Gatekeeper Resolutions Day 29: Learn To Throw Backhand Rollers
Day 29! Let’s hit the field with some backhand rollers. Rollers have a lot of distance potential, can shape some weird fairways, and when you know the disc right, can be trusted to finish in a particular direction. So today I have some Thrashers and some Cranks. When I do fieldwork with rollers, I’m trying to find repeatable angles with those discs, and understand how I need to land them in order to follow a particular route on the ground and get the correct finish.
The flippier a disc is, the more it will tend to get onto its back–for a righty backhand roller, that means it will be turning to the right. If you start it landing on a cut angle, it can hold that for a little longer before turning over, but that carries some additional risk in case it never gets past vertical.
Similarly, more stable discs need more help to get to vertical so that they eventually get over and finish to the right.
To throw a roller, it’s a standard backhand grip, but you’ll need to lean back and bring your arm slot upward, especially for more stable discs. But it’s still essential to keep a straight pull-through, rather than rounding. Rounding will screw up your release point and rob you of valuable spin, because as soon as the disc gets to the ground it’s battling friction.
Kind of like the thumbers and hammers we talked about a few days ago, there isn’t really a way to learn rollers without trial and error. So use good backhand mechanics, adapt them a little bit for a different release angle, and go make mistakes! You “win” the game when you begin to figure out how your discs want to act as rollers, and can trust a couple of them to follow a particular path and finish.
Written By Andrew Fish, PDGA 58320
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