GLENS FALLS — A professional disc golf tournament is coming to Crandall Park later this year.
The city’s Recreation Committee on Wednesday approved plans submitted by the Crandall Park Beautification Committee to host a pair of disc golf tournaments in the park for the weekend of June 12 and 13, including a Professional Disc Golf Association sanctioned tournament with nearly 80 competitors.
The tournament will coincide with the official opening of the newly constructed 18-hole disc golf course spread throughout the park.
People have been playing the course for months, but rubber tee pads and other amenities have yet to be installed. The finishing touches for the course should be completed sometime in May, said Elizabeth Little Hogan, the president of the Crandall Park Beautification Committee.
“I have to tell you, I underestimated the popularity of this,” she said.
The weekend will get underway on Saturday June 12 with a “Learn to Play” event from noon to 2 p.m., according to the plans.
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Families or household groups of four to five will be assigned a tee time and will play the first two holes of the course with an experienced disc golf player, who will show them how to play the sport.
Each group will be allowed to play either the front or back nine, and groups will be spread out to ensure social distancing. Volunteers will be on hand to help direct players and ensure there are no large gatherings.
There will be a $25 registration fee, which will include four or five discs. Families who cannot afford the registration fee can apply for financial assistance.
All participants will be required to register for the event online in advance.
Beginning at 12:30 p.m. that same day, an 18-hole recreational tournament will be held.
The tournament will be broken into separate divisions including novice, men’s and women’s, and youth.
A $35 pre-registration fee is required, which will provide participants a pack of two new discs and a coupon book to Stewart’s Shops.
Everyone would be required to sign up online in advance and mask wearing will be mandatory, according to the plans.
Participants would begin play at separate holes in order to ensure social distancing.
Prizes for the tournament will be awarded via PayPal.
On June 13, a Professional Disc Golf Association tournament will be held, with an expected 72 participants.
The tournament will include players of all skill sets from professional to beginner.
A registration fee ranging from $25 to $55 will be required, depending on the player’s ranking, according to the plans.
The tournament will consist of two rounds, and all players will be required to stay within their group.
The first round of the tournament will start at 9 a.m. and the second will begin a 1 p.m.
There are also plans to reach out to local restaurants to sell food during the event, though whether those plans would be allowed depends on the pandemic.
Members of the committee were eager to approve the plans, though Mayor Dan Hall said he has concerns about parking.
The disc golf course is adjacent to a playground in the park, and with outdoor recreation becoming increasingly popular, there’s a concern about safety.
“I’m starting to be real nervous about parking in Crandall Park,” Hall said.
Little said she shares the same concerns and will be directing all participants to park near the soccer fields and is working on applying for permits needed to temporarily close roads near the course during the tournament.
“We’re on the same page,” she said.
Chad Arnold is a reporter for The Post-Star covering the city of Glens Falls and the town and village of Lake George and Washington County government. Follow him on Twitter @ChadGArnold.
In the early 1990s, Wayne Pierce would play disc golf with his friends on the weekends in Plano, Texas, while pushing his infant daughter, Paige, around in a stroller. Once Paige grew old enough, she started throwing alongside them, with her dad dangling ice cream rewards if she made par.
As Wayne improved, eventually placing second in the amateur division of the 2002 PDGA Disc Golf World Championships, so did Paige. By age 12, she was outdriving the grown men she’d grown up learning the sport from.
“You’d always hear about the 12-year-old girl out-throwing the dudes,” recalls Eric McCabe, the 2010 men’s world champion who became a family friend after competing with Pierce’s father. “She had better form than any other person—not just lady, but any other person in the sport.”
“That really got me hooked,” Pierce said. “I realized it’s not just my dad showing me support because he loves me; I’m actually pretty good at this. These claps and cheers are genuine and not just some show of support for a young girl.”
Photo Illustration by Dan Larkin; Courtesy of Alyssa Van Lanen/PDGA
Wayne, who works as a plumber, registered her for disc golf tournaments all over Texas during the summer, when school was out and her favored sport, soccer, was out of season. He ended up selling his own collection of discs to help pay for travel costs.
“It was sort of like she was living my dream,” Wayne said. “I wanted her to be able to take advantage of her youth and say that it worked. Because she had it from the beginning … I always believed I could make her into something that even she didn’t know she could be.”
Pierce has done far more than live out her father’s dream. She’s raised the bar for disc golf competitively and financially while helping out the women who may eventually knock her off her perch. Just don’t bet on that happening anytime soon. Pierce boasts the driving distance (upwards of 500 feet) to thrive on wide-open courses, the technical ability to win in wooded environments and the accuracy to sink putts from seemingly impossible lengths. The Texan with a warm smile, aw-shucks aura and lean 5′ 5″ frame may be the most dominant athlete at any level of any type of golf—ball, disc, you name it—or perhaps even any individual sport.
As the COVID-19 shutdown forced the world to socially distance and avoid indoor gatherings, most sports were put on hold. But disc golf—played outdoors and socially distanced even in normal times—experienced unprecedented growth. Professional events were broadcast on CBS Sports and ESPN2 for the first time, filling programming vacuums left by the abrupt stoppage of nearly every sports league of note.
And though disc golf probably won’t be the only sport on the airwaves again anytime soon, its days toiling in obscurity are over. Disc golf is here to stay.
Credit: Photo Illustration by Dan Larkin; Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images (James); Gaelle Beller Studio/Getty Images (Mask)
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The first recorded instance of golf being played with flying discs occurred in 1926, when a group of Canadian kids fashioned the game of “Tin Lid Golf” around the grounds of their elementary school. But the modern movement that led to disc golf’s legitimization as a sport started in the early 1960s in various U.S. locations including the tree-lined campus of Rice University, the streets of Newport Beach, Calif., and Pendleton King Park in Augusta, Ga. Early players would target water fountains, trash cans or whatever else was deemed suitable.
