Same courses, less wind.

August 30, 2022 by Josh Mansfield in Courses with comments

Emporia, Kansas, is one of the central disc golf hubs in the United States. Awarded the “Top Small Town” for disc golf by UDisc in 2020, Emporia is home to the Dynamic Discs headquarters and the long-running DGPT event the Dynamic Discs Open (formerly the Glass Blown Open). Emporia also played host to the 2016 World Championships, where Ricky Wysocki won his first title and Valerie Jenkins won her fourth.

In an unusual twist, the tour will return to Emporia this year for the World Championships; it will probably be the last time we see a repeat of Elite Series events at the same venue.

This year’s event features two courses that are more similar to one another than those at most recent World Championships, which tend to split between open and wooded.

Emporia Country Club

Measuring 11,189 feet on the MPO side and 9,507 feet for the FPO side, Emporia Country Club has been a staple on the Elite Series since 2015. While no longer the longest course on tour, the country club track feels longer than it is due to restrictive OB that requires an equal blend of shot shaping, ground control, and elite power. The country club is also accompanied by a near constant wind that elevates the difficulty of the course significantly. While the wind is forecasted to be significantly more mild than what we saw at this year’s iteration of the Dynamic Discs Open, it will almost certainly be a factor, especially in the afternoon MPO rounds.

Course Changes

Holes 6, 7, and 17 all feature shorter pins for the FPO division, while holes 4 and 14 saw tee pads changed for the MPO field. Hole 9 has a few OB rule changes that favor the player and hole 10 has an expanded safe landing zone off to the left of the hole.

The biggest change comes with changing of hole 12’s basket, which got moved back for both divisions. The hole will stay a par 3 for MPO and 4 for FPO, but the hole is drastically different from the hole at DDO.

Signature Hole: #16

Hole 16 is not only the signature hole of Emporia Country Club but one of the most iconic holes in our sport. It features a 320’ shot with a water carry nearly the entire way. The green is a true island in the middle of the pond, and reaching it is made exponentially more difficult in the typical headwind. Even after making the island, a player’s work is only halfway…