Vibrant swirls and brand-new plastics excite the disc golf world each spring.
Discraft’s Tour Series release is highly anticipated as both a celebration of the best players on Team Discraft, but also as a first-hand look at highly sought after molds in a groundbreaking plastic blend.
The tour series program is an industry-wide marketing strategy to promote players and their brands to the disc golf world, bringing unique stamps and designs onto the face of popular molds. This process builds name recognition and helps put extra money in players’ pockets.
Discraft has led the charge on the tour series front by hyping up each annual release and further encouraging consumers through visual appeal. Not only do Discraft’s tour series discs have inspiring stamps and high-profile player’s names on them, but the plastic itself looks beautiful. Each year it’s different, but each year the World Leader in Disc Sports knocks it out of the park.
The 2024 release features 12 molds in Jawbreaker Z Flx plastic and can be found at shopledgestone.com.
The original Jawbreaker Z blend was released exclusively through limited runs at Discraft-sponsored DGPT events in 2023, infusing colorful Jawbreaker flecks into standard Z plastic. The blend is less stiff than standard Z with more give and a tackier grip.
But the 2024 tour series discs feature an added Flx infusion into that exclusive blend from 2023. In the Jawbreaker Z Flx plastic, this year’s tour series discs have even more flexibility. They don’t have the same ultra-gummy feel of some previous Z Flx runs, but there is definitely some added give in the hand to pair with a stiff rim.
The grip is far more tacky than standard Z, giving players more confidence and increased spin. The flight is very similar to standard Z, with most molds flying on the more overstable end of the spectrum compared to other plastics.
The 2024 releases feature a 2-foil double stamp. Each disc advertises its Team Discraft representative’s last name in large bold font across the middle. A smaller font denotes the player’s first name above and a smaller block of text reads “2024 Tour Series” below. A ring of aesthetic dots encircles the outer edge of each design.
This continues a string of annual releases that dramatically differentiate from each previous year. Discraft first began rolling out tour series fundraiser discs for their elite team in 2017.
The 2017 release featured standard Z molds with an adjusted stock stamp. The words “Tour Series” were placed in small print just above the “Z” logo at the bottom and the athlete’s signature was printed on the top quarter of the stamp of each respective mold.
In 2018, Discraft debuted a custom stamp built around each mold’s emboldened stock text. Added to it were a shadowed and bolded player signature below the mold name, a small rendition of the mold’s Big Z art above the main text, the words “Tour Series” on the right, and the name of the brand-new plastic type on the left: Swirl Glo ESP.
Plastic experimentation continued into 2019 when Discraft produced a beautiful, 8-point ESP Swirl blend. This means there are eight distinct swirling arms within the plastic. This run of tour series was further differentiated by a custom bottom stamp, leaving a clean, visually appealing flight plate.
In 2020, Discraft debuted its Tour Series Z-Swirl plastic blend. Cloudy swirls fill out the vibrant colors of the translucent Z plastic in an 8-point pattern. These discs have an added tackiness, similar to ESP, but with standard Z’s durability. Large bubble font spells out the last name of each Team Discraft player’s respective mold across the face of the disc in the 2020 run.
The 2021 release introduced Metallic Z plastic to the world. Standard Z got an extra pearly sheen which allows this run to shimmer in the sunlight. These tour series discs feature each player’s full name in a lopsided perspective shift of outlined block font. Each player’s signature graces the bottom of their respective stamp in addition to the standard Big Z artwork for that particular mold.
In 2022 Discraft tweaked their swirling technique, releasing a new round of 3-point ESP Swirl plastic. At the time, these were some of the swirliest discs ever produced at the factory. The stamp displayed the name of each mold proudly across the face of the disc in a shadowed retro font with an 80s theme backdrop. Each player has their name in smaller font at the bottom of their respective disc’s stamp.
The most recent tour series release from 2023 came in a limited edition swirly run of ESP plastic, but they are made extra special by the bottom stamp with custom artwork. Each design is fully customized to the name of the mold, and the player it represents, to give this run a true uniqueness.