The first specialized disc golf course was designed and installed in 1975 in Pasadena, Calif., by Ed Headrick, who also invented the Frisbee and the prototype for the modern disc golf “hole”—the Disc Pole Hole catching device, which consists of 10 chains hanging in a parabolic shape over an upward opening basket. Players must land discs—which are smaller, faster and more aerodynamic than Frisbees—in the basket to complete a hole. Headrick was motivated to create a standardized target in part to stifle arguments among his friends over whether someone actually had hit one of the objects in their makeshift courses.
The following year, Headrick formed the Disc Golf Association (DGA)—a company to build equipment for the sport—and later the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA), a not-for-profit that oversees the sport’s top-level competitions and generates the majority of its revenue from annual membership fees ($50 for amateurs, $75 for professionals) and event sanctioning.
For decades, disc golf was mostly regarded as a hobby for college kids and stoners working their way through a six-pack as they played. It has matured over time; however, and especially experienced incredible growth in 2020—likely partially due to its ability to be played outdoors and socially distanced. But it was also the continuation of a growth trend that occurred through the 2010s.
Nearly 50 years after the PDGA’s humble beginnings, it now boasts 150,000 members, with 70,000 of those retaining active status for tournaments—a figure that’s doubled since 2016 and is roughly an 80/20 split of amateurs to professionals. Last year alone saw the registration of more than 20,000 members, continuing a 13-year streak of record membership growth.
These numbers don’t account for casual players, who surely outnumber PDGA members and have far more courses to play on than there were just a few years ago. As of November 2020, there were 11,300 courses in the world. That’s a 66% increase from the last count performed in May 2017, when there were 6,800. Roughly 8,000 of those are in the U.S., with Finland, Canada and Sweden coming next on the list of 71 countries that host courses, which are often woven into community parks or even share space with ball golf. An average of 3.5 courses were built each day in 2020, and 70% of courses have been built in the last 10 years, according to a study published by UDisc, the official scorekeeping app used at PDGA events. The same study found 91% of courses are free to play.
“Disc golf is just so readily available for anyone to pick up,” Pierce said. “You spend $20 and you get a disc, then spend $5 to play—or a lot of courses are even free to play. You can be outside in nature for $20 and have a great time.”
The sport’s true home is in the forest, where skill is required to avoid trees that can send your saucer flying off-course. But more open, expansive courses have grown in popularity and provide a chance for the sport’s most powerful throwers to showcase impressive drives that are more easily appreciated by the layperson. While the PDGA offers course development resources, local clubs take on the responsibility of raising funds by pitching public recreation officials or private donors on the prospect of providing a cheap way for the community to get active. And those pitches have gained a lot of support in recent years.
“Our numbers have astronomically skyrocketed in every way: PDGA memberships, views on Pro Tour livestreams, disc sales,” Pierce said. “All the manufacturers had to buy more machines and go to three shifts. So they’re running shifts 24/7, and they still can’t keep up with production right now.” Indeed, a representative at Discraft, a disc golf equipment manufacturer, and one of Pierce’s sponsors, confirmed many of the company’s goods are sold out.
That increased interest in participation is translating to rising television viewership, which generates more money for competitors. In fact, 225,000 people tuned into ESPN2 for the Disc Golf Pro Tour (DGPT) Championship when it was aired on the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, making it the channel’s most-watched program of the day. The event awarded $20,000 to the winner of both the men’s and women’s competitions, the most ever awarded to a disc golfer at a single competition. The total purse was $130,400; second-place finishers netted $10,000, third place earned $5,000 and fourth place got $3,000.
With more money flowing through the sport, Pierce is set to cash in both on the course and off it. Her latest sponsorship contract with Discraft multiplied her previous salary tenfold, and she made about $500,000 in 2020 between her sponsorship contracts (which include performance bonuses and a portion of sales from their signature discs), tournament winnings and Patreon/YouTube accounts. It’s by far the largest annual earnings for a woman in the sport, and is believed to trail only Paul McBeth’s estimated $1 million pay among all disc golfers. But those two are outliers.
Courtesy of Alyssa Van Lanen/PDGA
Playing disc golf professionally usually means committing to a nomadic way of life. Many touring professionals spend nine to 10 months of the year on the road. Some live in customized, souped-up vans; others couch surf through connections in different cities, living paycheck to paycheck. Most have to take on second jobs within the scene by selling apparel out of their trunks or offering lessons. Mind you, Pierce’s van (which she’s dubbed “Vanna Kendrick”) is an impressive beast decked out with a bed, couch, fridge and closet. She enjoys the convenience of being able to wait out a rain delay in her makeshift home, along with the freedom of having an “endless backyard.” But it’s not a way of life everyone could get used to.
From the early stages of her career, Pierce has been able to make a living from her frequent purse winnings—having been the highest-earning woman on tour in six of the last eight years, usually topping out at around $30,000—and sponsorship money, which far exceeds tournament earnings for the sport’s biggest names. In 2013 she was among 12 of the world’s best players who signed endorsement deals with disc manufacturers guaranteeing them monthly salaries for the first time, along with performance bonuses and tournament purses. Pierce estimates that group would earn around $60,000 to $75,000 if they played to their potential. About 60 to 75 players now operate under similar contracts.
