Steve Dodge interviews Nate Heinold, TD of the Ledgestone Open presented by Discraft.
Disc Golf Daily
Disc Golf Daily: Ledgestone TD, Nate Heinold
(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Disc Golf Daily. I am Steve Dodge and I'm joined by Nate Heinold, tournament director event organizer for the Ledgestone Open. Hello Nate, how are you today? - I am well, Steve, how are you? - I am doing great. I want my first question to be, I just said Ledgestone Open and then I left off a little bit, I think. Do you want to tell me a little bit about your presenting sponsor? - Discraft is the presenting sponsor. They've been that for 10 years now, almost. And they bend over backwards for the event. They give an extraordinary amount of money but the support they give is often charged. So without them, I wouldn't be able to have this big event. A title sponsor makes the world go and 10 years is no small feat. That says a lot about a positive relationship. So we're talking about the Ledgestone Open. You've grown this event, well, obviously from nothing to the richest tournament in all of Disc Golf until the Tour Championship went crazy. So now I guess your number two in that regard, but tell me a little bit about the local culture of the Ledgestone Open, presented by Discraft. - Yeah, the local culture is very interesting. We, I don't recognize a lot of the players anymore. It's grown so much here that if I go to a local event, I don't know most people because it's grown so much but here it's a very old school club. I mean, the Peoria Frisbee Club has been around for a long time. We have some courses that were built in the early '80s here. And so really it's, we have this old age culture that Marshall Hopkins, Wilbur Wallace who is on the PDJ board and then you have the newer age, which is me over the last 10 to 15 years, but we've essentially been adding one new course a year here in the Peoria area. We're opening a new course in three days that's debuting in Ledgestone for the AMS side. So the culture here, a lot of great volunteers. We have people like Kip Toffer who have literally donated thousands and thousands of hours to helping build Northwood Black. So the culture here is definitely get it done. - You did a great job of tying into my next question which was talks about club support and the locals. Tell me a little bit about the support you get from the towns. - Yeah, they, wow, between Morton and Peoria and Eureka and Washington, we get huge financial support. Just they see the people staying in hotels, spending money. So they give us substantial tourism grants, but they also have access to things that I don't have access to. The City of Peoria, they have a shuttle and we're using in at Ledgestone this year for all of our Morton area activities. We have a lot of those things that we get for bleachers or, hey, this bench in the middle of our fairway, can we move this bench? Okay, we'll have it gone tomorrow. So let's plant some trees here. I was just at Eureka last night and found a massive branch that had come down and we could do a lot of the work, but the City, they're taking care of that. And so I think we get, they bend over backwards for us as the bottom line. (laughs) We have 2,250 amateurs signed up this year. It is a three day event and it is about 10% more than last year. So we are fortunate enough to say we're the biggest event in disc golf. For the fourth straight year and this year, it's by 1,500 people. I mean, DGLO is the next biggest at about 1,000 for the combined amateur pro. So it's definitely madness, so. Could you see, and this, I'm going off script here, but could you see a day where the am side of this event has over 10,000 competitors? (laughs) I wish, I don't think I can get enough courses to do that. I think, you know, we have to have right now, we have 15 courses within a 25 minute area and we're using all of them. And so I don't know how I could get that many courses. I mean, my goal is 3,000 in a few years, but 10,000 is, that is a steep dodge thing to say. (laughs) - It's not that hard. If you have 15 courses, if you get to 60 courses and you get a little more organized, you're knocking on the door. - All right, I have a staff meeting next. I'm gonna tell the staff that's the new goal is 10,000 players, so. - Yes, I'd give it a 15 to 20 years, but 10,000, that's not out of the question. - All right, I'm on it, so. - Okay, now we're gonna get back on script, my apologies for that. Special events, if someone comes to the Ledgestone, what are we going to do out here? I know I'm gonna watch some amazing disc golf on some amazing courses, but what happens after that? What can I do? What do you guys have planned? - Man, if you're a fan of disc golf, you can do so many things. We have glow disc golf, doubles event. We've got a disc in the dark event. We have 15 flex seats years that you can play throughout the week. We have fly marks with 35, 40 vendors, free ice cream, free food. Our most exciting event though, this year, is a new event that already has 300 people signed