2024 Green Mountain Championships: The DGPT Playoffs Are Starting

50% more points are available as players jockey for a spot in the Tour Championship.

September 17, 2024 by Justin Westfall in Preview with 0 comments

After a grueling season with 20 Disc Golf Pro Tour events, the 2024 DGPT Playoffs have finally arrived. Discraft’s Green Mountain Championship begins this Thursday, September 19th, in Jeffersonville, Vermont, and will serve as the first of two playoff events before the Tour Championship next month. Located at the Smugglers’ Notch resort, the GMC showcases two of the tour’s most well-known courses in Brewster Ridge and Fox Run Meadows. DGPT CEO Jeff Spring started the GMC in 2013, and besides 2018 and 2023 (when the courses hosted the PDGA Pro World Championships), the event has been a part of the DGPT schedule since the inaugural season. Spring, who still serves as the Tournament Director for this event in its 10th year, is also the designer of both courses.

In 2022, four-time champion Ricky Wysocki entered the final day with a two-stroke lead over reigning champion Chris Dickerson. Through a rainy final round, Wysocki was able to hold off the field and secure his 5th GMC title by five strokes over Dickerson, Isaac Robinson, and Matt Orum. In FPO, Kristin Tattar came into the final day tied for the lead with Henna Blomroos. Tattar went on to shoot a 1014-rated final round and defeat Blomroos by seven strokes.

Past Winners

Four Things We’ll Be Watching

1. With the Player of the Year award all but locked up, Gannon Buhr still has four events to really put his stamp on the 2024 season. After sweeping the DGPT+ schedule, Buhr is now 5-1 in four round tournaments this season. While his best GMC finish is 6th, Gannon just took down the Great Lakes Open where his previous best finish was 10th. This past weekend, Buhr played The Rip, a DGPT Q-Series event, and ran away from the field averaging an unofficial 1087 event rating. If that rating holds, it will tie Paul McBeth for the highest PDGA event rating ever at an A-tier or better. Buhr has gone toe to toe with Ricky Wysocki several times this season and continues to come out on top. As a five-time champion and podium finisher eight times at the GMC, Wysocki may finally have the upper hand this weekend. Both players have very similar stats to this point in the season, with Buhr performing slightly better from tee to green. If Wysocki wants to earn his 4th win of the season, he’ll need to be accurate off the tee and lean on a decade of experience playing these courses.

2. While it feels like Kristin Tattar is in a bit of a slump this year, one more Elite Series win would tie her ES win total from each of the last two seasons. It would also bring her Elite and Major win total this year to six, which would match her number of wins from the 2022 season. When the final round comes on Sunday, however, it will have been over five months since her last Elite win, her longest in-season drought since the start of 2022. Tattar has had great success at Smugglers Notch, taking 2nd in 2019 and winning both the 2022 event as well as the 2023 World Championships. The competition should turn up this week with the return of reigning World Champion Eveliina Salonen to the tour. While Salonen has not podiumed in her two trips to Smuggs, her game has been elevated this year, where she’s averaged a 981 event rating at Elite and Major events compared to just 965 last season. Though she has struggled to close at times, DGLO champion Holyn Handley has been even better this season, averaging a 985 rating at Elite and Major events. Salonen has been exceptional from tee to green, but Handley has hit the fairway more often and been more consistent on the putting green than both Salonen and Tattar. If she’s able to keep the disc in bounds, she has another opportunity to take a big step forward by coming away victorious in a field of the world’s best players.

3. If Buhr and Wysocki are the favorites in the MPO division, another pair of players are right on their heels. Chris Dickerson has finished in the top four at the GMC each year since 2019 and won it in 2021. That win still remains as the only standard Elite Series win of his career. Dickerson looked to be in control at last year’s World Championships in Vermont as well until a mediocre penultimate round knocked him back onto the chase card. The eventual winner and now two-time World Champion Isaac Robinson has only played at Smuggs one other time in his career, coming in 2nd at the 2022 GMC. The pairing of Brewster Ridge and Fox Run set up perfectly for these two players who are some of the best in the world at hitting gaps, finding optimal landing zones, and making difficult putts. With low winds in the forecast throughout the weekend, don’t be surprised to see a shootout come Sunday.

4. With just two events remaining to qualify for the tour championship, a few players currently sitting on the bubble will need a couple of strong performances if they want to earn a trip to Charlotte. Playoff events are worth 1.5x the normal DGPT points, a step up from the 1.25x bump of DGPT+ events. After an 8th place finish at DGLO, Eagle McMahon has now moved into the final spot in 32nd place. Less than four points separate him from Mason Ford in 29th, with Emerson Keith and Evan Smith sitting between them. On the outside looking in is Ezra Aderhold, who sits seven points back of McMahon. Further down the leaderboard is Jake Hebenheimer, who has a 25 point deficit to McMahon. In FPO, Stacie Kiefer is currently the last player in and well back of 19th place Emily Weatherman, who has already secured a tour championship invite due to her win at the Des Moines Challenge. Hanna Huynh remains six points behind Kiefer, with Eliezra Midtlyng 22 points back of the final spot. Keep your eye on these players: a top 5 or even top 10 performance this weekend could be enough to lock up their spot in the tour finale.

Course Changes

Smugglers’ Notch is home to two premier disc golf courses. Brewster Ridge is a shorter but tightly wooded track that plays in the foothills of the Sterling Mountain Range. Brewster ranked #5 on UDisc’s 2024 list of the best disc golf courses in the world, second only to Maple Hill in the United States. The other course, Fox Run Meadows, currently sits at #7 on that list and the fourth highest rated course in the country. Fox Run is an open course with beautiful mountain views and plenty of OB to keep players out of the wetlands that surround the course. The open meadows can lead to increased difficulty progressing up the fairways when heavier winds are present.

As one of the shortest courses on tour, Brewster Ridge is very scorable as long as players can hit their gaps and scramble when they land out of position. While Fox Run is an open layout, the course is actually quite short when compared to most of the open courses on tour. This design places a large emphasis on accuracy and doesn’t necessarily give much of an advantage to the longer throwers in the field. Fox Run also has the easiest MPO hole on tour: Hole 6 is a 265 foot par 3 that saw a 91% birdie rate in the final round of the 2023 World Championships.

Both courses have seen very minimal changes from the layouts used during the 2023 Pro World Championships. Brewster Ridge is nearly identical, with just a couple of small OB areas added near the greens on holes 6 and 10. Fox Run, on the other hand, has some modified OB lines throughout the course, most of which tighten up the fairways. Hole 1, however, now has an expanded green area with the OB lines now a bit further from the basket.

2024 MPO Brewster: 8,350 Feet Par 62
2023 MPO Brewster: 8,350 Feet Par 62

2024 MPO Fox Run: 9,510 Feet Par 63
2023 MPO Fox Run: 9,515 Feet Par 63

2024 FPO Brewster: 7,485 Feet Par 62
2023 FPO Brewster: 7,485 Feet Par 62

2024 FPO Fox Run: 8,425 Feet Par 63
2023 FPO Fox Run: 8,360 Feet Par 63

Extended Forecast

Temperatures should be comfortable throughout the week and low winds could lead to even lower scores.

Thursday: Partly cloudy with highs near 80.  Winds light and variable.

Friday: Partly cloudy with highs in the upper 70s. Winds light and variable.

Saturday: Mostly cloudy with highs in the lower 70s. Winds light and variable.

Sunday: Partly cloudy with highs in the upper 60s. Winds light and variable.