💫 It's been a long off-season

Hello and welcome, this is The Players Meeting. The only newsletter that wishes someone would look at them like Simon does at Eagle. Happy Vday!

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TOUR COVERAGE
All-Star Weekend

PREVIEW (2/16-18)

For the All-Stars and those already in FL, the first day of school Tour starts Friday. They’re reuniting with tour families, showing off new discs, and muddying up a fresh pair of shoes.

The long off-season is finally behind us, and live coverage is days away. Here’s everything you need to know about All-Star Weekend:

Teams

Last week, the 4 captains snake-drafted their teams. For FPO, Gannon picked a bunch of “no-brainers” while Scoggins was focused on having fun.

For MPO, Heimburg went straight for veterans while Robinson loaded up on ”young guns & friends”. After the draft, McMahon was quickly swapped for Chris Dickerson on Heimburg’s team.

Format

Unlike previous years, the skills challenge (putting, accuracy, & distance) is no longer included in the team competitions. Instead, they’ll be side shows on the 1st day.

Because of that change, the Tour is bringing more pros than just the All-Stars. Big bombers like Eveliina Salonen, Eliezra Midtlyng, & DoubleG get a chance to flex their distance.

Then on Saturday, the teams will go head-to-head in doubles (best disc, stroke play). And the weekend will finish out with head-to-head singles stroke play.

Most head-to-head victories will determine the winning teams. The skills will be broadcast for free on YouTube, while the team battles will be on DGN.

Here’s a look at Saturday’s matchups:

Course

Pros will be throwing up and down Florida’s only mountain. This will be our 1st look at Paul McBeth’s & Dylan Cease’s newly purchased, improved, and opened Olympus course.

Previously known as the Gran Canyon, the McCease property has plenty of valley and top-of-the-world shots on its quarry hills. While the course has been open for weeks now, only 9 holes will be played this weekend.

Here’s Thomas Gilbert ripping across the new Hole 9. It’s a true MPO-level par 3 at 461ft.

Players to Watch

While this event is mostly for fun, it’ll give us a preview of how the course plays and how much off-season prep players did. As for showing off new plastic, Gannon Buhr, Ali Smith, & Macie Velediaz are the only All-Stars who switched sponsors.

Will Buhr be comfortable with his new discs? Will Heimburg fillet the fairways he has a decade of experience on? The season is days away.

NEWS
Early Season Changes

It wouldn’t be the start of a new season without the DGPT ruffling some feathers in pursuit of improvement. It started with the UDisc breakup and has turned into a new live media plan.

DGN is changing its prices with 3 separate tiers. Jeff Spring appeared on The Upshot with more details:

• Basic - Similar coverage level for PDGA members

• Standard - Same coverage as last year’s paying subscribers except no European Open & USDGC

• Pro - New tier that includes all coverage, ad-free 1st rounds, bonus streams, and alternate commentary feeds (think ManningCast)

• 1st rounds of DGPT events & select Majors will still air live on YouTube. JomezPro will continue operating as usual with its post-coverage

• DGN grew by 50% last year with ~50k subscribers currently (doing some quick math, subscriptions could be generating around $3.5m/year)

For those who are money-conscious and only care about watching pros chuck live, Redditor u/j-swizzler did the math for you:

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QUICK HITS
Random Triples

1️⃣ Over the weekend, the 3rd of 4 events wrapped up for the Tour Down Under. Corey Ellis was primed to continue his winning ways in New Zealand, but he dropped after 14 holes due to an overuse injury.

Instead, the local 17-year-old - Levi Stout - took down the Bottle Lake Open by 1 over Luke Humphries. In FPO, Juliana Korver strung together her 3rd win in a row by 31 strokes.

In true Down Under fashion, the pair celebrated by doing Shoeys out of Idio Syncrasy’s.

2️⃣ Most everyone agrees on the 3 main grips: power, fan, and hybrid. But what seems to change the most from person to person is thumb placement.

OTB’s “Distance Hack” series goes into finding the best grip for optimizing distance by being more “on-center“. Here’s their quick exercise on thumb placement:

• Find two discs with similar rims, domes, and feel (ideally identical)

• With them stacked, power grip both and move your thumb around

• When your grip is right, both discs stay together and you can take a few practice swings

• When it’s wrong, the discs will tend to separate and feel off-center

Generally, you’ll get a more nose-up flight with your thumb close to the center and the opposite with it closer to the rim. This information can be used to purposefully alter a flight to better fit a hole’s needs.

3️⃣ When you think of a disc golf destination, what comes to mind? Missouri for the millionaire’s Eagles Crossing? New England for Maple Hill & Smugglers’ Notch? Or the Mecca of Charlotte, NC?

Jeremy Rusco - Dynamic Discs founder - plans to cement Emporia, KS at the top of that list with his latest purchase. After finalizing ownership of its only country club, he revealed more of his intentions with Charlie Eisenhood (Ultiworld).

• The new property - Champions Landing - will be a mega venue: on-site hotel, event space, brewery, restaurant, clubhouse, pickleball

• He’ll be receiving $500k from the city and hopes to get more funding from the state. Being a tourism draw, he wants a bond to cover up to 50% of the development costs

• Eric McCabe will completely rethink the course to be purpose-built for disc golf

When all is said and done, will this be your next disc golf trip? Thanks to Rusco, Emporia is turning into Discgolftown.

Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading today. Get out and keep your putt in this week!

- Charlie