Equipment

From the desk of Owl P. Jackson, Esq.

February 28, 2023 by Owl P. Jackson, Esq. in Opinion, Recap with comments

It’s a city built on a little bit of risk and a whole lotta luck. You arrive with high hopes and big dreams, but only a few will leave as winners. Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada! We’ve got golf carts, rangefinders, and pestiferous geese—not to mention the hazards. In my not-so-humble opinion, these are the top ten storylines of the 2023 Las Vegas Challenge.

1. Disc Golf is Back

Ten oughta do it, don’t you think?

All in all, this was quite the entertaining offseason. It began with little promise of the previous year’s fireworks (or helicopters) but ended with blockbuster deals and legal discussions. Still, it is good to have disc golf back on our variously sized screens, isn’t it? Whether you’re listening to Ian or the JoMez folks, it’s good to hear familiar voices again. And, let’s be honest—All-Stars doesn’t really count. This is where things really begin. I’m hoping for a year full of close finishes, highlight moments, and plenty of storylines! Welcome back, everyone.

2. Calvin Heimburg

The house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the house.

Calvin Heimburg was hitting putts from everywhere on Sunday. Still, it never felt like it was his tournament to win until the last four holes of the final round. Leader Kevin Jones had been playing cautious and conservative. Calvin took a more aggressive approach. In his post-round interview he said, “Being the first one on the box, I wanted to push the issue.” It always feels like there are a couple extra layers of pressure on Calvin (mostly because he is so good and so consistent). For example, he comes to mind first in the “best player without a major” conversation. Last year also brought the pressure to give a contract year performance. Now that he is set for 5 years, Calvin will be free to just play disc golf. That’s a good thing for fans…because he’s pretty darn good.

3. Catrina Allen

Smash and grab job, huh?
Slightly more complicated than that.

No Kristin. No Paige. No Val. If you didn’t pick Catrina to finish on the podium, there’s no helping you. Cat did exactly what we expected her to do, winning…

Pro disc golf is finally back!

February 15, 2023 by Justin Westfall in Preview with comments

If you’ve been anxiously awaiting the return of live disc golf these past four months, the wait is finally over! While the 2023 Elite Series does not kick off until next week, the Disc Golf Pro Tour All-Star Weekend begins this Friday in Tucson, Arizona, featuring 24 of the best players in the world. In a modified Ryder Cup format, the All-Star event pairs off 12 MPO players into two teams, and 12 FPO players into two teams. The MPO and FPO teams will compete separately in a skills competition as well as doubles and singles stroke play in order to accumulate points for their respective teams. At the end of the weekend, the MPO and FPO team with the most points take home a small paycheck, but, more importantly, bragging rights over their opponents.

The Teams

Ricky Wysocki and Paul McBeth are the team captains in MPO. In a live draft, they selected the following teams and assigned each player to one of the three skills competitions:

Catrina Allen and Ohn Scoggins are the team captains in FPO. In a live draft, they selected the following teams and assigned each player to one of the three skills competitions:

The Format

The All-Star Weekend is a three-day event, featuring a Friday skills competition, Saturday head-to-head doubles stroke play, and Sunday head-to-head singles stroke play. The teams earn points by winning each element of the head-to-head competition. There are a total of 12 points available across the three-day event.

On Friday, the skills competition features three different categories: controlled distance, shot shaping/accuracy, and putting.

Controlled Distance [1 pt]: Throw as far as you can without going out of bounds. Players will have 6 attempts to throw their furthest shot. Each player’s longest shot becomes their score, and scores for each pairing are added together. The highest combined team score wins the point.

Here are the distance matchups:

• Simon Lizotte/Kyle Klein (Team Ricky) v. Calvin Heimburg/Kevin Jones (Team Paul)
• Henna Blomroos/Jennifer Allen (Team Catrina) v. Ella Hansen/Maria Oliva (Team Ohn)

Shot Shaping/Accuracy [1 pt]: Each player gets 3 throws at 5 different stations. Players get points for each throw based on where the shot lands relative to the target. Winners are determined by most points when all 5 stations are totaled and for teams, both players’ scores are added….

Henna Blomroos, 2022 USDGC. Photo: Chad LeFevre

Improve Your Distance 

What made you fall in love with disc golf? Was it the first time that you saw someone throw a disc farther than seemed possible? Your friend took you out to the course, ripped one over 300 feet, and you thought, “Wow. I have to learn how to do that.” 

Nothing in the game is more epic or beautiful than a full S-curve slung to max distance. In this article, we provide some form tips to help you throw farther. Adding distance is often a game of taking one step back in order to move two steps forward. Be ready to scrap form elements that are working in pursuit of form elements that work better. 