Tournament purses are increasing across the sport’s pro circuit, even adjusting for inflation. The DGPT was purchased in 2019 by Todd Rainwater, the son of the late Texas billionaire Richard Rainwater. The younger Rainwater, who was initially drawn to the sport by its laid-back atmosphere, injected the pro tour with cash, raised the requirements for purses and brought a renewed focus on broadcasting competitions—in addition to the breakthroughs on television last year, YouTube livestreaming for events grew more popular during the pandemic. There are now 219 men and 42 women who qualify as PDGA Premier Pros, or national tour participants, though not all of them can afford to play full-time.
That’s still a big step up from how it used to be. Until the mid-2010s, the prize money for tournaments was almost entirely the sum of its entry fees. The best players would make money from everybody else, and not much at that. Ken Climo, who won nine straight world titles in the 1990s, kept his day job as a construction worker during much of his sporting career. As a disc golfer, he never made more than $20,000 in a single season.
So, even after Pierce gained child prodigy status and played in tournaments every weekend during high school, she wasn’t sure it was possible to make a career out of her greatest passion. After graduating high school in 2009, she enrolled in nearby Collin College to study criminal investigation; an interest born out of her love for CSI. But after her freshman year indicated that path wouldn’t be all it was cracked up to be on TV, she entered the following summer unsure what she wanted to do.
McCabe, looking for a tour partner who could help out with driving, asked her to ride shotgun with him for the summer.
“We were scraping by, sleeping in cars, going stop to stop. Most of the time, I was fortunate enough where I had been doing it long enough that I had a spot in every town where I knew someone who could put us up,” said McCabe, who remembers his teenage companion blasting a lot of Justin Bieber songs on the road. “I wanted the world to meet Paige Pierce, because I knew she had something special and that everyone needed to see it.”
It didn’t take long. In her first tournament that summer, the Beaver State Fling, she placed second and lost by one stroke. Just two months later, she placed fifth at the world championships.
“She went on tour for summer, came home after three months and was No. 5 in the world,” Wayne said. “She said, ‘Dad, I don’t think I ever wanna come home. I wanna go play disc golf.’ I said, ‘Go, travel the world, do your thing.’ ”
Pierce won her first world championship the following year, in 2011, and has claimed the same trophy in every odd-numbered year since, breaking records along the way.
Pierce has won nearly half the events she’s participated in during her career, with 136 wins in 287 PDGA events. For reference, McBeth, a five-time world champion on the male circuit who’s widely considered the best male disc golfer of all time, has 131 wins in 344 events. And Pierce’s win rate has only increased since earning her first title at the Texas Women’s Championship in 2007, when she was a 16-year-old amateur. Since 2016 when she earned the first of four Player of the Year awards, she’s placed first in a staggering 92 of 148 events, good for a 62.1 winning percentage.
Three years ago Pierce set the women’s record for player rating—a metric that evaluates a player’s skill and adjusts with each competitive round—and has steadily set the bar higher on a pace to become the first woman with a 1000 player rating (she currently sits at 996, with McBeth owning the world’s best rating at 1055). If the 29-year-old takes home her sixth world championship in June, an opportunity that wasn’t afforded to her in 2020 due to the pandemic, she’ll become the first woman to do so.
“Being able to be her dad, I’m a lucky person, man,” Wayne said, his voice cracking. “She’s really humble, she’s not gonna tell you the whole story. … She’s my role model.”
“She’s definitely the greatest of all time in her division,” McCabe said. “You’ve got players like Des Reading, Elaine King, Juliana Korver—those ladies back in the day who all have multiple world titles. But they weren’t doing it against the stacked field that we have today. And she doesn’t just win, she dominates. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s not just the greatest woman of all time, but one of the best players of all time.”
Pierce has achieved her status as the most dominant disc golfer in history in relative obscurity. When she was a teenager plying her craft in Texas, there were few women peers to compete with at the youth level. Even now 7% of PDGA members are women, though the level of competition has risen as the sport has gained popularity. Still, life for even the most talented disc golfers isn’t what most athletes would consider glamorous.
Even Pierce doesn’t have the built-out team you may expect from an athlete at the top of her sport. She retains a strength coach who gives her daily workouts and guides her nutrition, sleep and mental health habits. But other than that, she’s mostly on her own. No coach specialized in her sport. No agent to negotiate contracts. No p.r. team (not that she’s needed one to build her popular YouTube channel).
Most professional athletes, even those who compete in individual sports, aren’t accustomed to going it alone in almost every aspect of their career. Many, at least for a while, were forced to during the shutdown. But disc golfers are used to running a one-person operation, which prepared them to plug along and provide a massive opportunity for their sport while the pandemic represented a roadblock for almost everybody else in athletics.
“Disc golf is small enough right now to where we are kind of our own agents, which is good and bad,” Pierce said. “It’s fun for me because it allows this creativity and genuineness in interacting with fans. I do want to somewhat continue that, but I think that as we grow, the sport is going to change. So it feels like a responsibility to sort of lead that way, where we want the sport to head and how we get there.”
A disc golf tournament will help raise funds to expand Williston’s course.
The Williston Disc Golf Club is sponsoring the tournament at Williston’s disc golf course, located at the town park on Saturday, June 5 at 9 a.m. The bracket challenge will consist of 5 rounds where players will compete to see who can be the last one standing.
“All proceeds from this event will go towards growing our home course and purchasing an addition 9 baskets,” according to the website.
All 32 slots have been filled, but there is a waiting list. Sign up at www.discgolfscene.com/tournaments/Williston_Disc_Golf_Club_Bracket_Challenge_2021.
Spectators are welcome to attend the tournament.
The Williston Disc Golf Club was started by Williston resident Dalton Mundy, who became interested in the sport after college. His father, Hal, often plays with him.
“We always compete against each other but use that competition to better ourselves,” said Hal.
The sport has been a great bonding opportunity for the father and son, but has also led to some accolades. Dalton has won five of the 16 events he’s competed in while Hal has won one of 16.
