- European Open Week
- opendiscgolf.com
- Iceland Disc Golf
- udisc.com/blog/post/iceland-disc-golf-cold-place-hot-scene
- Junior Worlds in Tulsa, OK
Summary
In this episode of Disc Golf Daily, the host covers several news stories related to disc golf. The main topics discussed include the President's Cup, the European Open, disc golf in Iceland, and the PDGA Junior Disc Golf World Championships. The host provides updates and insights on each topic, highlighting key players, events, and trends in the disc golf community.
Keywords
disc golf, news, President's Cup, European Open, Iceland, PDGA Junior Disc Golf World Championships
Takeaways
- The President's Cup is a highly anticipated disc golf event featuring Team Europe versus Team USA.
- The European Open is a major disc golf tournament where top players compete for the championship title.
- Disc golf has gained significant popularity in Iceland, with a high participation rate among different age groups.
- Creating beginner-friendly disc golf courses alongside advanced ones can help attract and retain more players.
- The PDGA Junior Disc Golf World Championships showcase the future stars of the sport.
Chapters
00:00 The President's Cup: Team Europe vs. Team USA
01:13 The European Open: A Major Disc Golf Tournament
03:09 Disc Golf in Iceland: A Growing Sport
05:41 Creating Accessible Disc Golf Courses
08:11 PDGA Junior Disc Golf World Championships: The Future Stars
Music:
Strange Bop by
contreloup
[Music] Hello, race fans, and welcome to Disc Golf Daily. We are the podcast that gets caught up at Disc Golf News and Growth in about 10 minutes, saving you time and effort. If you want to dive deeper into any story, links, as always, are in the show notes. Anytime you share the podcast, an angel gets its wings. Our number one news story today, the President's Cup starts today. It is Wednesday. If it is morning and you're listening to this in the USA, or the afternoon and you're listening to this in Europe, turn this off right now, turn on DGN. This is the best pre-event event of the season. They've been doing it for over a dozen years and the US has never lost. Europe, Team Europe versus Team USA. The teams are set, the best players, and the fans' favorite players from each continent will meet in stroke play and match play events until one team is crowned champion. This is one event that is worth watching. Our number two news story, European Open Week. Kristen Tatar is the clear favorite to add another major to her already six titles. If anyone challenges her, then it'll be one of the more interesting story lines out of the Europe swing. You've got Silva, Hannah, Evelina, and Haiti are joined by the American women, Missy, Ella, Katmerch, and Paige Pierce. Most of the gang is back together and in just a few days we will get to see who will step up to challenge the undisputed number one player in the world for the title European Open Champion. On the men's side, Ricky Wysocki is once again solidified himself among the top three, Gannon, Ricky, and Calvin. And this is his chance to get over his seven year major drought, seven years, wow. And not only that, but he's won two of the last four events without a bogey. Here we go, Ricky. Gannon Burr became the highest rated player last Tuesday at 10.51. He's experiencing a bunch of first this week. Nate Sexton played his way into qualifying for this event with his 32nd at croquel. And Vigno Makala, podiumed at his third event on team Inova. He'd got brand new discs, and he goes and hits the podium at his third event. He knows Tampere better than most. It also wouldn't be a European Open without mentioning Paul Macbeth and Paige Pierce. Paul Macbeth, who turned 34 last week, has a rich history here, and he's pushing hard to match Ken Klimo's major win count of 18. Also, Paige Pierce returns to the course that she did not get to play last year. She's shown flashes and will be one player on the FBO side that will be fun to watch. Our number three story, Iceland Disc Golf. This one comes to us from release point, Udisk's blog, a guy named Olmersson, who recently retired led the Iceland Disc Golf Association for 20 years, overseeing a major rise in the sports popularity. When he moved there, there were no courses. In 2023, about 20% of Iceland's 380,000 people played at least one round of Disc Golf in that year. The participation rate for, get this, kids 18 to 24 years old was almost 50%, and people 25 to 34 years old was nearly 40%. Disc Golf obviously gained significant traction during the pandemic when it became one of the few activities that we are allowed to play. The surge is reflected in Udisk statistics. Listen to this, rounds played in Iceland jumped from 17,000 in 2019 to over 60,000 during the pandemic, and they have since settled in at nearly 50,000 in 2023. There was also a 250% increase in unique players using Udisk from 2019 to 2023. Iceland boasts an impressive Disc Golf infrastructure with the highest course per capita rate globally in 2022, having one course per 4,500 people. And if you listened to yesterday's podcast, you know, they got another course this past week. Anyway, this availability helped sustain the sports popularity