up. It's an 18 hole short course in downtown Peoria with the new Discraft Ace Race disc. So you can play 150 foot, 200 foot holes under Interstate 74 around buildings with a soft special disc. And so super excited. We did that six years ago, and I brought it back this year thinking we'd have 50 or 60 people and we'll have more than 300 people play. - And that is literally downtown. - It's on the riverfront downtown by the Caterpillar World Headquarters, by the Caterpillar Museum, the Riverfront Museum. It is downtown. - Under I-74, I genuinely wish I was there. Please do it again next year when there's a chance I can make it. The next question's funny, special discs are merch. Nate, do you have any special discs that you make for the tournament? - Oh my goodness, we, no. - This podcast is limited to three hours in length, so I'm gonna ask you not to list them. - We have 26 special releases and then 15 for players and then another 50 items. So I think we have 70 different items we're dropping from baseball-themed disc-off jerseys to cartoon hoodies to 26 different LE discs and 15 player discs, Anthony Barela, Paul Macbeth, collab loonas, all of the above, fly dye this. Yes, we have a lot. It'll be, it's on our website now, shopledgestone.com or we'll have all the goodies in person at Eureka and our fly marks. - So you mentioned baseball-themed first. Is that because of the baseball hole and Paul Macbeth's shot that wedged into the basket? - That's good, I wish I could say that was the case. It's more of a here in Peoria in Central Illinois. It is a die-hard Cardinal Cub split rivalry, even though the Cubs suck. - Oh, I think. - But you know, it's a baseball town here, half the people like the Cardinals, half like the Cubs. I'll just remind people that the Cardinals have been more successful though, in general. Regardless, that's kind of the reason is baseball is big here, so. - Okay, well, I'm from Pittsburgh, so I follow the minor leagues. (laughing) So, you've got some courses there, and if I'm correct, the men play on a couple of courses and the women play, no? This year, it's the men will play Lake Eureka all four rounds, the women will play Sunset Hills all four rounds. The main reason is that we used Northwood for the Champions Cup and the PDJ asked me to not have that be used for legstone. I think the players, I think, wanted to come back and do Northwood again, but a lot of them were coming from Estonia, and they would have gotten here what, Tuesday, and then practiced Eureka and Northwood in essentially one day would have been hard, so. - Yeah, and you have jet lag to deal with as well. - Yeah. - So, from a spectator's perspective, I personally like watching Eureka better, so the 2024 edition of legstone might be my favorite ever. So, tell me about Lake Eureka and any changes you've made to that course. - You know, I've kept Eureka very consistent over the last five years with almost no changes. This is the first time since, I think, 2019, where I have almost any changes. So, the changes you'll see, you know, whole seven's been essentially a part two. I added OB to the left side. Instead of being in the creek, the OB lines at the top of the creek, it's not really that much different than the creek, but it'll get in their heads a little bit more. Whole nine is the bridge hole. There'll be two pins there. There'll be a pin off to the left, and then the regular pin. The water tower hole played too easy last year. I tightened up the OB on that hole. And so, it'll be a little harder to stick the green. I can remember when players used to hit the tower and rule out a balance every time. Now, if you hit the tower, you're staying in balance half the time, which I don't like. So, hole 13, the biggest change, that's the par five over the water. There'll be an alternate pin back into the left, about 120 feet. We use that back in 2018. So, that's the first time this will be seen in six years. But the biggest change, the most controversial change, will be hole 17. There'll be two islands on that hole. One will be used on Thursday and Sunday, the typical island on the right side. But then, if you look to the left, we'll use that smaller island on Friday and Saturday's round, which ironically, it is smaller, but there's a backstop to it. So, there'll be two islands on hole 17, which will be a big change. And then, the right island will have hay bales on the front of it to prevent the short shots from skipping off the lake onto the green. - There's two comments I wanna make. The first is the water tower hole. And if I was listening to this, I would say, Nate, why do you want someone that hits the water tower to go out of bounds? Why are you a mean person? And I wanna give you a moment to clarify why hitting the water tower is not a good shot. - The main reason is that we used to not have a platform teapad. And so, you essentially used to be throwing uphill on that hole to get, and that made it actually a much harder tee shot. When we added the platform on a flat teapad, a very nice turf teapad, it cut the