A chaotic close to the season.
October 28, 2025 by Kingsley Flett in Analysis, Recap
Holyn Handley and Calvin Heimburg finished their tournament seasons with a bang last weekend at the 2025 Disc Golf Pro Tour Championship in Lynchburg, VA. The scorecards showed comfortable wins for both, but it belies the drama that unfolded in the back nine of the final rounds as the winners surged from positions that were anything but comfortable in the middle stretch of the round.
Here’s what I saw as the most compelling story lines.
1. The Diminuendo After the Crescendo
“Nothing really matters, anyone can see”
If the DGPT season was a symphony, then the stretch of Green Mountain, Maple Hill, and Throw Pink/USDGC would be the crescendo, while the DGPT Playoffs the diminuendo. Or if we are talking modern music, think of how the guitar solo in Bohemian Rhapsody leads to Freddie Mercury singing the soft bit at the end. It’s still part of the overall piece, but it’s quiet and more reflective.
The DGPT playoffs hasn’t seemed to be able to match the crowds of the tour’s crescendo apart from when it was held at Hornets Nest in Charlotte, NC. This has lent the tournament a subdued atmosphere. This hasn’t stopped the drama though. This year there was more theater.
2. Heartbreak Hill Breaks More Hearts
“Another one bites the dust”
Interestingly, it wasn’t hole 14 with its treacherous approach slope that inflicted the most pain over the weekend. That title went to hole 4. The almost impossible to hit green with its away slope towards the water averaged 17% double bogeys or worse in the MPO field and 15% in FPO.
But just like at the 2024 World Championships, it was hole 14 that gave us more tragedy and drama. In the 2024 Worlds, it was Holyn Handley scoring an eight in the middle of her horror stretch during the final round, or the drama of the MPO final with Isaac Robinson putting his hand on his heart after his rolling disc stopped next to the pole, Luke Taylor’s throw in from deep, and Niklas Anttila’s putter hitting dead center, burying itself in the chains, only to spit out and roll away down the hill.
This year, it was Aaron Gossage who took the lead role…
3. Aaron Cooks His Own Goose
“Mama, life had just begun. But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away”
With five holes to play in the final round, Aaron Gossage seemed to have built an unstoppable momentum to go with his three stroke lead. Aside from a bogey on hole 4, Gossage shot a stunning 8 under par for the first 13 holes of the final round. Then the rain got heavier.
Gossage slipped on the wet tee of 14 and threw out of bounds left. In that moment, Gossage seemed to begin reading from the ‘how not to’ section of the sports psychology 101 textbook.
“A slip on the stupid teepad! So annoying!” Gossage yelled, seeming to make no attempt to calm down.
Going for the green from the tough angle created by his OB drive, Gossage’s disc appeared to just clip the rock wall guarding the green before it rolled out of bounds again.
“Why! One slip is all it takes and I miss by six inches. What a joke!” Gossage said, continuing with the self-talk guaranteed to heighten his arousal even more. Adding to his stress in that moment was PDGA official Brian Cole giving him a time violation warning.
Gossage proceeded to the drop zone, assuming that his disc had hit the rock wall (which was in bounds). This was the way it looked to everyone except the official who was standing 15 feet away, who said it never crossed the OB line. Gossage was instructed to throw from the last place the disc crossed inbounds. The call wasn’t made any easier to swallow when Ezra Robinson’s shot hit the rock wall in similar fashion but was judged to have crossed the line. Gossage threw his upshot deep and then missed the edge of circle putt, carding a triple bogey seven.
Gossage still had a share of the lead at that point and was still very much in the mix, but he sidetracked himself with an attempt to become the first sports person in history to change an official’s mind after they made the call. He was in robust discussion with Brian Cole and Jeff Spring all the way to the next tee.
Gossage was able to birdie hole 15, but an eagle from Heimburg ignited his run to the finish. Gossage’s double bogey on 16 snuffed out his chances.
