The Best Disc Golfer From Every Decade

since the start of disc golf back in the 1970s a lot has changed thousands of tournaments have happened around 90 majors have been held and countless money distributed to so many different generations so i thought to myself competitive disc golf has been around for almost 50 years with all these years there have been plenty of great disc golfers so why not figure out who the best disc golfer from every decade has been even from all the way back in the 1970s when professional disc golf started who dominated the first tournaments and these players whose names we throw around all the time like climbo schultz and macbeth how do these players compare to the best of the best from their own time well here's my list for the best player in every decade of disc golf here we go all the way and i mean all the way back to the 1970s when the first big tournaments occurred the first thing i needed to do is establish some criteria for how to rate these players much easier to do in the later decades but in these first few years when things weren't as established much much harder with there being some little pop-up tournaments that people dominated in their own region i had to discard them as counting in order to establish the best player from the decade then they needed to be playing against the best players all around what's the best way to make that happen money in 1979 whammo hosted a disc golf tournament called the 50 000 tournament boasting its 50 000 payout in the title this tournament required you to qualify through one of its 72 qualifiers no world championships back in the 1970s so this is the closest option plus when you look at the payout no tournament would compare for quite a while the winner of the 1979 wamo 50k would be deemed the best player in the decade tom kennedy and john connolly would tie in regulation they would play a sudden death playoff where tom kennedy would win this win compared to the second place would be 5 000 difference kennedy takes home 10k for winning as well as being the best player in the decade for the 80s the pdga world championship wasn't established until 1982 that means for the 80s only eight world championships occurred a lot of other tournaments were beginning to rise up at the time just none of them major championships the only staple major championship in the decade were the pga worlds i say pdga because a lot of other tournaments were calling themselves the world championships as well i collected the winners of all the events those being the bigger tournaments that most of the top players were playing in those would include the world flying disc championships the world flying disc federation championship and the ifa disc championship some of those tournaments only happened a couple times so if you won one of those events i deemed you a point if you won a pga major i deemed you three points in 1982 harold deval would win the first pga major event he would repeat in 1985 as well being the first player to do so out of the eight pga worlds held in the decade deval would lead the race with winning two of them he did not win any of the other one point events i listed the only player that came close to duvall was sam ferenz he won worlds in 1984 and also won a world federation title other than that everyone was kind of dominating their own region harold duvall two world titles under his belt was the best disc golfer in the 1980s this decade was the easiest to figure out by far in the 1990s there were 11 major titles in 1999 usdgc first major event was hosted with that in 10 worlds i could determine the best player of the decade easy peasy because ken kleimo won 10 of the 11 major events held he won every single world title from 1990 to 1998 then won the first usdgc major event ron russell would take down the 1999 world title barely beating climate who took second place figured i would give him honorable mention for being able to stick with the climate king i mean pure domination in the decade he won plenty of other stuff don't get me wrong but there's no way someone was going to catch him if he won 91 of the major titles ken climo the best disc golfer in the 90s by far now this is where disc golf gets interesting in the 2000s disc golf starts to grow tours are established major championships start popping up really good events and really good money starts being funneled into the sport in the 2000s to determine who the best player was i had to start adding some different stats since there were other events in the 2000s if you want a major you get three points the national tour was established so if you want one of those events you get one point alongside those stats you now have the money list that can help influence just how good the players were overall so i collected the wins the money added them up to give each player a value now the money was just used as a tiebreaker more or less to give us a better understanding of how the decade as a whole went for those players every year in disc golf seems to be different when it comes to major championships in the 2000s the european open and european major were added as well as the japan open and the players cup these majors made it so that i could determine who the best player was by quite a bit so with the combination of those in national tour events here's what we have david feldberg he won five major titles 12 national tour events his money earnings added up to 214 302 that is roughly 645 an event i granted him 27 points barry schultz won five majors as well but he won 17 national tour events his money earnings added up to 254 664 dollars that's about 1 122 per event i granted him 32 points the winner in my book just like in the decade prior but this one was much closer ken climo he won eight major titles 12 national tours and had a money list of 221 843 that was roughly 1115 an event that's 36 points in total now if i granted schultz more points for making more money it wouldn't be enough to catch climbo eight major events that was the key that's including world titles usdgc titles and european open title ken climo back to back decades as the best player now even more than the past decade we start to see the diversity growth over the sport in 2016 the disc golf pro tour is established national tour events pro tour events even more major events all these can help us determine who the best player is now for the first part of the decade it was a toss-up but i wanted to mention will shoestrick he won three major titles and two national titles he didn't get much done in the later part of the decade but since he was a top player at the start i figured i would mention him then we have ricky wysocki in 2011 ricky wins his first major one of six that he would win in the decade six majors 14 national tour events and 10 pro tour events that's a really good resume but for second place i don't need to do a point system for this decade because paul macbeth is the heavy favorite macbeth would win 15 major titles that's a little under half of the major events held 36 major events macbeth wins 15 of them he also won 22 national tour events 13 pro tour events and a pro tour finale yeah macbeth dominated ricky was definitely second but paul was first by quite a bit best player in the 2010s paul macbeth now for this decade so far we have an interesting discussion just three years of disc golf have occurred one of them not really counting due to covet with that being said i imagine most of you guys have been able to watch for the past three years more so than for the last few decades these are our players these are the guys who got me into the sport i didn't watch disc golf before the pandemic but i certainly do now i have stats i picked the top three guys according to those stats but the eye test matters what you think matters too so i'm gonna give you the stats which are remarkably close then you tell me who is the best player of our decade i will post down in the comments my decision make sure you do too and if it's not one of these three players then i'm excited to see your reasoning major event win is three points pro tour and national tour count is one silver series counts as half a point chris dickerson has two major titles one pro tour win and two silver series wins that gives him eight points riku isaki has zero majors six pro tour one national tour and three silver series wins that gives him 8.5 points paul macbeth has one major win four pro tour and one national tour win that gives him eight points now you tell me who the best player in our decade is

Channel: R.M. Disc Golf

Views: 70,979

Keywords: disc golf decade, best disc golfers, best of disc golf, ken climo, paul mcbeth, ken climo vs paul mcbeth, the greatest disc golfer, greatest disc golf moments, disc golf majors, disc golf 2020, disc golf 90s, disc golf 80s, disc golf 70s, disc golf 2000s, disc golf 2010s, ricky wysocki, chris dickerson, sam ferrans, harold duvall, tom kennedy, disc golf whamo 50k, disc golf worlds, disc golf pdga, disc golf usdgc

Id: 67PlSZJ9FD4

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2022