“He’s gained a lot of respect in Augusta and other areas,” said Hal of his son.
Dalton and Hal both won their divisions in The Kraken Classic at the Langley Pond Disc Golf Course in Warrenville on April 24-25,
They hope to spread their love of the sport in the Williston community by getting more people involved, including playing at the Williston disc golf course that opened two years ago.
“It’s not a very hard course but can be technical,” said Hal of the Williston course.
The course currently has nine holes, but their plan is to add nine more. The tournament will help raise some of those funds, but they also welcome donations and hole sponsors. Having 18 holes will allow them to host tournaments that are sanctioned by the Professional Disc Golf Association.
“This can bring revenue to our town,” said Hal of hosting a PDGA sanctioned tournament.
Disc golf is the number one rapidly growing sport in world right now, he said. Hal encourages other residents to give the sport a try. It’s similar to the traditional golf game, but disc golf players throw discs into baskets rather than hit balls into holes.
“This sport is great for people who aren’t athletic and have never played a sport before. It’s an individual sport, so you don’t rely on anyone else. I control the flight of the disc,” said Hal.
Fellowship is a major component of disc golf because it allows players to meet new people. It’s also a perfect sport to play in the midst of COVID since it’s an outdoor, socially-distanced sport.
The Mundys are sponsored by Lucky Disc Golf, a Las Vegas-based company. Hal is also sponsored by Chris Blume and his M&M Glass business in Barnwell. M&M Glass recently started selling disc golf equipment, including a variety of discs.
Dalton and Hal both started on the recreation level, but have worked to progress. Dalton is already up to intermediate level and could see move up to advanced, said Hal.
There are some players who compete on the professional circuit and have million dollar sponsorships, including South Carolina’s own Ricky Wysocki who is a leader in the sport. However, the Mundys are happy to compete for fun and spread their love of the game. They welcome others to give disc golf a chance.
The Williston Disc Golf Club currently has 28 registered members from all over the area, but they welcome more to join, especially Barnwell County residents. Registration is $15 and can be done online at www.discgolfscene.com/clubs/Williston_Disc_Golf_Club.
For more information about the club, call Hal Mundy at (803) 300-1256.
Carla Walker was tired of sitting inside during the coronavirus pandemic. She missed going to the gym, shopping and spending time with friends and family. Her retail job in Central Phoenix had laid her off and she had time on her hands. She wasn’t sure how to fill it.
One day while returning from buying groceries, she took a different route to avoid traffic and drove past something she had never seen before: a disc golf course.
“I remember seeing two guys throwing a Frisbee, but not to each other or to a dog,” Walker said.
She dropped off her groceries at her apartment and returned to Conocido Park in North Phoenix to walk around and watch a little longer.
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“They were throwing the Frisbees at these metal basket things on poles,” Walker said. “It looked sort of weird but I could see a bunch of other baskets around the park and figured that’s how you play the game.”
Walker did research on her phone and learned they were playing disc golf. She watched a few videos and quickly learned the rules. She even found a beginner’s set of discs online and bought them while she was still at the park.
When the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to most recreational sporting events and activities, people began looking elsewhere for exercise and competition. While many indoor sports are slowly returning, outdoor activities have seen major growth and involvement in the last year. Disc golf is one of them.
The sport is similar to traditional golf. Participants begin at a tee box or launchpad and throw their disc toward a “hole,” which is an elevated, metal basket. Each hole has a set number for par, and scoring is the same as traditional golf, where each throw equals one stroke. A round of disc golf is typically 18 holes but some courses also offer nine and 27 or more holes. Depending on how busy the course is and how quickly one plays, a round of disc golf can take anywhere from one to three hours.
In disc golf, there are different types of plastic discs that offer different flight paths and distances. The discs are categorized as distance drivers, fairway drivers, mid-range drivers and putters. Similar to traditional golf, or “ball golf” as some disc golfers call it, where a driver is used to hit a golf ball farther than a 9-iron, a distance driver disc more than likely will fly farther than a mid-range disc or putter. Within each category there are subtle differences that (Photo courtesy David Payne ) These are often noted on the disc with specific numbers. Each disc varies in price but the average disc costs $13 to $15, although some are as low as $8 or as high as $30 depending on the quality of plastic and manufacturer.
UDisc, an app for disc golfers to keep their score and statistics as well as find new courses worldwide, put together The Disc Golf Growth Report in February 2021. Fifty million rounds of disc golf were played in 2020, according to the report. That’s equivalent to more than 140,000 rounds per day and 100 rounds started every minute of the year. Also, 11.7 million rounds were scored through the UDisc app in 2020, which is three times the amount scored in 2019.
Brian Hartman, an associate professor of statistics at Brigham Young University, conducted a study with some of his students to help UDisc with its growth report.
“We had the data of how many people were scoring rounds on UDisc and wanted to find out how many more people were playing that weren’t using the app,” Hartman said. “It ended up being that for every one round scored on UDisc there were about four rounds, give or take, that were played not using the app.”
Hartman said the first time he played disc golf was 20 years ago, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that he started playing consistently. He said he began using UDisc a few years ago to score his rounds and noticed they were looking for a data analytics intern, which piqued his interest.
“I thought it would be so fun to work on disc golf data,” Hartman said. “I applied for the job and told them I’m not going to leave my faculty position but that I’d love to do some disc golf data work.”
Through the study, Hartman became an even bigger fan of disc golf and got more involved as a player.
“I played maybe two or three rounds a year in the past few years but when the pandemic hit, I really got into it and started researching about different discs and played a lot more often,” Hartman said. “I guess you can include me as part of the growth the sport has seen during the pandemic.”
