[upbeat music] - Hello, race fans and welcome to Disc Golf Daily. We are the podcast that gets you caught up with Disc Golf News and growth in about 10 minutes, saving you time and effort. If you wanna dive deeper into any story, links are always in the show notes. Today we hit on our United Rankings and course growth, but first the news. Stats from the world of Disc Golfs after the Des Moines Challenge. In MPO, this comes from Stapp Mando. MPO, there are four players that have four or more Elite Series wins in one season. Namely, Paul McBath, Ricky Wysocki, Eagle McMahon, Simon Lazat, we know all of those. We now have a new one. Congrats, Anthony Barella for joining that Elite list. Barella went 31 of 33 putting from C1X. He carded just one bogey on the week and averaged a 10-67 event rating. Meanwhile, on the women's side, Emily Weatherman wins the Des Moines Challenge from the Chase Card. It's her first career Elite Series win. More on that later in the show. Weatherman led the field and OB rate, shot a 10-26 rated final round, and averaged a 1,005 event rating, both of which are career highs. For some context, Heather Emily Weatherman played 137 FPO rated rounds from 2019 season through the Des Moines Challenge. She had zero 1,000 rated rounds. At the Des Moines Challenge, she then shot back-to-back 1,000 rated rounds to win her first Elite Series event. We all saw this coming. It was just a matter of time. She is 18 years old and she has her first Elite Series win. Also, interesting, thank you, Stap Mando. Emily Weatherman is the fifth first time FPO major or Elite Series winner this season. The previous record, so there's been five this year. The previous record, two. Thank you to Onick and Sten, Ella Hanson, Holland Handley, Silver Sarnan, and Emily Weatherman. You all are killing it and making disc golf on the women's side crazy fun to watch. Our number two news story, PDGA Approvals. The Pro Basket Trainer from Latitude 64 is a standard level basket approval. Received a standard level basket approval. The Shadow Slicer, which is a fairway driver, and the Dawn Chaser, a mid-range, are from King Dao Hippo Sport Products, have been PDGA approved. And, looking at the pictures, they are either really cool looking or really crappy looking. I honestly cannot quite tell. The Chimp from Gorilla, that's kind of funny. The Chimp from Gorilla Performance Discs, and the Ember from Lightspeed Disc Golf, are new putters, and the Aquila from XCOM Discs, is a new fairway driver. Our number three news story, Disc Golf Around's Interview with Jonathan Fastboard. First of all, congrats to Disc Golf Around for finding Jonathan and giving him an interview, a very fun person to learn more about. Just giving you some highlights from the article. It starts with instant respect to Jonathan for acknowledging that Luck is a big reason that we have heard of him, which instantly makes us think that there is much more to him than Luck. And he is right. His combination of drive, humor, irreverence, thoughtfulness, consistency, and more, are just too much for me to believe that he doesn't, that he wasn't going to be successful in this YouTube medium. That is a direct quote from the article, very well written. I find it intriguing, instructive, and insightful. Latitude 64 was looking for a YouTube presence. Jonathan mentioned in his resume that he'd done some YouTube videos, and somehow the stars aligned and he was hired. He had never played Disc Golf. It was not a given that this would happen. Both parties took a flyer, and we are all richer for their belief in each other. Jonathan started out by documenting his journey, his personal journey of learning Disc Golf from his very first throws. He is infectious, fun, and a great instructor. Overall, this article is a great interview and a great read. I'll give you a couple more fun bits. Jonathan states, "I'm always trying to figure out how I can keep my viewers drawn in for the entire video. I always want there to be some sort of hook that keeps them watching until the end." Just so you know, Disc Golf Daily does not do that. You can stop this show at any time and not worry about missing a thing. Continuing on, prior to his first video, not one of Latitude 64's videos had eclipsed 100,000 views. One of them is at the 86,000 range. Most of them are sitting right around 10,000. Jonathan has authored many Latitude 64 videos that have over 750,000 views and one is quickly approaching a million. That is not luck. That is drive, creativity, talent, vision, teamwork, humor, consistent, it's everything. Whether it's the folks he creates videos with or people behind the scenes, he is very appreciative of all the people at Latitude 64. The bottom line is that Jonathan's genuine caring for Disc Golf and its members, us, comes through in his videos. He truly wants to give and be helpful as well as to entertain. Disc Golf Around finishes with this nugget and as for luck, I think there's enough luck for all parties, don't you? Maybe