By Andy Furman
NKyTribune reporter
The year, 2016 – June 23-25 to be exact. The Vibram Open. It marked the beginning of the Disc Golf Pro Tour, which eventually transformed into the MVP Open. And some eight years later, the 2024 LWS Open at Idlewild in Burlington takes place August 9-11. The Burlington stop is the 16th on the Disc Golf Pro Tour.
We will take it just a bit slower now. Disc Golf, for the uninformed, also known as Frisbee Golf, is a flying disc sport in which players throw a disc at a target – it is played using rules like golf.
The sport is usually played on a course with nine or 18 holes (baskets). Players complete a hole by throwing a disc from a tee pad or tee areas toward a basket, throwing again from where the previous throw landed, until the basket is reached.
The baskets are formed by wire with hanging chains above the basket, designed to catch the incoming discs, which then fall into the basket. Usually, the number of throws a player uses to reach each basket is tallied – like par – and players seek to complete each hole in the lowest number of total throws.
Par is the number of strokes an expert player is expected to make for a given hole or group of holes.
At last year’s Idlewild event, Valerie Mandujano came into the final round with a three-stroke lead. After a phenomenal 2022 season, she missed much of the early season a year ago recovering from injury.
She returned to the tour less than two months prior to the Dynamic Disc Open, but just could not match her success from the previous season.
“I felt like the Ledgestone event put a damper in my plans,” she said a week prior to Idlewild in 2023. “I missed the cut and I used that as motivation for Idlewild.”
She won with a minus nine final score.
Gannon Buhr won the 2023 men’s division at Idlewild with a minus 32.
Since its inception in 2016, the Disc Pro Golf Tour has experienced tremendous growth and has become the world’s most prestigious professional disc golf tour.
The Pro Tour has expanded to include over 25 events each season, with top-tier players from around-the-world competing for large cash prizes and valuable tour points.
As the Pro Tour has expanded, so too has its fan base. Last year, the Burlington event sold over 500 three-day and 1,798 daily passes to spectators, and drew nearly 800 visitors from the Disc Golf Pro Tour, players/partners/caddies, vending staff, and volunteers to the area, according to records.
Since the creation of Idlewild by Fred Salaz and Robert Herbert, the course has been hailed as one of the best in the world. The meteoric growth of the Idlewild Open stems equally from the amazing course as well as the management of the event.
The course challenges the best players in the world with its 18-hole, par 67 layout. From its 1,000’ par five to its tight 280’ holes, from its long straight bombs that require landing zone accuracy to its large number of doglegs that require intense shot shaping, the course is set to test the best.
Last year, a total of 143 players in both MPO and FPO divisions, competed for a total purse of $93,610.
All you need is a pass – and a parking spot.
More information and tickets here.