Benjamin Loveallo, a member of the Desert Flyers, is among the disc golfers who like to participate in tournaments, like this one at Conocido Park. (Photo courtesy of David Payne)
Another way the growth of disc golf can be quantified is by looking at the Professional Disc Golf Association or PDGA, a membership organization dedicated to promoting and sustaining the sport of disc golf. At the end of 2020, the PDGA had 71,016 active members, up 84% from the 53,366 active members in 2019, according to the 2020 PDGA Year End Demographics Report.
Since its creation in 1975, the PDGA has seen upwards of 156,722 total members. Each member is given a specific membership number that they use in PDGA events and tournaments.
The majority of these members (61%) are in the 20-40 age range and 53% of them have a household income of under $75,000, according to the PDGA’s 2020 report. It also shows that 93% of all active PDGA members are male.
Walker said she has seen a few other women playing disc golf but isn’t concerned that it’s currently a “guy’s sport.”
“I’ve seen guys out here play worse than me and I’m just learning,” Walker said. “It doesn’t necessarily surprise me that more men play than women, but I think if more women came out and tried it they’d enjoy it.”
The number of female PDGA members grew by nearly 25% in the past year, from 3,826 women to 4,752. This doesn’t include women who play disc golf but are not members of the PDGA.
Justin Menickelli, president of the board of directors for the PDGA, said the growth seen by the association was not expected.
“When the pandemic hit, we were cautiously optimistic but overall we were nervous,” Menickelli said. “We furloughed some of the staff and postponed all our sanctioned events. We had to cancel the National Tour and World Championship and we basically had to shut down like everyone else. We were really nervous and we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Part of the process of being and staying a member of the PDGA is competing in sanctioned events and tournaments. Menickelli said he was nervous they would lose a lot of members because those events were canceled, but “the complete opposite happened.”
“It was crazy,” said Menickelli, a professor of kinesiology at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. “The membership base blew up and it felt like the numbers doubled overnight.”
Menickelli is president of the board of directors for the PDGA, a volunteer position that he has held for four years. He also has a side business where he and a few business partners help design disc golf courses for different cities or private parties looking to construct a course.
“The pandemic was hard on everyone,” he said. “But for disc golf, it was really a blessing in disguise. It brought in tons of new players, tons of eyes on the sport through social media, and tons of money to continue growing.”
As state mandates and guidelines changed, sanctioned PDGA events were rescheduled and played. One event was the Memorial Championship in Scottsdale in March 2021, where Phoenix’s Christopher Paetz won first place among amateurs with a 10-under-par score.
Paetz started playing disc golf when his high school friend introduced it to him six years ago. He recently graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in marketing. Paetz was also a member of the ASU Disc Golf Club, which is affiliated with the school but not funded by it. The club is based out of the Polytechnic campus and often uses Conocido Park as its practice course.
“Our goal each year was to raise enough money through fundraising to bring everyone in the club to College Nationals,” Paetz said.
The College Disc Golf National Championship is affiliated with the PDGA and began in 2007. It is held in different cities each year and each college club attending competes in multiple flights or teams. Paetz’s first experience at nationals was in 2019 in Appling, Georgia, home of the PDGA’s headquarters and about 30 miles northwest of Augusta, the home of traditional golf’s Masters Tournament.
“Our A team got 13th out of 36 and our B team didn’t do quite as well, which is the one I was on, but I don’t remember what place we got,” Paetz said. “I had a great time and I couldn’t wait to go back in 2020, but of course we all know what happened.”
After the 2020 championship was canceled due to the pandemic, Paetz geared up for 2021, which would be his last collegiate tournament. In April’s championship, he competed on ASU’s A team, which placed 16th of 36 teams.
On top of competing in major PDGA sanctioned events as an amateur and the College National Championship, Paetz is part of the Desert Flyers, a community of disc golfers who hold their own tournaments in the Phoenix area. He said he has noticed a new surge of participants in the community during the past year.
“I’ve seen way more people play at the courses I play at,” Paetz said. “Instead of seeing just normal park goers, the courses are packed with people playing every afternoon I’m there.”
Conocido Park is one of the courses the Desert Flyers frequently enjoy. They hold a doubles tournament league every Sunday, Monday and Wednesday at 5 p.m. and often put on weekend events there and at other local courses.
Tommy ‘Gunz’ Trujillo, one of a group of friends who founded the Desert Flyers 12 years ago, has seen disc golf grow since he started playing in 1992, but never like he has in the past year.
“People realized we could still come out here and play and be outside and keep distance from each other and that brought a ton of new players,” Trujillo said. “It didn’t matter that there was a pandemic. We all just wanted to still have fun.”
Trujillo estimates he’s seen the number of players double in the last year when it comes to the group’s Sunday, Monday and Wednesday league. In these league tournaments, players bring five dollars to play and are given random partners.
“It’s fun because a lot of the time beginners will get paired up with pros who come out and everyone has a great time,” Trujillo said. “All the money that comes in goes right back to the players who win each night.”
Trujillo said the Desert Flyers are always welcoming new members and never want to cap the number of participants.
“Every time we’re out here and we see people playing by themselves or on their own we always invite them to play with us,” Trujillo said. “We’re the coolest group of guys out here and we just want more people to learn how to play and come have as much fun as we have.”
The Desert Flyers Facebook page is a public page that boasts over 2,000 members in the greater Phoenix area. Their goal, according to the page, is to “take everyone to the next level of disc golf and continue growing the sport.”
Walker, who admitted she’s becoming a regular at Conocido Park, said she’s aware of the Desert Flyers but isn’t quite confident enough to join them.
