I didn’t quite get the postseason feel.

September 29, 2022 by Christopher Wiklund in Analysis, Opinion with comments

The first run at a playoff system for the Disc Golf Pro Tour has come to an end with two excellent events in New England. The on-course action and wins from Ricky Wysocki, Kristin Tattar, Simon Lizotte, and Natalie Ryan were all thrilling and emotional for different reasons. Tattar cemented her status as the runaway favorite for FPO Player of the Year, Lizotte capped off his career-best regular season, and Wysocki continued to demonstrate the season long excellence at Elite Series events which he prizes so highly. Natalie Ryan continued her historic season, demonstrating her trademark skill on the course and remarkable grace off it. In a system where their wins carried actual consequences for their participation in the DGPT Tour Championship, these playoff events could count themselves as among the most exciting couple of weeks in recent disc golf memory.

But that’s not the case, is it?

All four of the winners in these playoffs had long since punched their ticket to the DGPT Tour Championship event in Charlotte, as had many of the players in both fields. Indeed, almost every consistently touring player in FPO will be in the field at the Championship. In MPO, performance in these events was crucial for a handful of players who are usually considered “middle of the pack,” at least by the standards of touring pros. These players, for whom the past two weekends DID have the sort of implications–play well or go home–were not necessarily the primary focus of the major media teams.

So what we had was, and rightfully so, tons of eyes on the highest quality of play and most compelling storylines, and very few eyes on the players for whom the term “playoffs” holds much resemblance to the generally accepted and used definition in most major US sports.

If I were to tell a new fan that it was the DGPT playoffs, they might look at the scoreboard at the end of MVP Open and see Calvin Heimburg’s name all the way at 26th, or Missy Gannon down in 15th place and reasonably draw the conclusion that they had been eliminated from championship contention. I would then have to explain the whole point series and watch their eyes glass over and steel myself for the following conversation.

“Well, why is it called the playoffs then?”

“Well the points are worth more!”

“That seems contrived, so…