The first step to throwing a great drive is being intentional about your desired flight path. Closing your eyes and ripping it as hard as you can isn’t going to add distance. Picture the line you want the disc to take from your hand to the landing zone. If you are throwing an S-curve, at what point in the flight do you want it to start turning? What angle do you need to release on to make that happen? Pick checkpoints in the sky that you want your disc to cross through on its way to your landing zone or the target. Visualize the shot that crosses through those imaginary points in the sky and then execute. 

This will also keep you honest in your assessment of how each throw went. Did you park the hole, but completely miss your line? If you visualized the shot beforehand, it will be harder to be results oriented. On the flip side, if you hit your line exactly as intended, but catch a branch that you couldn’t see from the tee, you can still take confidence knowing you threw the disc as intended. 

One of the biggest flaws in many players’ forms is throwing before they have planted the front foot. Some players try to throw and plant at the same time, essentially releasing during the wrong step of the run-up. Plant the front foot first (the right foot for right handed players), then push off the back leg, open the hips, drive with the shoulder, and rip it. 

If you try to pull the disc forward as your front foot hits the ground, you lose out on hip rotation and power from your back leg. Think about hitting the peak of your reach back at the same moment that you plant your right, front foot. 

There are many players who learn to throw fairly well and decently far…

Prodigy seeks to block Buhr from leaving endorsement contract early, wants monetary damages

February 19, 2023 by Charlie Eisenhood and Christopher Wiklund in News with comments

In a stunning development in professional disc golf, Prodigy Disc (PDI) has filed a lawsuit in US District Court against Gannon Buhr for attempting an early termination of his endorsement contract with Prodigy. The Georgia-based manufacturer’s lawsuit seeks to bar Buhr from working with or promoting a competitor, require Buhr to fulfill his Prodigy contract through the end of 2023, and also asks for Buhr to pay monetary damages to Prodigy.

The dispute appears to have developed in the past few months and swiftly accelerated into legal maneuvering earlier this year. Buhr and his mother, Michelle Nesheim (who co-signed his endorsement contract), reached out to Prodigy in November 2022 requesting that Buhr be released from his endorsement contract.

According to PDI’s own filings, PDI responded to Buhr by expressing a willingness to restructure and renegotiate Buhr’s deal. Then, on January 13th, Buhr delivered an email notice to PDI that he was invoking a 30 day clock to terminate the endorsement contract on the basis of multiple material breaches. PDI’s attorneys denied these breaches, but Buhr’s lawyers followed-up with a February 13th letter claiming that all cure attempts had failed and termination was effective immediately.

Ultiworld Disc Golf has reviewed the court filings made from PDI, which include purported copies of email communications from Buhr and his mother; at the time of publication, no substantive filings from Buhr were available for our review on the court’s website. Buhr and Nesheim declined to comment on this story; Prodigy did not respond to a request for comment.

The Alleged Contract Breaches

The dispute appears to have escalated after a January 13th email from Buhr to Prodigy management. In that email, Buhr alleged five items that he said constituted a material breach of the endorsement contract:

1. Buhr didn’t receive a PDGA Rookie of the Year commemorative disc, despite promises that he would get one.

2. Buhr did not receive regular sales reports to verify royalty payments on disc sales. “My Mom and I were told that we could see those at any time, but they had never been sent to us, even though Prodigy knew that was very important for us to have,” he…

Liz Lopez makes her return to disc golf eight years after her departure.

February 20, 2023 by Kingsley Flett in Profile with comments

Peoria, Illinois – August 2015.

After shooting an uncharacteristic 13-over-par 70 in the opening round of the 2015 Ledgestone Insurance Open, Liz Lopez recorded a DNF for the first time in her nine-year career. She left for her Texas home that night, bringing eight years on tour to an abrupt end.

Aside from a few social rounds and a couple of local tournaments in 2017, she barely touched a disc for seven years. She was so removed from the game that when a group of work colleagues took up disc golf and invited her along for a round, none of them knew she had played.
When she walked around the course with Maria Oliva in the Portland Open last year, another member of the card asked, “so have you played before?”

Lopez is returning to the game though, as an analyst for the Disc Golf Network. The new show is called Tournament Central, which will air before the start of play, between rounds, and after the close of play for most of this year’s major tournaments. We caught up for a chat recently and talked about what Disc Golf has meant to her, why she left the game, what she has been up to in the ensuing years, and the contribution she hopes to make.

Kingsley Flett, Ultiworld: So why did you leave the game so suddenly?