“I’m sure I’d enjoy playing with them but I don’t think I’d do any good in their tournaments,” Walker said. “I prefer to just play for fun. That doesn’t mean I won’t join them someday though. It might be fun winning some money if I ever get good enough.”
Walker is quick to invite anyone looking for a new hobby to try disc golf.
“It’s cheap to start, easy to play and a lot of fun,” Walker said. “Plus, you get to be outside and enjoy life, which is a nice change of pace compared to those peak pandemic days stuck at home.”
Just four strokes, or shots, separate the top men and women in the top 10 of their respective classes heading into the final day of the 2021 PDGA Texas State Championships in Tyler.
Matthew Orum of Alabama who has 63 career wins, is tied with Richard Wysocki of South Carolina (who has 115 career wins) at 107.
On the women’s side, Hailey King of Wisconsin is the leader at 124 and Catrina Allen of Minnesota is second at 125
There were 500 players competing in different professional and amateur brackets. Two Rose City Golf Club members won their brackets on Saturday after a three-day tournament that started Thursday. Larry Rosemond of Canton won with a 187 and Jesse Weaver of Tyler won with a 189
As professional players were leaving the course at the 2021 PDGA Texas State Championships in Tyler, many were asked to sign autographs on discs or photos.
Eagle Wynne McMahon was stopped by Jonah Jernigan from Ben Wheeler for an autograph.
McMahon, who has won 46 tournaments and earned $179,000 in his career, was signing for a 13-year-old who wants to be just like him.
And Jernigan, an amateur, is two steps away, competing as well in the three day Professional Disc Golf Association tour event.
Tyler has 10 courses, and three are being used for the state tournament. The main course was the Dogwood Course at Lindsey Park.
Jon Jernigan said he started playing disc golf as a way to lose weight, get exercise and have fun at the Mineola club. Jonah, his son, came along to “simply go get my disc when I started throwing badly” he explained.
“Then he started to decide to throw the discs. And he started to throw them way better than the rest of us!” Jon Jenigan said. “Now, he’s a 920-rated player, which is really high for a 13-year-old. Jonah completed in the Intermediate bracket, which is by ability not age. He is one step below advanced … after advanced is the pros.”
He finished tied for fifth with a 168. The winner Clint Johnson, shot a 164.
The father-son team are also fans and started talking about McMahon again.
“He throws really far and I throw really far. He has the same game as me and he does a lot of creative shots other people won’t do. He will go over trees,” Johan Jernigan said of his disc idol.
Jon Jernigan added of McMahon, “Most guys will go to the right. He has the strength and ability to go way up over and come down. He’s probably the furthest thrower or second in the world and can throw 800 feet.”
Steven Sizemore helps run the Rose City Disc Club in Tyler. He praised the workers, volunteers, the association and the national media who helped with the tournament.
It’s a long way from Huntington Beach, but if you didn’t know better, you’d think Paul McBeth was right at home.
The five-time PDGA world champion is now also a five-time winner here — including the last three editions — at the tournament once known as the Glass Blown Open, and now, as the Dynamic Discs Open.
McBeth began his championship Saturday campaign with a statement piece. Sitting 60 feet long, and well below the pin on the 1175-foot par-5 hole 1, he connected on a huge circle 2 putt to prevent his three card mates — Calvin Heimburg, Eagle McMahon and Ricky Wysocki — from gaining a stroke.
The champ can be stingy like that.
He would go on to birdie the first four holes — and come as close as you can to birdieing the fifth — before his hot start cooled off.
But things went a little sideways after that. He lost a stroke to the card on hole 5, and another two strokes, as well as the lead, to Heimburg after making bogey on hole 6.
McBeth wasn’t pleased.
“Mentally I just need to go out there and play,” McBeth said, holding his newly acquired glass globe trophy — the DDO’s signature hardware. “I feel like I’m too nice sometimes out there. I’m just being too friendly to where I just need to go out there and attack. Especially in a situation where it’s a three-way tie and two people are within two strokes right behind. I just need to go out there and tell myself that I’m not out here for friendships, I’m here to win.”
It was an ominous message for any of his rivals who may have been hoping that, following one of his longest winless streaks in years, McBeth’s days dominating the tour may be drawing to a close.
He steadied the ship after the bogey on 6 and regained his lead by avoiding trouble as each of his card mates struggled to keep a clean scorecard through the back nine.
An errant tee shot on hole 16 opened the door to a potential two-stroke swing for Heimburg, who was three-strokes back heading into the island green. But Heimburg could not stick the landing and his drive hyzered high and wide, skipping off the top of the wooden fence that guards the rear of the island and into the water.
It was all but a formality from there.
But before McBeth could be crowned, Wysocki would go on to make one of the most memorable shots in disc golf history.
Putting from the drop zone after missing the island green, Wysocki let fly a 70-foot hyzer that sailed majestically over the water and into the heart of the chains, sending the gallery into a frenzy. Raptor-legging and fist pumping his way through the crowd, it was a fitting end to and emotional week for the two-time PDGA world champion.
“That was awesome. I’d been struggling most of the day and I wanted to save par and come in with a decent score, and I was able to do that,” Wysocki said. “I made the long putt, the crowd went crazy and I got my raptor legs out. That’s what it’s all about. It was awesome to share that experience with everybody. I think my sister threw that putt in the basket for me — it was definitely emotional.”
McBeth, Wysocki and company will have their next opportunity for a PDGA National Tour title at the Santa Cruz Masters Cup, May 28-30.
Eagle McMahon tees off on the first hole of the GoPro Mountain Games Disc Golf Tournament Sunday at Maloit Park in Minturn. McMahon is one of the top ranked disc golfers in the world.
Eagle McMahon visited the Vail area in 2015 and 2016, playing in tournaments organized by the Eagle County-based Flying Eagle Disc Society.
