverted Frisbie Baking Co. pie tins for fun and more than 20 years after the first plastic toy "flying disc” was manufactured. Today, hundreds of thousands of people play disc golf on 3,000 courses around the world. Professionals can earn thousands of dollars a weekend, and tournament purses last year totaled $2 million.

"This sport is now growing by leaps and bounds,” Rotan said.

As a boy, Rotan was into baseball and swimming, but he remembers neighborhood kids playing Frisbee golf on a course they had made up of light poles and other objects wending through an apartment complex. In the Army stationed in Germany, Rotan and his unit would play the game indoors when the weather was bad.

Years later in Oklahoma City, Rotan tried disc golf again at Will Rogers Park, one of the first disc golf courses in the nation. But it wasn’t until he was in his late 20s in Stockton, Calif., that he began playing regularly.

Disc golf has been good to Rotan. Rotan operates Twisted Flyer, an online disc golf supply company he hopes will become his sole livelihood in a few years, allowing him to give up his package delivery job. The game also introduced Rotan to Danielle Vargas, 32, a Helotes, Texas, woman who has become his girlfriend, office manager and partner in all things disc golf.

Shy as a child, Vargas never played school sports. But eight years ago, Vargas was pushing her youngest child in a stroller at a park when she saw people playing disc golf and decided to try it. Disc golfers are nice, and it’s outdoors, she explained. And as with ball golf, she said, you’re competing mostly against yourself.

"It’s really only how I do,” she said. "I can’t blame it on anybody else.”

After Vargas and her husband split, she continued to play, but her ex gave up the sport. "I got disc golf in the divorce,” she jokes. Vargas launched a women’s league and got into tournaments, which is how she met Rotan.

Today, Vargas and Rotan are disc golf pros and play for money on the circuit. On a recent weekend, Rotan got $600 for winning a small tourney in Jasper, Ark. Manufacturers sponsor some top players, but few can earn a living at it — for now. It took centuries for ball golf to build up to multimillion-dollar tournaments, major sponsorships and superstars. Big times could be ahead for disc golf, Rotan figures.

"We’re a sport still in its infancy.”