Liz Lopez: At Ledgestone it really came to a head. Halfway through that first round I was barely able to hold the disc, let alone control it. I’d been experiencing some extreme anxiety in many of the events leading up to it. The feeling of excitement to play tournaments had been replaced by fear. I promised myself that was the last time I was going to feel like that.

I just had this intense feeling like this was no longer where I needed to be. It wasn’t so much that life in those days for a touring pro was hard, although it certainly was. It was more the loss of independence that came with that existence. Always having to rely on others in some way: for rides, to split gas money, or for somewhere to sleep. But none of that would have mattered if I’d felt I was reaching my potential. I’d left college in the second year, at 20, to go on the tour and at 28 I felt that I didn’t have much to show for it. I felt like there was more to me than just “disc golfer.” I didn’t…

OCHS grad helps get course at Amanda’s Field in Upper Township

PETERSBURG — “It’s like hiking in the woods and throwing a disc while doing it,” Chris Scott said of disc golf, a growing sport in the region and around the nation.

Upper Township installed a course last summer at Amanda’s Field, where Scott and others play casually or as part of an informal league that meets monthly. He called it a passive sport that is good for people of all ages and skill levels.

“That’s the beauty of disc golf — there’s no age limit or requirement,” Scott said, noting one of his friends brings his 5-year-old son along to throw discs when they play.

He also said one of the people who “helped get the ball rolling at Amanda’s Field,” Stephanie Marx, is in her 50s or 60s and plays regularly.

“It’s all about playing to your personal best, not as much about being competitive,” Scott said.

On President’s Day, Scott was with daughter Penelope, a week shy of turning 4 years old, as he practiced on the Upper Township course. Penelope, while holding her Elmo doll, did some practicing herself, albeit from about a foot away from the basket.

The game is played like standard golf in that players start at a tee and take turns until reaching their goal. In disc golf, it’s a basket beneath hanging chains that work to stop the disc instead of a 4.25-inch-wide hole in the ground.

Andrew Vesay of Upper Township was at the course as well Monday with his 9-year-old daughter Charley and her friend, Evelyn Melli, whom, Charley happily pointed out, shares her birthday and is in the same fourth-grade class at Upper Township Elementary School.

Vesay said they’ve been playing at the course since it opened. “We love it,” he said. “It lets you get outside and get some fresh air and exercise. It makes good use of the park.”

Asked what she liked about the sport, Charley agreed with her dad that it is fun to throw the discs and to run around with her friend.

“I just like the adventure of it,” Evelyn added as she and Charley giggled.

Although the little girls seemed to have just as much fun throwing the discs randomly as they walked toward the next hole, those who do it competitively take turns using one of four types of throwing disc — distance driver, fairway driver, midrange and putter.

Scott said a round can be played with as few as a single disc but noted he carries more.

“In my bag…

The 2023 Elite Series debuts in Las Vegas

February 23, 2023 by Justin Westfall in Preview with comments

The 2023 Disc Golf Pro Tour season is finally upon us as the Elite Series kicks off this Thursday in Las Vegas, Nevada for the third consecutive year. After yet another offseason of big sponsorship changes, plenty of old faces like Simon Lizotte and Paige Shue will be throwing new plastic competitively for the first time. Notably absent this week are the 2022 Players of the Year as Ricky Wysocki rehabs a wrist injury and Kristin Tattar will wait for the Texas swing to make her season debut.

In the past, players have taken issue with having to practice three separate courses for this event. While all three courses will be featured this weekend, each division will only need to practice and play two of them this time around. Any players who were hoping to escape winter weather for sunny Las Vegas however will be disappointed to see rain, heavy winds and near freezing temperatures in the forecast.

Past Winners

• 2022 DGPT Drew Gibson, Catrina Allen
• 2021 DGPT Eagle McMahon, Paige Pierce
• 2020 A-Tier Nate Sexton, Catrina Allen
• 2019 NT Calvin Heimburg, Paige Bjerkaas (Shue)
• 2018 NT Eagle McMahon, Paige Pierce
• 2017 NT Ricky Wysocki, Paige Pierce
• 2016 A-Tier Philo Brathwaite, Jessica Weese
• 2015 A-Tier Paul McBeth, Paige Pierce
• 2014 A-Tier Nikko Locastro, Catrina Allen
• 2013 A-Tier Dave Feldberg, Catrina Allen
• 2012 A-Tier Nikko Locastro, Valarie Jenkins

Five Things We’ll Be Watching

1. After taking most of the 2022 season off to rehab his throwing shoulder, Eagle McMahon is finally back on tour. Aside from his long-term health, the question on everyone’s mind is will he return to the power sidearm, or continue throwing only backhand shots. In his first four career starts at the Las Vegas Challenge, McMahon never finished worse than 3rd and earned two dominant wins. His hyzer sidearm played a major role in those wins, and it would certainly benefit Eagle to have it available to him this weekend. It’s worth noting that McMahon won the Challenge at Goat Hill earlier this month without throwing a single sidearm. Even if the forehand is in play, he’s certainly taking load management into consideration. Of course Eagle won the 2022 European Open and averaged the highest event rating in PDGA major history while only throwing backhands. Regardless of whether he…

Could 2023 be the year of Catrina Allen?