Since then, the Boulder resident has went on to win some of the most competitive events in the sport, playing disc golf in Europe, Australia and “pretty much every state in the U.S.,” he told the Vail Daily on Sunday.
Walking the course at Maloit Park in Minturn, McMahon said he was happy to be back.
“It was actually a deal maker for me that this was not (Professional Disc Golf Association) sanctioned, because I just wanted to come up here, play in the mountains, have some fun and just tone it down for a while,” McMahon said.
Women’s winner Erikah Weir said this year’s GoPro Mountain Games was a hot-ticket event on the disc golf calendar.
“It was a race to know when the registration is going to happen,” Weir said. “Disc golf is one of those sports that really exploded during the pandemic, so we’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth.”
Steve Klehfoth with the Flying Eagle Disc Society said that the 2021 GoPro Mountain Games tournament sold out in less than 48 hours.
Eirkah Wier prepares to tee off on the second hole of the GoPro Mountain Games Disc Golf Tournament Sunday in Maloit Park in Minturn.
Stopover before worlds
McMahon is on his way to Utah to compete in the 2021 PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships in Ogden starting June 22. He said the GoPro Mountain Games presented a perfect stopover opportunity for him.
“I’m friends with Steve Klehfoth and I saw they had this event, and I wasn’t really doing anything on the weekend anyway, so I figured perfect little stop before heading out to worlds, have some fun out here and decompress,“ McMahon said. ”The statistics (at the GoPro Mountain Games) don’t count for your overall career stats, which, it’s a good thing that we record stats, but sometimes you just kind of want to be off the record, take a deep breath and have some fun.”
McMahon was first drawn to Flying Eagle Disc Society disc golf tournaments in 2015 when he learned that the club’s annual event would be taking place on a traditional golf course or, as disc golfers call it, a “ball golf“ course.
“It was definitely cool to be playing disc golf on a ball golf course in the mountains at the time,” McMahon said. “That was the time when you weren’t seeing as many ball golf courses. But ever since then, it’s become a very normal idea, and you see if all over the country.”
Professional disc golf
With disc golf exploding in popularity, it has allowed the idea of the disc golf professional to become a reality. But that also brings the pressures of the task at hand.
“Disc golf is my job, but I got into it as a hobby, and it’s my passion,” McMahon said Sunday. “So (at the GoPro Mountain Games) I can bring it back to my roots, not worrying about it, and just playing for the love of the game. That’s kind of what brought me here.”
Local Nathan Matlack tees off during the GoPro Mountain Games Disc Golf Tournament Sunday in Minturn.
The emergence of the professional disc golfer has also brought fans. The top finishing local on the day, Nathan Matlack of Edwards, got to join McMahon’s foursome on Sunday after shooting the low round on Saturday.
“It was surreal to watch Eagle on Jomez coverage, at a huge event last weekend, and just geek out like a fan, and then be watching him sink 90 footers in my face, live, the next weekend,” Matlack said.
Matlack was able to ask McMahon questions about disc golf and specific tournament moments he has watched via streaming services in recent years.
“It was really cool to chat with him in person,” Matlack said.
Matlack finished tied for 5th in the open division, taking home $215 for the effort.
Stacie Rawnsley picked up the game in 2019 and decided to pursue pro status after she lost her job during the pandemic.
FISHERS, Ind. — Fishers native Stacie Rawnsley has always liked throwing things. She was a pitcher for the Fishers High School softball team, went on to play at the next level and also picked up ultimate frisbee in college.
Just two years ago, she turned her attention to disc golf.
“There’s just something so beautiful about flight of disc,” Rawnsley said. “Once you see one fly with like an ‘S’ shape and just see how far it can really go, you’re just so ecstatic about it. It brings so much joy to you and you don’t know why.”
Rawnsley was first introduced to the sport back in 2019 when a friend brought her to a disc golf course. She admits she was a little skeptical at first.
“I was like ‘no, disc golf is gonna be lame’ and then I got a disc to fly correctly for the first time and I just became absolutely hooked on it.”
Rawnsley picked it up quickly because of her background in softball and Frisbee. In the beginning, it was really just for fun. Then, during the pandemic in March of 2020, Rawnsley lost her job as a pet store manager in Indianapolis. That’s when she decided to take the leap and go pro.
“I had two months because you could social distance while playing disc golf. You just don’t putt into the baskets so I was able to practice a ton for the two months everyone was on lockdown, so I was like ‘why not?’”
Now a rookie on the Professional Disc Golf Association Tour, Rawnsley has spent the last few months competing in events all over the country. She travels the country solo in her Honda Element with a small camper attached to the back.
“I sleep in that and I literally just travel across the U.S. in a car and sleep wherever I want. I mean, that’s an adventure right?” she said.
It is an adventure and Rawnsley is succeeding along the way, currently ranked in the top 20 in the PDGA standings. This week, she’s competing in the Disc Golf World Championships in Ogden, Utah.
“My goal is to achieve top 30, which I think is very doable,” she said.
Rawnsley said she plans to join the tour again next year and hopefully beyond. She also says she wants to buy a bigger camper.
“I have goals to get a touring van and deck it out to live in something much more livable than my car and little pod. So yeah, I’m definitely going to be doing this long term.”
February 22, 2022 by Charlie Eisenhood in News with comments
JomezPro founder Jonathan Gomez. Photo: Alyssa Van Lanen — PDGA.
After six months of negotiations, the Disc Golf Pro Tour and JomezPro signed a contract yesterday, granting the YouTube media company rights to produce and distribute lead card MPO coverage at DGPT Elite Series events and select PDGA Majors for two years for a $500,000 fee.
