Barry Arnson [dot] com

(photo by PDGA)

Frisbees are a hobby; disc golf is a sport.

Perhaps my favorite line out of a recent article on disc golf on ESPN.com [link].  In the article they interviewed many of the top pro players, the executive director Brian Graham and a few other volunteers.  I personally have been playing since late 2005 and can relate to many of the sentiments in this article.  Avery Jenkins talks about how there always has been a sense that disc golf as a sport was just going to explode in the next three to five years.  People have been saying that for many years prior.  I do however feel we are at a crossroads as far as tournaments is concerned.  New members join the PDGA very consistently but what we are seeing is huge jump right now in number of tournaments and total purse for those tournaments.  Total number of tournaments from 2007 to 2008 went from 852 to 994 (as reported in the article).  That is a 16% increase.  What is more amazing is that total purse from 2007 to 2008 went from $1.7 million to $2 million.  That is a 17.6% increase!  Discounting for the increase of tournaments that is still good total purse gain.  I really do believe that in ten years or so we will see some major sponsorships of tournaments.  Perhaps even from the big guys like FedEx and AT&T.