(upbeat music) - Hello everybody, welcome to Disc Golf Daily. I'm Steve Dodge, we're joined by Nate Heinold. You might remember him from the Ledgestone interview a few weeks ago. And Nate, we've got pro worlds coming up. How are you today? - I am pumped for pro world, Steve. - I can't imagine your excitement level, but probably your stress level, which do you think is higher? - You know, Ledgestone is a much harder event to run than pro worlds because we have 15 courses and 2,500 players. Ledgestone is all about stress for pro worlds. It's excitement because it's two courses. It's 300 players. It's honestly easier to run than Ledgestone, but my excitement, I mean, I've been anticipating this event for a year and a half. So I am excited to be honest. - We are very excited. And we'll talk about the course a little later on, but I'm very excited to talk about the course and to give everybody a little insight. But first, this is the first time pro worlds has been held in Virginia. Can you tell us a little bit about the culture, the local culture and what the scene is like in that area? - You know, it's funny when I first got contacted about Lynchburg, I thought, okay, let me look at a map. And I thought, oh, that's not the south. So, you know, that's, you know, that's probably the same temperature as where I'm at in Illinois, it's probably this. And I go there and it is, you talk about Southern hospitality. They, I mean, they welcome me and they, I mean, my wife's from Kentucky. And so she has a wonderful Southern accent. And I went there and I could just tell, it was Southern hospitality at its best. And I met the Runk family who owns Ivy Hill and I talked to the CVB there and Margette and Andrew and their team. And it was, it was incredible. There, you know, the motto there in Lynchburg, Lynchburg loves you and it's very welcoming and friendly. And, but they mean business when it comes to getting stuff done. But I wouldn't say it was a slower pace, but the hospitality was very welcoming. And I'd say that is the culture. A lot of people want to help, you know, at one point in time they told me, hey, things shut down on Sunday here because everybody goes to church in Lynchburg because it's, you know, you got Liberty University there and whatever. And I said, well, hopefully not everybody because we have a tournament to play on Sunday, you know, for the finale, but very welcoming culture. - So not counting Sunday, how many people do you have on staff? How many people will be supporting this event? - Well, they're all coming Sunday too, but we have, we have 66 people on paid staff and then a couple of hundred volunteers. And so, and honestly speaking of Liberty, I mean, they're, I think they have 25 people for volunteers that students who are helping. So very just, I'm blown away by even that. Just, you know, Liberty students have to volunteer a certain amount of hours a year and they all wanted to do this. They're all from their disc golf team, actually. So very excited to have them help as well. - I feel like I saw something about them doing pretty well at, or being highly ranked, at least. I don't know how they did at nationals, but. - They're one of the best disc golf teams, for sure. - Yeah. So at Worlds, do you have any kind of special events that people can look forward to after the rounds or before the thing starts? I'm coming down to Worlds, what am I gonna do? - Yeah, we, so at Ivy Hill, which is our premier course with the finale and for the last two days, we'll actually have a spectator course, 18 holes that you can play, actually Wednesday through Sunday, right on the property and play sanctioned rounds there, or play non-sanctioned with a golf cart. That's probably the most exciting thing. We'll have tech disc there, and you can play two of the holes virtually at their tens. - Oh, wow. - We have a Merrill Speedgun test where you can see how fast you throw, and we'll have a lot of vendors there. We have a pool party for the players. We have fireworks on Saturday night. We have great food being served for free for the players and available for the spectators. So we have a lot of fun activities going on. - Good, and I didn't doubt it one bit. Is there a signature disc? Is there a disc that somebody should get if they want to get the pro world's commemorative disc for the first time it was held in Virginia and yeah, the 2024 pro world's disc? Is there one specific disc? - We have a couple different ones. We do have a special Big Z Luna. So when I ran 2019 pro worlds, that was the year the Luna came out and Discraft did a Big Z Luna. And lo and behold, no one ever at the time thought it would be popular, that popular, but that run, that from that worlds is considered the best run of the Luna ever. And so I'm hoping to replicate that. We're doing the same plastic. So the Big Z Luna will be a cool one. We'll have about 10 other ones available at the event, including some from our other sponsor and they'll be selling some as well, so. - Fantastic. It's nice, almost the fifth anniversary of that disc. - Yup, yup. - Now comes the exciting part. Everybody should go ahead and tune back in. We're gonna talk a little bit about the course. I assume two courses, actually. - Yes. - Who designed this course? - Well, we have two courses. So New London was designed by Paul Macbeth and then Ivy Hill. I designed it along with some assistance from Paul, actually, as well, so. - Okay, so