The saying goes "everything is bigger in Texas." So it's no surprise that the Texas Disc Golf State Championship is actually a bit bigger than just a state championship.
In 2022, the tournament was a Disc Golf Pro Tour Elite Series event for the first time after appearing in the now-defunct National Tour from the PDGA in 2021. The competition took place from Friday, March 25 through Sunday, March 27 in Lindsey Park. The venue was was the same in 2021, but the 2022 event was played on a new layout called The Thorn.
Learn more about the Texas State Disc Golf Championship below:
- Who won the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship
- How to watch the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship
- History of the Texas State Disc Golf Championship
- Highlights from previous Texas State Disc Golf Championships
Who Won the Last Texas State Disc Golf Championship in 2022?
Ricky Wysocki (29-under par) and Paige Pierce (17-under par) won the Texas State Disc Golf Championship in the MPO and FPO divisions, respectively.
Who were second and third place at the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship?
Who shared the podium at the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship in FPO?
Scores & Stats from the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship
You can see hole-by-hole scores and in-depth stats for all competitors in both divisions of the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship on UDisc Live.
How To Watch the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship
How to watch the 2022 Texas State Disc Golf Championship:
| MPO | FPO | Paid subscription needed? |
|
| Live (archival footage) | Disc Golf Network | Same | Yes (except last round, which is free on the Disc Golf Pro Tour's YouTube channel) |
| Lead Cards - Condensed | JomezPro | GK Pro | No |
| Chase Cards - Condensed | Gatekeeper Media | No |
Texas State Disc Golf Championship History
The Texas State Disc Golf Championship was founded by Disc Golf Hall of Famer Andi Young and the Houston Flying Disc Society in 1996. The 2021 tournament was the 26th iteration of the event.
The tournament was held in the Houston area for its first 17 years. When Vinnie Miller took the reins in 2013, it began moving around the state.
“It got to the point where disc golf around Texas was growing,” said Young. “For the longest time at the Flying Disc Society, it was our baby, but finally we decided it was time to go on the road. It moved around Texas because it needed to.”
Before ending up in Tyler for 2020-2022, the competition was held in Austin in 2013, returned to Houston in 2015, moved to Waco in 2016, and came back to Houston once more from 2017 to 2019.
“Each place it has gone, it has gotten bigger,” said Young. “It’s continued to evolve, and people want to host it, which is the cool thing.”
It's also been an elite event throughout all of those venue changes. The only year the tournament wasn’t an A-tier or higher was 1996, its inaugural year.
“It has ridden on a high tier level for quite a while,” said Young.
Current tournament director Steven Storrie intends to make sure his tournament organization lived up to the prestige the event had been granted. He told us that when it comes to a big event like the Texas State Disc Golf Championship, having it "run very smoothly and organized with a good value for the players is my number one goal."
Storrie expects the overall experience, the payouts, and the caliber of play to live up to even Texas-sized standards.
Past Highlights at the Texas State Disc Golf Championship
Here are some of the standout moments from past Texas State Championships.
Mandujano Wins First A-tier (2020)
Valerie Mandujano shredded the 2020 Texas State Championship FPO field, winning by a 14-stroke margin over second place and finishing as the only player under par. She had been crowned as an amateur champion at the event in 2015 but had never won the tournament as a professional. The win marked her first A-tier win, which helped put her on the path to her first Elite Series win in 2022 at WACO.
Hometown Hero Anthony Perkins Snags an Upset Victory (2018)
Spring, Texas, local Anthony Perkins had a home course advantage when Spring Valley hosted the 2018 Texas State Disc Golf Championship. He knew the holes well from his multitude of league rounds each year, but he still had to throw the shots, and he still had to outperform stars like Paul Ulibarri and Garrett Gurthie.
Perkins trailed Ulibarri by two strokes with five holes to play but cranked out a birdie frenzy on the home stretch, and he and Ulibarri were tied going into hole 18. You can see what their drives were like in the clip below from JomezPro (Ulibarri is commentating):
Ulibarri banged his jump putt off the cage while Perkins cashed his Circle 1 bid for a birdie, giving the 974-rated player an extremely unlikely A-tier win over stiff competition and making him an instant hometown hero.
Pierce Outlasts Allen in Playoff (2014)
A battle for supremacy in FPO was already brewing back in 2014. Paige Pierce and Catrina Allen went toe-to-toe at the Texas State Championship, with bonus holes being needed to determine an outright winner. Pierce led by two strokes after round one and by one stroke after round two, but Allen came back in round three to take the lead. Allen led by three with five holes left in the tournament, but Pierce clawed back to tie on the final hole and ultimately emerged victorious in a sudden-death playoff.
JomezPro Films First Full Round (2013)
The final round of the 2013 Texas State Disc Golf Championship was filmed by a man named Jonathan Gomez. After filming the Final 9 at Worlds the year before, Gomez expanded his disc golf reel by filming the entire final round of Texas States in 2013. In fact, the first four full rounds of disc golf filmed by the now-famous JomezPro crew were all at Texas States.
It's pretty astounding to watch Wysocki, Ulibarri, Paul McBeth, and Nikko Locastro battle it out knowing where they, the man filming them, and disc golf in general will be just eight years later. You can give the coverage a watch over on JomezPro's YouTube channel.