Disc Golf Tournament Profiles: 2022 Dynamic Discs Open

The Dynamic Discs Open (DDO) welcomes pros to the top small town for disc golf in the United States: Emporia, Kansas. Emporia is also the place disc golf equipment brand Dynamic Discs calls home.

There will be additional intrigue at DDO in 2022 as it's a essentially a trial run for the 2022 PDGA Pro Disc Golf World Championships that will go down in Emporia in late August and early September. The disc golf course at Emporia Country Club and the new Supreme 18 at Jones Park that host the pros at DDO will be used again at Worlds.

As usual, the event will be huge, with over 500 amateur and over 150 professional players signed up to compete. They can expect that storefronts, billboards, restaurants, and the entire community will celebrate their arrival to this town of about 25,000.

Though the people may be welcoming, there's no telling what mood the Kansas wind will be in. If it decides to howl, the pros will need to be at their absolute sharpest to keep scores low and avoid tight out-of-bounds lines.

Learn more about the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open (Thursday, April 28 to Sunday, May 1) below:

• How to follow and watch footage of the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open
• Who won the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open
• History of the Dynamic Discs Open
• Highlights from previous Dynamic Discs Opens

It might also interest you to read about how the disc golf course at Emporia Country Club has been a very welcome addition to the traditional golf course. If so, check out our post "Join The Clubs: Bringing Disc Golf To Ball Golf Courses."

2022 Dynamic Discs Open (DDO) Scores & In-Depth Stats

You can see hole-by-hole scores, tons of stats, and more for all competitors in both divisions of the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open on UDisc Live.

How To Watch the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open (DDO)

Who Won the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open?

Ricky Wysocki (10-under par) and Kristin Tattar (even par) won the 2022 DDO in MPO and FPO, respectively.

Below you can see the other players who made the podium in both divisions. See individual scores on every hole, in-depth stats, and more at the UDisc Live results page for the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open.

Dynamic Discs Open (DDO) Tournament History

Though its name has changed a few times, the seemingly ever-growing reputation and attendance of the event now called the Dynamic Discs Open has made it one of the world's largest disc golf tournaments by number of competitors. It has always been held in Emporia, Kansas, just like this year's 19th edition will be.

Locals Eric McCabe and Gabe Werly created the event, but Dynamic Discs took over its organization with the pair's blessings early on. Notably, McCabe was the 2010 Pro Disc Golf World Champion and is currently the team manager and a course designer for Dynamic Discs.

The competition began as the Emporia Glass Blown Open in 2003. The "Glass Blown Open" (GBO) portion of the name remained a staple of the event until 2020 when the unusual circumstances the COVID-19 pandemic generated – such as a huge number of people discovering disc golf while seeking safe outdoor recreation – inspired the tournament staff to give the event a more disc golf-specific name.

"We thought a title for the event that was more recognizable as an actual disc golf brand would be better than 'Glass Blown Open,'" said Doug Bjerkaas, tournament director of the Dynamic Discs Open and head of Events, HR, and Community Outreach at Dynamic Discs. "With so many new players coming into the sport, there wouldn't be as much of a connection to the sport of disc golf and to us at Dynamic Discs with a name like 'Glass Blown.'"

When the Disc Golf Pro Tour (DGPT) approached Bjerkaas and Dynamic Discs with the opportunity to be the first Elite Series event of the tour following the COVID pause, they took that chance to rebrand the event as the Dynamic Discs Open. The timing made sense after the Glass Blown Open had been cancelled along with the rest of the Professional Disc Golf Association's (now-defunct) National Tour (NT).

The rebrand didn't change the top-notch organization that has won the Emporia event a sterling reputation, and 2021 saw a large turnout enjoying the Emporian courses and hospitality.

The biggest reason players keep coming back is because of how the city has embraced disc golf to the point of calling Emporia "Disc Golf Disneyland." Before becoming the TD, that's what brought Bjerkaas to the tournament year after year.

"I've played tons of tournaments and never did I ever pull into a town where there were signs that said, 'Welcome Disc Golfers,'" said Bjerkaas. "You'd go into a store with your disc golf shirt on and they'd ask what course you were playing. It was amazing how the whole community embraced disc golf."