the real word is gratitude. We can all be grateful that Jonathan and Disc Golf found each other. Everyone is better off for it. Well said, Disc Golf Around. Thank you very much for a great read. Our number four story, the sunflower games of Kansas open with Disc Golf and bowling. The 2024 sunflower games, sunflower state games are officially underway with bowling and Disc Golf starting the festivities in Topeka this weekend. Why is this important? Because the sunflower state games are not only including Disc Golf in their, the largest amateur multi-sport competition in Kansas, it's their opening event. They're putting it out there. It's basically on the marquee saying, come and play everything 'cause Disc Golf's so cool. People come out and enjoy, this is from Eli Smith, the tournament director for Disc Golf. People come out and enjoy the overall atmosphere. It gives them a nice competitive way to display their talent, but it also just keeps it fun and family oriented. It just has a really good mission and that's kind of why I got into supporting it. Thank you, Eli. Thank you, sunflower games. Thank you, Kansas. Thank you all the humans on the earth. (upbeat music) Our number five news story, Abilene Native wins her first DGPT event. This comes to us directly from the big country homepage newscast. Quote, "To say that she's the talk of the Disc Golf world "would be an understatement, Emily Weatherman "has been a part of the Disc Golf Pro Tour "for about four months now, "but she's made quite an impression already. "Yesterday, the Abilene local cemented herself "as a rising star in the sport. "Weatherman took home first place "in the true bank's Des Moines Challenge. "This was her third ever podium finish "and first tournament win at the professional level. "And by the way, she's 18 years old. "Thank you very much big country homepage. "You guys hit it on the head. "When a player wins their first Pro Tour event, "it is definitely worthy of letting the locals know. "The next time the Tour comes to Texas, "I hope there is a very large crowd rooting for Emily." (upbeat music) Now let's talk who's number one and course growth. On the men's side, Ganon Burr is the overwhelming choice. He is number one in the world. Ricky Wysocki is number two. Anthony Barella moves up to number three, just edging ahead of Calvin who drops to fourth. The biggest movers in the disc golf daily rankings on the men's side, Evan Smith moves up six spots to 30th. A guy named Paul McBeth moves up five spots to 26th. And Gavin Rathbun continues his climb which he's been doing all season. He moves up four spots and he's now 14th. On the women's side, Kristin Tatar maintains that number one spot by the slimmest of margins just over own and just over Missy. It's actually just like doing, doing, doing, doing. The Kristin-owned Missy, Holland and Evelina are all just, well, one, two, three, four, five. But it's super duper close. So this European swing, when we get the whole gang back together again, it's gonna be very fun to watch and very telling for the world rankings. The biggest movers in the disc golf daily rankings and not a surprise. LA has remitling, moves up two spots to 17th and Emily Weatherman moves up two spots to 20th. And we will close it out with the U-disc course growth numbers. 30 new courses this week springs the total number of courses in the U-disc public database to just over 15,700. We are averaging over 22 courses per week. We finally hit that 22 number, which means we should eclipse 16,250 courses by the end of the year. That will be 1,150 new courses by during 2024 and an 8.3% year over year increase in the number of courses. The USA had 14 new courses, Canada had five, Sweden and Norway each had three to take the weekly podium in course growth. Slovenia led the pack in percentage growth growing at an 8% clip last week as they went from 11 courses to 12. And just so everyone understands, I don't point out the stat to poke fun at places with very few courses. I point out the stat because these are the places where we will see the most disc golf growth in the coming years. If adding a few courses significantly increases the percentage of courses your country has, each new course will have an outsized influence on the growth of the sport in your country. If you don't have a lot of courses in your country, it is critical that you find a way to get more courses in the ground. That's how we grow the sport. So congrats to Slovenia and all of the countries that get new courses, especially the ones that didn't have a lot of courses already. And just so we're all sure, nowhere in the world has enough courses yet, nowhere. So that's it for us today. A good day for disc golf, especially in Slovenia and Abilene, and a wonderful way to close disc golf daily. Please continue to shoot us emails. We may reply slow, but we answer them all. DiscolfDaily@aol.com, have fun, throw them straight, and hit the thin gap. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)