“Our goal for the last few years has been to secure a multi-year deal with the Disc Golf Pro Tour,” said JomezPro founder and owner Jonathan Gomez. “And we’ve worked really hard to get to this point.”
JomezPro, which leads disc golf channels with more than 360,000 subscribers on YouTube, will produce next-day post-produced MPO lead card coverage at all DGPT Elite Series events in 2022 and 2023, along with MPO lead card coverage at PDGA Pro Worlds and the PDGA Champions Cup, both majors. They will return to the US Women’s Disc Golf Championships to provide lead card FPO coverage as well.
This is the first time that Jomez has paid a significant sum for rights to film and distribute disc golf. Recent deals with the DGPT have been focused around advertising trade; past arrangements even included the PDGA and DGPT paying Jomez to cover their events. “We always knew there would be a time when we had to put up significant investment to secure rights to MPO lead card coverage,” said Gomez, who noted that the effort that Jomez has put into elevating the profile of disc golf online helped turn the property into a valuable one.
“The terms that we agreed to with the Pro Tour was a really good middle ground for both parties,” he said. “[The rights fee] really helps us show the sport how committed we are to ensuring the growth of the sport. And in terms of the DGPT, it helps them increase purse sizes and continue to elevate their strategy as well, which is why we’re here.”
“The value generated through media, in 2022, will be put right back into event support, continued purse growth, and another record-breaking DGPT Championship payout,” said DGPT CEO Jeff Spring in a statement.
Gomez said that JomezPro now has nearly 20 employees and that this multi-year DGPT agreement makes it easier for the company to build towards a long-term media strategy and increase the quality of the product and content ideas. “Things cost more, but, fortunately, the disc golf community continues to support us in larger numbers and even just by watching videos,” he said.
The contract with the Pro Tour, who also controls media rights to select PDGA majors (but not the USDGC or European Open), also includes some advertising for the DGPT and PDGA.
The future of post-production coverage on YouTube remains uncertain. The DGPT is increasingly emphasizing its own live coverage platform, Disc Golf Network, which generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in subscription revenue. The DGPT is also working with producers GK Pro and Central Coast Disc Golf to put Silver Series post-produced content on its own YouTube channel in 2022.
“I’m actually really excited that I don’t know what it’s going to look like two years from now,” said Gomez. “…All we know is that if we continue to feed our energy and resources into it, it’s going to continue to grow.” He added that JomezPro plans to be involved in disc golf media no matter what the landscape looks like.
Jeremy “Big Jerm” Koling, Nate Sexton, and Paul Ulibarri — dubbed ‘Big Sexy Barri’ by fans — are set to return as commentators for Jomez in 2022. As for any changes to the production? “People are just going to have to wait until Friday,” said Gomez, referencing the release of the first round of Las Vegas Challenge coverage on YouTube.
Saturday, June 26, was the finale of the Disc Golf World Championships in Utah. It was also the day that Joshua Luiz’s son Clayton was born.
Clayton’s mother, Samantha Thurman, was two weeks past due when she and Luiz checked into the hospital that morning. Thurman was induced and Luiz was exclusively focused on her health and well-being. (Don’t worry, this is not one of those stories where an absent-minded father is neglecting his partner or newborn to watch DA BIG GAME.)
Clayton was born at 1:51 p.m. the new parents basked in the presence of their big boy — 10 pounds, 6 ounces! — and then mom drifted off to sleep.
So Luiz held his newborn, and yes, he put the World Championships on his phone. The games had been canceled last year because of COVID-19, and Luiz was pumped to tune in while he passed the time with Clayton.
“I really got into disc golf in the last year,” he told me Monday from McKinleyville, California, where he and Thurman live. “This is the first time I’ve been able to watch the championships live. I wasn’t planning on watching it, but the way things worked out, he was born at the perfect time and we were hanging out in the room when it happened.”
“It” is in italics for a reason. I do not follow disc golf closely, so I am partially relying on Luiz’s narration here, but I also watched the clip in question, and it is indeed one of the wildest sports scenes I’ve ever witnessed.
The world championships came down to two players: Paul McBeth, whom Luiz refers to as the Tom Brady of disc golf, and James Conrad, the underdog. On hole 18, Conrad basically had to nail a 247-foot birdie to stay alive. “It seemed like McBeth was walking away with it,” Luiz recalls. Conrad released his Hail Mary attempt. “It just floated,” Luiz says, “and the whole time it was in the air I was saying, ‘Oh no, no way!’ When it went in, I went, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ I had my son in my hands and a couple of nurses came running in asking if everything was OK.”
Or, as he texted a friend: “It was insane bro. Best worlds ever… I screamed when it went in [and] all the nurses came in thinking something was wrong.”
Nothing was wrong. Most importantly, he did not wake up Clayton or mom Thurman, who does not remember any of this.
McBeth and Conrad are playing off right now. Watch live here: https://t.co/P2hGISEaDQ pic.twitter.com/Rtqf27Vhqu
— Disc Golf Pro Tour (@DiscGolfProTour) June 27, 2021
Conrad went on to win the title. The family is back home; Thurman is doing well, and so is Clayton. Luiz would love for Clayton to give disc golf a try someday — if he’s interested in it, anyway. And even if he isn’t, his dad’s disc golf freak-out will almost certainly be brought up for years to come.
Plus, Luiz can now make an unusual, difficult-to-disprove claim: He is the first person to ever alarm hospital workers because he was yelling about a disc golf shot.
“I’m sure they didn’t quite understand the moment,” he says. “I’m just very glad I didn’t wake up mom, because she definitely would not have understood what was going on.”
A photo of Clayton Joshua Luiz, born on June 26, 2021.
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