🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Disc Guts & Glory

Hello and welcome. This is The Players Meeting, where I take the best disc golf ingredients from the week to make a fresh new treat for you.Email Read Time: 4 Minutes & 05 Seconds

Welcome to an off-week for the Pro Tour. You might have to spend your weekend actually playing.

Let’s get into it.

Do you have the Guts?

Back in the day (and now), disc sports were more than just Ultimate Frisbee and Disc Golf. One discipline is Guts: Two teams of 5 having a Mexican standoff 46ft apart, then each team blasts a disc at the other.

On The Nick & Matt Show, Will Walden - President of the Guts Player Association - got on to reintroduce the disc golf world to Guts. Here are the quick play rules:

• Play to 21 points, switch offense/defense turns, and use a 110g disc.

• Offense: Throw the disc with speed, movement, and accuracy so the other team can’t catch it.

• Defense: Line up finger tip to finger tip and catch the thrown disc. It can be tipped to one another.

• Misconception: It’s mostly painless, and you can wear gloves.

So if you and your buddies feel like letting out some steam, then grab a Guts disc and beam each other. But don’t forget to pound Red Bulls and get hyped, cause that’s the Guts way.

Reader Convos: In-Person vs. At-Home

Great comment on Tuesday’s money breakdown for OTB Open. Let’s talk.

This is interesting… Does the DGPT prioritize course designs that make in-person spectating better or more profitable? And as a result, does the coverage suffer from the home viewer’s perspective?

It’s almost unfair to bring this topic up during the West Coast swing. Hybrid golf courses are all the rage, and people love to critique them.

• “I can’t follow the holes. They don’t make sense.”

• “There’s so much artificial OB. Get rid of the white flagged fairways.”

• “I don’t want to see a bunch of rollers. I want live coverage in the woods.”

All these complaints are true. But what’s the point of a Pro Tour if we only get to see pros smacking trees. There should be variety to fit the viewers’ and the pros’ different preferences.

It doesn’t seem that the DGPT is choosing one over the other. Obviously, they want to grow in-person attendance while also creating a broadcast worth paying for. The sport is growing, and there will be painful changes.

At the end of the day, there was a Covid boom, and now they want to make those new players stick. Watching in-person is always the best way to watch, AND the current quality of coverage is at an all time high.

These conversations are necessary for us to “grow the sport.” So comment or hit reply, and let me know what you think.

Stat That

Cutting edge analytics by StatMando. THE disc golf stats platform.

Simon Lizotte finally won by playing “vanilla disc golf,” so StatMando dug this up:

Lizotte had a roller coaster week. 2 days after his “fluky” win at OTB Open, he shared that his Uncle Pete Lizotte passed away. Peter was a Canadian DG pioneer who is directly responsible for Quebec’s growing scene.

Even with the sad news, Lizotte shared his optimistic future on The Upshot:

• Currently filming an off-season series with Jomez like Adventures in Golf 

• Plans to move out of Boston and into warmer weather as soon as possible

• And thinks his “best years are still to come”

Random Dubs

1️⃣ Disc Golf is getting into the era of documentaries. Recently there have been several docu shorts: Brian Guice x JomezPro (Throw Canada & An Eagle’s Trail) and Disc Golf Digest.

But there are 2 full-length features coming out soon:

1. Paige Pierce’s “FIERCE” is still waiting to be picked up by an outside network

2. Dennis Warsen’s “Disc Golf: History in the Making”

Warsen is the filmmaker behind Flatball Film company. Back in 2016, he made Flatball: A History of Ultimate that was available on Netflix.

But this time around, he’s focusing on the history of disc golf leading up to the Covid boom and the “Holy Shot.” The 90min film features almost all the sport’s notable contributors and other public figures.

If you’d like to find out more or get involved, then check out their Indiegogo campaign.

2️⃣ Watch this almost too realistic depiction of a friend we all know. It’s perfect and hilarious.

Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading today. Get out and shoot for the stars this weekend!

- Charlie

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And as always, hit reply to send me your questions or comments.