February 24, 2023 by Matt Thompson in Profile with comments

2022 was the year of Kristin Tattar. She was dominant on the course, with an average finish (1.58) that belies the fact that she was playing against the strongest FPO field ever. She even ranked as the most popular player in Ultiworld Disc Golf’s fan survey. If there was a disc golf competition to be won, there was no safer bet in 2022. For most of the season, particularly the first half, the story of the FPO season was Paige v. Kristin. This was bolstered by Pierce tying the all time major victory number of Valarie Jenkins-Doss with her victory at Champions Cup, and claiming the record outright at the European Open. Pierce won two majors to Tattar’s one, but failed to win in her final eight tournaments, finishing the season with an average finish of 5.32. Head to head, with the notable exception of the final hole of Champions Cup, Tattar looked like the more complete player in 2022, going 8-3-1 against Pierce, taking a total of 93 less strokes over the course of those events. With her trademark openness, Pierce herself admitted in the latter half of the season she was not playing like a top player.

Going into the 2023 season, the Pierce and Tattar rivalry will probably be once again a prominent storyline. But I have an alternative matchup to offer. There is another player who, the same as Pierce, won three events Tattar played in, and gave up 36 strokes in their overall head to head matchup, considerably fewer than Pierce. They went down to the wire at the Dynamic Discs Open, with Tattar taking it down by one stroke, and at Throw Pink Tattar fell by three strokes. Tattar’s other unspoken rival is Catrina Allen. Allen’s average finish for 2022 was 5.2 and she had a much shorter-lived rough patch during her tour than Pierce, putting together an altogether consistent effort for the season, and finished strong with the win at Throw Pink.

There are a number of reasons Allen flies under the radar, with the most obvious simply being longevity. She’s been playing at a high level for a long time and she’s one of the older players on tour, having picked up the game as an adult. She won her first World Championship in the famed Portland Worlds of 2014, and did not win her second World Championship until 2021, where…

The 2023 DGPT Season Begins

After a long winter of waiting in anticipation, the 2023 Disc Golf Pro Tour (DGPT) season is finally here. Team Innova is thrilled to start our year off with a big win. Star Team member Calvin Heimburg took first place at last weekend’s 2023 Las Vegas Challenge presented by Innova, the first DGPT Elite Series event of the year. Calvin fought back from a three stroke deficit in the final round, ultimately taking down runner-up, Kevin Jones, on hole 18. 

We had five FPO players finish in the top 10, showing that Innova’s women are going to be a force in 2023. As the first event of the season, LVC is the first opportunity for players’ to show that they plan to bring their A-game this year. Last weekend, Team Innova made that statement loud and clear. 

Aggressive Game Plan Leads Vinny to Victory

After a slow start in round one, Calvin Heimburg strung together three scorching rounds of disc golf, recovering a 5 stroke deficit and jumping 23 spots up the leaderboard into first place. He played aggressively and confidently, earning his strokes with bold plays where others laid up. 

Calvin charged his way to the win on the final day, draining four C2 putts on the front nine. He refused to give the leaders any breathing room. Through all that fighting, Heimburg still went into the back nine down three strokes to Kevin Jones.

“You can’t really play conservatively and win events anymore” -Calvin Heimburg

Jones had a conservative game plan for the difficult, OB-laden back nine of the Innova Course at Wildhorse – and Calvin took advantage. Throwing daring, perfectly-executed lines where Jones laid up, Calvin forced a tie going into hole 18. Calvin threw first on 18, stuck the landing zone, shifted the pressure to Kevin Jones, and walked away the two-time LVC Champion.

For the weekend, Calvin Heimburg led the field in Birdie Percentage, was 2nd in Fairway Hits, and 3rd in Strokes Gained Tee to Green. This was the first time Calvin recovered a 3 stroke deficit or more after any round and went on to win an Elite Series event. With this smoking hot start to the season, Calvin looks determined to show what he is made of in 2023. 

Hats off to Kevin Jones, who finished in second place at the 2023 LVC. He competed at a level any player would be proud of. 

Innova’s Women are Ready for 2023

For the FPO, Team Innova set the tone…