Some surprising stats!

May 24, 2022 by Justin Westfall in Analysis with comments

The Disc Golf Pro Tour returned to action this past weekend in Stockton, California, for the OTB Open. This event gave players one last chance to move up the leaderboard into the top-16 and qualify for the Match Play Championship next month, and there was plenty of movement on the bubble in both MPO and FPO.

Paige Pierce got out to an early lead which she extended to nine strokes going into the final round. While Pierce has never lost an Elite Series event when leading by five strokes or more, Natalie Ryan caught up with three holes to play before ultimately falling short after a mistake on hole 17. Meanwhile in the MPO, Simon Lizotte took a lead in the second round and, despite leading by only one stroke, never relinquished it. He was able to close out his first ES win in over four years with fairly little stress.

Simon Lizotte

One year ago, Simon surprisingly took home a top-15 finish at the OTB Open in his first event back from injury. It’s safe to say Simon has fully returned to form, and everything seemed to be going his way, starting off with a nearly 200 foot eagle on hole 4. Lizotte led in strokes gained tee to green, C1 in regulation, and birdie percentage while taking just six bogey strokes. He also kept his OB strokes to a minimum with five, good for 13th best. While he finished just 28th in strokes gained putting, Simon made 100% from C1 on the final day and overall put up good numbers on the green. The win also propelled Simon to 12th place in the points standings, which qualifies him to play in the Match Play Championship. It had been 1,541 days since Lizotte’s first win on the Disc Golf Pro Tour, the longest stretch for any player between their first and second win.

Calvin Heimburg

Calvin finished one stroke back of Simon in each of the first two rounds, and those would ultimately be the deciding strokes. Aside from a few too many missed putts in C1, Heimburg played very well matching Lizotte’s birdie rate, leading the field in C2 in regulation and only missing three fairways the entire weekend. He also went 11-of-27 putting from C2, including four putts that are credited at 55 feet or longer. While Heimburg found C2 in regulation more often than anybody he was only 9th best getting to C1 in regulation, which made chasing down Simon just a bit too…