Paul and Paul and you. In your opinion on these holes, we're gonna be watching this on Disc Golf Network. We've got lots of 10 rounds to watch, I'm guessing. What are the most fun holes to watch? Yeah, what are the most fun holes to watch? And you can talk about the men or the women or both. - Yeah, so New London is heavily wooded with a couple of open holes. That course is a lot like Northwood Black, wider fairways, and then you go to Ivy Hill and that's a golf course, so much more open. So New London, there are a lot of great holes, to be honest. There's two par fives in the front nine though, that are probably the holes that people are going to remember. Six and seven, six is 1200 feet, and seven is much shorter par five, but it's dog leg right, and then back to the left with an amazing green. So six and seven are gonna be the ones that New London. At Ivy Hill, people are gonna remember the finish. The last four holes there are incredible. 15 is an uphill par five, 800 feet. 16 is a 900 foot downhill par four that has a layup zone, or a go for the Bernie zone, 17 is an island hole, then 18 is an 1100 foot massive dog leg right par five. So that's gonna be a very, it has like a stadium feel to it on those four holes. And so the stadium finish there is gonna be, I would say comparable to Nokia maybe, in terms of the awesomeness of just the atmosphere. The holes I think are great, but just the atmosphere is gonna be pretty awesome. It sounds like that's gonna be an incredible finish to the tournament. And just seeing Disc Golf Fairways lined with people two, three, four deep, and then as the players come up the finish, and it's a world championship, and there's a for some, and you know there's probably a couple of people gunning, and yeah, the electricity is beyond words apparently. So in your opinion, which of those holes gives the biggest opportunity for scoring spread, for risk reward? - Yeah, I mean at New London it's gonna be the par fives. Any time you have honestly higher par, there's generally more ability for separation, especially if there's out of bounds, and both of those holes have out of bounds as well at New London. At Ivy Hill, I think it's gonna be, in this case, the most exciting holes probably have the best scoring separation just because of the distance, 17s in Island Hole. There's gonna be a lot of twos there, a lot of fours. So those four finishing holes are gonna be where you can pick up strokes and give away strokes. And honestly, I believe actually 14 through 18 at Ivy Hill are five of the six hardest holes on the course. So they're the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth handicap holes. So Ivy Hill kind of starts easier and it lulls you in the middle of the course. There's some birdies, some shorter holes and the end of the course really 14 through 18 at Ivy Hill, really tough. - Which is really exciting. What that says to me is if someone's in the clubhouse and they're tied, they're not out of it. That is definitely, I mean, honestly 14 through 18 at Ivy Hill, 14 is probably the hardest hole in the course. Par four, 850 through a gap and then to a landing to a tough green. I mean, even playing those last five holes in even par probably won't lose you strokes. - Yeah, fantastic. I'm even more excited to watch, which is tough. Is there anything else you want to mention? Oh, we should talk about locals and crowd favorites. It's interesting 'cause worlds, you've, everybody has their favorite player or, well, or players, that's funny. I don't actually have any favorite, I love all of the players, it's kind of interesting. But locally, there's gonna be a lot of people from Virginia there. Paul Macbeth designed these courses. He's potentially a crowd favorite. Are there any other crowd favorites that people will be rooting for? - You know, there's no locals from Lynchburg that I can think of that are playing, but I think, I mean, Paul's gonna probably have, he lived there for six years. Hannah has a lot of ties to Lynchburg. I think they're gonna have a lot of energy, but at the end of the day, you know, Ricky is very popular on the East Coast. He's popular everywhere, but you know, Ricky is gonna be popular, you know, I think those two are always gonna be, people are gonna root for that. Of course, Simon being from Massachusetts is close to Lynchburg, you know. - That's a lot of a stretch, but I, okay. - Sorry, it's closer than Peoria to Massachusetts, but you know, on the FBO side, I'm very excited to watch that. I think you saw what happened last year, Missy and Kristen kind of battling it out, and Kristen taking that big lead, and Missy coming back, but I think Kristen's gonna be a favorite. Missy, Silva, Evelyna, you know. - All the usual suspects. - All the usual suspects, so those courses are gonna favor Kristen and Missy's game, I think, and Silva, and just power thrillers, but you gotta keep it in balance. - So I will say, I think James Conrad is actually from Virginia. - That is true. - Which arguably is closer than Massachusetts. - That's true, good point. - Yeah, Nate, thank you very much for taking the time, and thank you for stepping up to run pro worlds. I know it'll be very well run, a couple hundred staff, a lot of paid staff, great courses, can't wait to watch, thank you. - Thanks, Steve. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment, and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