even after other entertainment options returned after the pandemic. Despite the global pandemic boom, Iceland's well distributed Disc Golf courses kept the sport thriving. One thing Omarsen learned was that you gotta make things easy. He transformed Iceland's Disc Golf scene by learning to make courses easier, thus attracting more players. Initially, he did build the challenging courses, but those failed, ha ha ha, easy for me to say, those failed to gain popularity. Realizing that easier courses encourage participation, he created the short Klombruten course in Reykjavik, which quickly became a favorite. This success demonstrated that people are more likely to return to a sport they find accessible and enjoyable. The strategy proved effective in Acuria as well, where a new short course led to increased use of a nearby difficult course. So the easy course makes the difficult course more popular. Same thing happened at Maple Hill for anybody wondering. Now, it's standard in Iceland to install a beginner-friendly course next to an advanced one, fostering a thriving Disc Golf community. Iceland's newest Disc Golf course, Losa Fos Volga. No idea on the pronunciation of that. My apologies to everybody living in Iceland. It opened in the spring of 2024. It's an hour east of Reykjavik. It's the most well-funded course in the country. This course replaced a low-quality traditional golf course, reflecting a strategic shift to engage more people with Disc Golf. The vision was to create a destination course that would appeal to a broad range of players, not just competitive ones. The high-quality infrastructure was a traditional Disc Golf course, including raised wood-framed tee pads with benches, year-round usability and low maintenance. This course quickly gained popularity, attracting, listen to this, more visitors in its first two weeks than the traditional golf course did in all of 2023. This course's success highlights Iceland's effective strategy of creating accessible and appealing Disc Golf courses, boosting the sports popularity across diverse groups. Let's just say that. Thank you, you Disc, for the great article and for giving us the stats. If you want to grow the sport in your area and you've got a course that's really hard, go to an easier course on it or next to it. Thank you and congrats to Iceland. In our final news story of the day, Junior Worlds is underway in Tulsa, Oklahoma. More than 450 players representing 19 countries have hit the courses in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the 2024 PDGA Junior Disc Golf World Championships. The field is deep, the future is strong. Ten divisions are battling for PDGA World Championships this week throughout the Tulsa area from reigning champions, new faces and a strong international representation. It'll be a battle to the end and it's just getting started. Catch tomorrow's Superstars today on the post-produced coverage from Gatekeeper Media and ACE Run Pro, both of which will be on the PDGA's YouTube channel. Now it's time to see some PDGA growth. All right, we're gonna go over PDGA approvals, PDGA vent growth, PDGA rounds and PDGA membership. PDGA approvals, we've been trailing all year but slowly gaining so far in 2023 through July 15th. There were 178 approvals. In 2024 through July 15th, there's been 133, 25% less. Again though, we were 30% less just a couple of weeks ago. We continue to close that gap. PDGA event growth, we're actually starting to outpace 2023 where you're now one and a half percent ahead of last year's pace. However, the number of people participating at each of those PDGA events is down about 9%. So overall, we have more events with less people which arguably is better for the consumer, the player. They get more options and they're not selling out as quickly. So that's arguably a positive for the players. And the PDGA membership, this number continues to slide. It looks like we are not going to be flat. Last year we had about 137,000 members. And in 2024, I am predicting we will have 131,000 276. Let's break that down a little bit. There are currently 114,000 PDGA members. I already said the estimate for the year, the current highest PDGA number. Whoops, that number is wrong. Let's check this out real quick. See if I can get this number super fast. Current highest PDGA number is Matthew Williams from Bonnie Lake, Washington, 291597. We estimate in 2024, there will be over 22,500 new PDGA members, which is 62% of the number of new members we had in 2023. And the problem is we are not retaining members at the same rate that we used to pre-pandemic, which makes sense 'cause we've got a lot of new people and you're just not as sticky in those first couple years. Currently, PTGA retention is running at about 80%. Our target is 83%. Again, not a great week, but not a bad week for the PDGA, basically more of the same and we're probably gonna be about 4% down year over year 2023 to 2024 PDGA memberships. That does it for us today. If you have any thoughts, news or opinions, please shoot us an email, discoffdaily@aol.com. Have fun, throw 'em straight and hit the thin gap. (upbeat music) Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
