Disc golf is a great way to kill an afternoon and the Morley Field course is a great place to do it. A round costs only $2 on the weekdays; $2.50 on weekends, not counting Frisbee rentals.

The setting is natural and bucolic and the sport attracts an interesting blend of families, people who work at night and science geeks who use physics to determine the best way to make a shot.

If you’re planning on checking it out, here are a few tips and observations.

Tip No. 1: This sport is great for obsessive types. The first thing that surprises first-timers (beside the fact that such a sport exists) is the level of seriousness approached by the fanatics.

You’d think that you only need one Frisbee to play and, in fact, that works fine for most people. But once you get hooked on the sport, you start trying to get an edge – and that means buying discs for very particular purposes. You can get drivers, putters, Frisbees that go to the left, Frisbees that go to the right, even rollers for holes that are hard to reach by air.

Tip No. 2: If this is your first time, expect a lot of friendly faces who will be offering unsolicited advice on how to throw a disc, especially if you do it badly. The easiest way to beat the learning curve is to pretend the disc is the rip chord of an outboard motor. Pull the disk across your chest while making sure it’s level (Otherwise, it will curve too far left or right.)

If your nipples hurt, you’re doing it right. This brings up the next point.

Tip No. 3: Frisbee golf is best as an activity for guys. I’ve seen lots of guys fall in love with the sport the first day and decide they want to share it with their sweetie. Nice thought, but 90 percent of the time it’s a bad idea.

Generally, women don’t like ripping things across their tits (with good reason), so first time Frisbee females tend to throw it up in the air and it goes ten feet instead of 100 yards.

Plus, if you’ve read John Gray, you know that women look at any suggestions on improving performance as harsh criticism and get angry or hurt feelings. This isn’t good if you were planning on a post-disc shagging session.

Tip No. 4: Bring a cooler with cans of beer, not bottles. Disc golf is a beer drinker’s dream sport but bottles aren’t allowed on the course. That’s a shame because if you get a disc stuck in a tree (and you will) a glass bottle has more weight and is more aerodynamic than an aluminum can.

Tip No. 5: Behold the shoe tree, San Diego’s equivalent to the Eiffel Tower, Coliseum and Sydney Opera House. It’s located at Hole No. 2 and, true to its name, is a tree covered with tennis shoes of all types from branch to branch.

The bizarre branch decorations have been around since the early 1980s and were originally added to prevent city officials from chopping down the tree because, according to course pro Snapper Pierson, ``It was considered critical to the design of hole two.’’

After a newspaper article about the shoe tree appeared, Pierson says it became a quirky tourist attraction for Frisbee freaks from all over the world and inspired similar shoe trees at disc golf courses around the country.

Despite the number of vintage sneakers, Pierson says visitors to the tennis shoe tree are more likely to leave their own shoes rather than taking the ones already on the branches.

Tip No. 6: Let better players or smaller groups play through. On weekends and late in the day, the course gets pretty crowded. This can actually be okay if you’re looking for an excuse to kill some time.

There are a lot of cool people at the course and some of the most creative business meetings I’ve had have been while sitting at, say, Hole 3, waiting for the group before me to shoot.

However, sometimes, there are players by themselves who want to run through the course as quickly as possible. Let them go. If you see a bunch of first timers, ask to go before them. They won’t mind because it will mean one less person making fun of their lame play.

If you are with one or two people and run into a couple of others at the same level, invite them to share the tee. You can meet some cool people and, occasionally, make good contacts.

I know of a few rock bands that formed in this manner, as well as other people who made connections on the course that helped them in real life.

Tip No. 7: All of the 19 holes have their cult followers but certain ones stick out for various reasons. Obviously, Hole 2 has its shoe tree but some people like Hole 5 because it’s on a hill facing the sea breeze and allows for some nice long throws.

I like Hole 8, which is called the Wu Wei hole. It’s dedicated to a deceased disc golfer who loved the hole and liked yelling ``Wu Wei,’’ a Chinese phrase that means “to let go and flow effortlessly.”

You’re supposed to yell ``Wu Wei’’ when you throw but I seem to be the only one who does it, so I stopped. The hole is also significant because it’s close to a residential area and attracts its share of weird things.

For example, male prostitutes have been known to ply their wares there and underneath one of the tees, a friend of mine buried his pet iguana. Presumably, the lizard was a disc golf fan.

Hole 17 has fans because it’s a tight grove of trees and a player has to have the eye of a Jedi to throw it straight through without hitting a branch.

But the most popular hole is without a doubt Hole 11. It’s an isolated part of the course that is protected by trees and, thus, is favored by pot smoking disc golfers. There’s usually a line there but the players don’t seem to mind waiting. Some people who visit regularly don’t even bother to bring a disc.

David Moye is a fifth generation resident of San Diego county and has the same birthday as Reggie Bush--but none of the athletic ability.

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