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Photos courtesy of Tim Keith.
Tim Keith celebrates after his winning putt at the 2023 PDGA Professional Masters Disc Golf World Championship in Flagstaff, Arizona, in July 2023.
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Photos courtesy of Tim Keith.
Tim Keith stands next to a disc golf basket before competing in, and winning, the 2023 PDGA Professional Masters Disc Golf World Championship.
It’s a three-peat for Tim Keith.
The Trussville native and city parks and recreation employee recently won the 2023 PDGA Professional Masters Disc Golf World Championship for the third consecutive year.
Keith is among only a few disc golf athletes in the sport’s history to capture back-to-back-to-back championships, and he’s the first to complete the accomplishment in the Masters Division.
And, furthermore, it wasn’t even close.
Keith blew away the competition with a gaudy score of -24, seven strokes over second-place finisher Doug Williams, a professional from Hazelwood, Missouri, with 34 career wins under his belt.
Keith, who now has 93 wins since turning pro in 1994, said he felt confident about his chances of winning the championship event after finishing the first round with a score of 55, four under par.
“After the first round and I was in a three-way tie for first place, I’m like, ‘OK, I’m sitting pretty good, right where I want to be,’” he said.
In the second round, however, Keith blew the tournament wide open, with an eight-under-par score of 55, establishing a seven-stroke lead. From then on, Keith was in control, leaving the rest of the field in his wake.
“I felt great on that second day. I shot the hot round, going eight under par, and everybody else was shooting plus-two, plus-one, and a couple of guys at one-under,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. That helped, having a nice cushion to play with the rest of the week.”
Despite winning by a large margin, Keith said he had his work cut out for him as he sought his third straight world title. Now in his third year on the Masters circuit — the division for professional disc golf competitors ages 60-65 — Keith traveled to Flagstaff, Arizona, for the 2023 Masters Championship.
“That was different, being at 7,000 feet of elevation,” he said. “Thank goodness I got there a week ahead of time because I knew I was going to have to acclimate to the altitude. It took me a good four days to get used to it.”
To prepare for the altitude, Keith spent time “pounding out the miles” on his bike, building his cardiovascular endurance level to handle the five-day tournament.
Additionally, the lefty discovered that one of his preferred throwing techniques presented a problem in the thin air of the San Francisco Peaks mountain range.
“I’m left-handed, and I can throw a disc out in what they call ‘understable,’ so if I throw it out left-handed, it’ll just roll over to the left, just flip over like a paper plate,” Keith said.
The technique normally allows him to precisely drop shots, similar to an approach shot on golf. However, with the thin air, Keith said, the disc would sail for longer distances before fading to the right. Undaunted, he spent the six days of prep time learning how to play the game at 7,000 feet above sea level.
“I basically had to relearn how my discs were going to fly up there. Luckily, like I said, I was there six days ahead of time to be able to figure that out,” he said. “Basically, I was throwing all super-flippy stuff because it became stable at altitude.”
Keith became interested in flying disc sports as a teenager in the 1970s, when Ultimate, disc golf and freestyle flying disc competitions broke into the mainstream. Those sports burst from the post-1960s California subculture, and Keith said he had the style to match. “I was one of those guys,” he said. “I had the tube socks up to my knees, Converse tennis shoes, the super short shorts and the headband.”
While he was at the forefront of disc golf’s evolution, Keith can trace his interest back even further, when his father first introduced him to flying discs as a child.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the Frisbee, when my dad got us one when we were kids and he would throw it with us in the backyard,” he said. “He could make it do all kinds of tricks.”
Today, Keith sports a white beard and wardrobe choices perfect for a Grateful Dead or Phish concert, but he continues to be one of the sport’s main proponents. When not working his day job for the Trussville Parks & Recreation Department, Keith competes in professional disc golf tournaments all over the country.
He has also been active as a disc golf course designer, working on many courses throughout the area, including two disc golf courses in Trussville: the Civitan (John LeMaster) Course running through the woods and neighborhoods along Cherokee Road, and the Greg Carter Memorial Disc Golf Course on Riverbend Road. He also designed a course in Rainbow City, and consulted on courses in Clay and Inverness. “I’ve always been very competitive, so I love the thrill of competing,” he said. “I also love meeting people from all over the world. I have friends everywhere.”
Now 62, Keith says disc golf has provided him with an outlet for his competitive nature and a social network that spans the globe, and he has no intention of giving that up any time soon.
