🎰 Disc golf happens in Vegas

Hello and welcome, this is The Players Meeting. The weekly email you can rely on to recap what’s happening in disc golf. Subscribe to get it every Wednesday.

It’s finally here. The 1st DGPT stop of 2022 begins tomorrow. Disc golf is back!

Let’s get into it.

Las Vegas Challenge

With sponsorship switches, surging foreign pros, and the explosion of the sport, anticipation for this season is huge.

PREVIEW

The LVC is 4 days starting Thursday, Feb 24th through Sunday, Feb 27th. Each day the MPO and FPO will play one round rotating between Course Infinite, Course Innova, and Course Factory Store.

These are the same courses as last year but with a few changes. All are on the Wildhorse Golf Club property as they have been since 2016.

Expect to see lots of hyzers, interesting OB holes, and sometimes high winds. Players will need to average at least double digits under par to grab a podium finish.

One last thing, Paul McBeth will NOT be playing. He’s opted to delay the start of his season another week and start at the Memorial Championship. Without the 3rd member of the 1050 club, Wysocki is licking his chops for a win.

LAST YEAR RECAP

Eagle McMahon ran away with the win by 8 strokes over Calvin Heimburg & Ezra Aderhold. He averaged a 1077 rating on the weekend and capped it off with an upside down Tilt up-shot on the final hole.

His win wasn’t much of a surprise. When his mental game is in check, he can’t lose on courses where hyzers (BH or FH) can be used frequently.

But this year is a little different for McMahon… His right shoulder is injured and doesn’t plan to throw any sidearms.

He showed off his lefty BH two weeks ago at All-Stars. If a hole requires a left to right shot and is under 400ft, we’ll see if he breaks out the lefty toss.

PLAYER TO WATCH

Everyone. But seriously, it’s impossible to pick as we’re seeing so many pros for the first time this year who have storylines to watch.

So the players to watch will be the Europeans:Linus Carlsson ▪️ Albert Tamm ▪️ Øyvind Jarnes ▪️ Seppo Paju ▪️ Knut Valen Håland ▪️ Peter Lunde ▪️ Blær Örn Ásgeirsson ▪️ Silver Lätt ▪️ Kristin Tattar ▪️ Henna Blomroos ▪️ Eveliina Salonen

All have been making waves overseas and have big plans to join most of the 2022 tour. There’s a good chance at least one of them will be on the podium come tournament end.

You’ll be able to watch these players live all weekend on DGN. Or on next-day coverage from JomezPro, Gatekeeper Media, and GK Pro.

The $500k Follow Flight

JomezPro just locked in the post-production coverage rights to the MPO lead card for the 2022 and 2023 DGPT seasons. They paid the Pro Tour half a million for those rights.

Everyone says live is the future, but JomezPro thinks being THE YouTube channel for post coverage is worth it. And it gives us a peek into how much they’re making from commercials, YouTube, Patreon, and merch.

Gatekeeper Media & GK Pro join the party by taking on MPO Chase Card and FPO Lead Card coverage respectively. By paying the DGPT, they will forever own their content and the money with it.

Jeff Spring, DGPT CEO, says the fees will go towards making each event better and have larger purses. Any way you look at it, this is great news for the sport.

So is disc golf big now 👀? The real test will happen in 2024. Maybe we’ll see all coverage consolidated into one place.

Fresh Plastic

Insights by Daddy Disc Golf. SHOP THE SHACK for the latest!

👨‍🏫 Daddy’s Disc of the Week: Axiom 2.0 Eclipse Glow Envy & Proxy.Glow season is alive and well. With daylight savings still weeks away, now is the time to get out with your glow plastic.

It’s known that MVP is in the top echelon of this category. Their 2.0 Eclipse Glow plastic outshines in brightness and duration over most others.

But the one true competitor and king of glow is Kastaplast. The cult disguised as a Swedish manufacturer is now co-owned by Latitude 64°.

Kastaplast has the best plastic whether it’s baseline or premium. Their cult followers fans are worried this move is going to change their plastic quality. Latitude 64° notoriously has the worst glow plastic on the market.

We’ll see what the K1 plastic feels like later this year when they’re pumped out of their new co-owner’s factory. And don’t worry, Trilogy (Lat64°, DD, & Westside) has no plans on switching their name to Tetralogy now that they are 4 companies. Team Kastaplast confirmed on Instagram they won’t be considered part of Trilogy.

Random Triples

1. Did the disc golf bubble burst in a post-vaccination world? No. UDisc dug into their numbers to answer that question with their 2022 Disc Golf Growth Report. Spread the word. We’re going to the moon 🚀.

2. Ricky Wysocki’s Sockibomb Foundation is starting with their First Putt initiative. Grade schools that apply and get approved will receive a basket and 100 putters for gym class. If you want your kids to learn about DG in school, then nominate them here starting Feb 25th.Included in the initiative’s package will be this video on what not to do.

3. I know you’ve probably seen the clip, BUT it’s too good not to watch again. Andrew Zimmern was on Hot Ones this week and talked about his obsession with disc golf. The video has over 1.2 million views and counting.

Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading today. Stay in and watch the LVC with your buddies this weekend!

- Charlie

What'd you think of this week's edition?

• ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Ace

• ⭐⭐⭐ Birdie

• ⭐ Par