In other cities a disc golfer can walk into the mall or visit a local restaurant and the people around them won't have a clue who they are or why they're there. In Emporia, it's the complete opposite. The town waits all year for this tournament and can't wait to see their favorite players come visit.

Though its population is relatively modest, Emporia is large enough to have sufficient amenities, hotels, and restaurants to sustain an influx of 2,000-plus people for the tournament. But it's also small enough that the economic impact of that number of visitors is widely felt and appreciated. The town's location in the center of the U.S. is another plus, making it a relatively accessible destination for players from all parts of the country.

"We have a perfect storm here in Emporia, Kansas, that makes this ideal for the community support that we have," said Bjerkaas. "You take a disc golf company, you take being in the center of the country, and you take the size of Emporia, and it creates the perfect laboratory for Disc Golf City, USA."

Bjerkaas also said that flexibility and willingness to adapt based on feedback has been key to the tournament's consistent popularity.

"We'll do something different every year," he said. "We always try to look at score distribution along with the positive and negative feedback we get. We're always trying to improve the courses. We also understand that part of what makes the DDO such a unique event is all of the off-course stuff. We're always doing something new there as well."

In 2022, the most obvious change disc golf fans will notice is the brand new layout at Jones Park. Last year, the DDO was played in part on Jones Gold, which was essentially a combination of tee and basket placements from two preexisting courses in the park. The Gold layout didn't provide the challenge the DDO team hoped it would, so they decided to create an entirely new course in Jones Park for the 2022 DDO and 2022 Worlds now called the Supreme 18.

The Supreme 18 comes in at over 10,700 feet/3,280 meters for MPO and over 9,400/2,865 meters for FPO.

Past Highlights from the Dynamic Discs Open

Here are some of the standout moments from past showdowns in Emporia.

Cam Todd's Underdog Win in 2016

Cam Todd won the 2001 PDGA World Championship, and plenty of people knew he still had chops. But almost no one expected him to take down the GBO in 2016, which was an NT with a stacked field.

Add to his unfavorable odds that he went into the final round with no cushion. He was tied with reigning world champ Paul McBeth and had Ricky Wysocki (who would win his first Worlds later that year) just one stroke behind, players who are not only phenomenal but also so much younger than Todd that they didn't play their first PDGA events until years after Todd won his world title.

Todd traded blows with both players the entire round, finally taking the lead courtesy of a parked drive on hole 15.

Todd found OB on the infamous island hole 16 at the Emporia Country Club, but fortunately for him, so did McBeth and Wysocki. After that bit of luck, Todd clung to his narrow lead through the final two holes and emerged victorious for the first NT win of his career.

Watch the drama unfold on hole 18 and the elation that follows from Todd in this clip from JomezPro:

2017 FPO First Place Tie

Due to unforeseen and powerful storms ripping through central Kansas, the 2017 GBO was called off after just two rounds. Hannah Leatherman and Paige Pierce both sat atop the leaderboard and were declared co-champions, something that had not been seen before and hasn't since.

The result may have been different had the players known they were playing their final round, but they had no inkling the next day's round would be cancelled.

Hole 17 began with Pierce holding a four-stroke advantage, but she aggressively ran a putt from outside Circle 1 on the hole that landed her in thick rough. She missed the subsequent par putt while Leatherman birdied, bringing the competitors within two strokes of each other.

On hole 18, Pierce shanked a drive into the woods while Leatherman put her shot in birdie range. Though Leatherman only ended up parring, Pierce missed a relatively simple putt for bogey and tapped in a five on the par 3 hole. These late miscues tied Pierce with Leatherman.

The later cancellation of the next round gave Leatherman the biggest win of her career and likely left Pierce regretting her mistakes more than she would have otherwise.

Emerging from the COVID Shutdown & Onto CBS Sports

After the global pandemic forced a months-long shutdown of touring professional disc golf, the 2020 DDO was the first event that boasted nearly every top U.S. pro on its registration sheet.

The historic and highly anticipated GBO had been part of the multitude of cancelations on tour in 2020, but Dynamic Discs still had everything in place and the backing of Emporia to run an event. It wasn't just the big return of pro disc golf and the DGPT, however. Dynamic Discs helped secure a deal with the CBS Sports Network to broadcast a post-produced version of the tournament and a skins match.

The 2020 DDO was also the first time the players were forced to experience a full event with no fans.