scoring average by about 0.3, just because the tee shot was so much easier. So, before the angle of the hyzer used to hit the front of the water tower, let's 45 feet short of the basket. I, from a design perspective, I just didn't think that's a good shot to hit this tower and stay in bounds. And so, now, what's actually happened is they painted the tower five years ago. It increased the humidity on the tower, and it drains and kind of floods the area around the tower, and the grass is so lush that discs don't run off the green as much as they used to, so. - Interesting. Okay. - So, that's kind of the design reason why I made it. I mean, we're talking about three feet, so. - Yeah. The second thing was on hole 17, the double island, as you're calling it. Are you gonna have any kind of an event on Wednesday night where people get to throw two discs and try to ace them at the same time? - We do have an ace contest on Wednesday, but it's at Sunset Hills. And then Thursday night, we do have a contest for spectators to throw the water tower hole. - Okay. - But it would have been core to new 17. Good idea. - Well, keep me on the budget here. So, but you did a good segue there with Sunset. Let's talk a little bit about the women's courses, and if there's any changes on there, and what exciting things we'll see over there. - Yeah, there's some minor changes. There's a new teapad, I believe it's hole seven, has a new teapad, a hole 12, which is the one by the parking lot that has a new teapad. That was mainly to get them off of the parking, or the path. So, there's a dedicated pad there. We had to change the elevated basket on hole nine because the tree rotted out so there'll be a basket pin about 10 feet to the left. But the changes at Sunset are pretty minor. So, the women, honestly, I think that's the only course on tour still that is dedicated exclusively to FPO on the elite side. And so, honestly, the women love playing Sunset, and I don't like to mess with things that are going well. And so, I think Sunset goes really well for them. And I think changing it doesn't make a lot of sense. So, we do have some minor changes. - What is the most exciting hole where the women can get in trouble at Sunset? - I'd say hole six is kind of the par five over the water. You've seen Holland Hanley took an albatross, and I've seen people dump in the water, and then go left on me and take a seven or an eight. So, that's by far the best hole in the course for scoring separation. - Yeah. Regarding the legstone, oh, my last question. Who has done well at the tournament in the past? And are there any local favorites that you'd like to call out? - Yeah, I mean, on the FPO side, she won't be here, but Katrina Allen has won the event five times. But the most recent favorite has got to be Miss again, and she's won it the last two years, actually. So, Missy has played very well here, locally on the FPO side. Maybe Lexi Marks on the MPO side, Gary Patton. I think you know Gary back from MVP day. So, Gary is a great player. MPO side, Ricky has won legstone three times. Paul has won it twice. I'd say Paul won world's year, so you could say Paul's won here three times, Ricky's won here three times. Obviously Cole dominated. Eureka last year, I think he shot 15 under the last round, which just, that's too good. So I think, but Ricky and Paul have had a lot of success here. - Any local favorites on the men's side? - Yeah, Gary, I'd say he's the best local player that we have, you know. I used to compete with Gary, and then Gary got better, and I got worse. Yeah, that's how it goes. I got so hung up with the thinking about Cole, Ricky, and Paul on that final card. I forgot about the earlier question. Anything else you want to say about legstone before we wrap this up? - You know, the thing I'm most proud about besides bringing this many people here, and having a staff of 110 people is our continued partnership with St. Jude. We, you know, have given them and other charities $634,000 since 2015, and that really, you know, seeing the family come out Sunday afternoon, we have one family come every year, and they talk, and they throw the first putt out. That kind of brings everything back to reality of, we can complain about spit outs, and get mad about this, or that, or whatever, or argue about politics. And then when a family comes out, and they talk about their three-year-old son, who had cancer, and I think people can just shut up and listen and say, you know what, we have it pretty good here in the USA. - It kind of helps us remember what matters. - Yes. - That was a great way to finish this. Thank you for the hundreds of thousands of dollars you've given to St. Jude through the event, and thank you for showing all of Disc Golf, what a Disc Golf event can be. You pushed the sport forward, and I thank you for it. - Well, so did you, so we were there together, but thank you, Steve. - Thank you, Nate. Talk to you soon. - Thanks. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment, and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)