The Disc Golf Pro Tour

Warming up pre-tournament. Always fun.

I don't typically get into tournament stuff, but Steve Dodge has always impressed me with his tournaments and how he handles himself. So when the DGProTour reached out to me to cover there new announcement - I said, "That sounds cool, but I gotta ask you some questions." They didn't mind, so here's the low down:  http://www.discgolfprotour.com/

Hey man, this is interesting... so tell us what are the long term goals of the Pro tour?

To keep it short, in the long term we plan on being the premier pro tour in North America

Okay, bearing that in mind, you would basically be replacing the national tour in 2017 or beyond. Does that mean that all N-Tier tournaments would be under the umbrella of the DG Pro Tour?

Our goal is to increase the Pro Tour to have 12 to 14 events and to have every event in the tour be a premier event. If, in the future, the PDGA likes what we are doing and therefore decides to stop executing the National Tour, we would of course welcome any and all NTs to apply to be on the Pro Tour. The National Tour and Pro Tour are not mutually exclusive. In fact, our inaugural event, The Maple Hill Open presented by Vibram, is both a National Tour and a Pro Tour event.

Why is Steve hugging my grand mother?

Do you guys have goals for cash added or payouts that you're aiming for?

We would like each event to have a minimum $30,000+ FPO/MPO payout. The minimum amount of added cash that we ask is $10,000.

Big Jerm, dancing. Nobody understood why.

It doesn't take many tournament sign-ups to realize how quickly things get filled and pushed into long wait-lists. I believe Steve has had dedicated spots available in the past so that top level players aren't left in the cold if they can't get to a phone/computer at the right time. There's been some epic facebook/DGCR "discussions" about these situations. How are you planning on handling what will likely be a big # of players looking to get into these events?
At this point in time we are going to be giving recommendations to our events on how to go about doing a tiered registration process, where higher rated players have the ability to sign up first. The Maple Hill Open is already an event that players must qualify to play, and the Ledgestone Insurance Open already has a tiered process where 990+ rated players have first crack to sign up. As our events grow we will look to implement a consistent process to take care of the sign-up issue.

Any idea on the size of the events? #'s for MPO, WPO, Masters, Juniors, etc?

Our events will be focused on the showcase MPO/FPO divisions and those are the only divisions that will earn points towards the Tour Championship. In the long run, we foresee our events including the MPO and FPO divisions only. Pro Tour events will not be focused on age protected or junior divisions. Every event will vary in terms of the number of players, but our goal is around 15 to 25 FPO players and over 100 MPO players.

Anything else we should know?

Every event will have live coverage, scoring and statistics. Additionally, we will be building a festival concept within each tournament with the plan that this will draw in newer players and spectators to the game.