4. Calvin Cashes In
“Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters”
Heimburg missed his birdie putt on 14 and did admit later that he had been distracted by “everything that was going on.” It seemed, too, that on hole 15 Calvin smelled some blood in the water when he cashed an uphill 60 foot putt for eagle to pull within a stroke of the lead.
The tournament turned on its head on hole 16, though, when Heimburg’s towering drive put him within a layup and a 20 foot putt to become the only player in the field to birdie the hole in the round.
“It is kind of a crazy tee shot,” said Heimburg after his win. “When you want to go for that, you’ve really got to get it turning because the fairway slopes from right to left. So anything that doesn’t get out to the right is going to run out of bounds left. It always looks a little sketchy when you throw it off the tee.”
Robinson matched an OB throw with a wide layup and a missed circle two put for a double bogey while Gossage three putted for the same. Suddenly, Calvin was up by two with two holes to play. Heimburg sealed the deal with a birdie on hole 17 and cruised to his first pro tour championship and the biggest winning check of his career.
“I’m super happy I won,” Heimburg said. “I definitely didn’t put together the round I was hoping for, especially not the start. After the bogey on hole 12, I started to feel like it was getting too far out of reach. Holes 15, 16, and 17 were the do or die moments. I needed all of those strokes so there was only one thing to do and that was go for them. I like to go out on my own terms, wether its good or bad. I don’t like to leave it up to other people. I went for them all and it all worked out for me today.”
5. Holyn Breaks Bad
“Because I’m easy come, easy go, Little high, little low.”
Holyn Handley’s season has played out like Breaking Bad: a great start, an ordinary middle, and a strong finish. After racking up two DGPT+ events in Austin and Portland, snagging wins in Kansas City and Krokhol, and landing five other podium finishes, Handley struggled through the European swing and on her return stateside.
“It’s been tough because I was playing well,” Handley said. “But it seems the more success you have, the harder it is to find that calm and let go of those expectations which is what you have to do to continue to win. Trying to find that thing in me that just fights back even when I’m down. I had a couple of tournaments where I saw flashes of it and so it was just having to trust that it was still there. Today I was really trying to monitor how I was talking to myself and how I was handing it when I didn’t do something well and telling myself to shake it off instead of berating myself. It’s really hard to do but it worked today.”
Handley saw the one stroke advantage she brought into the tournament erased after the first round where she shared the lead with Silva Saarinen and Ohn Scoggins. Handley fell six strokes behind Saarinen in round two before she was able to draw within two of Silva on the switch to Ivy Hill for round three. The final round was a battle between Handley and Paige Pierce as Silva fell away early. Pierce and Handley were level after 11 holes before a two throw swing on hole 12 saw Handley pull away.
“I was thinking what a privilege is to battle her,” said Handley after the round. “I thought that whether this goes my way or hers, I can be proud of myself for being here.”
Handley had some demons to face, too, on the back nine at Ivy Hill, where she shot +9 in six holes to ruin her chances in the 2024 World Championships.
“It was one of the lowest lows last year blowing the World Championships,” Handley said. “I was telling myself the reason that that happened last year was because I was scared. I was playing really scared. I was turfing drives. I wasn’t giving the disc a chance to do what it needed to do. A lot of the times to today it was like ‘here’s your angle, give it height. If it’s going to go OB, at least it’s going to go OB in the right spot’. I did find OB a couple of times today but mostly staying in that mindset had me putting the disc where it needed to be and gave me opportunities. I don’t ever count myself out and remind everyone else – don’t ever count me out.”
6. Comeback Watch
“I’ve taken my bows and my curtain calls”
The two most dominant players of last decade made a return to form late this year. Paige Pierce was fighting it out for the win right up until the final nine, while Paul McBeth was in second place after round one and spent the rest of the weekend in striking distance on the chase card. Both players are now going into their first offseason unrestricted by injury in three years. Just sayin’.
7. Silva’s Final Rounds
“But it’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise.”
Silva Saarinen has let some leads slip in the past few years and last week in Lynchburg was one of them. Starting Championship Sunday with a 2 stroke lead, Silva had a putt from the drop zone on hole 3 go into the hazard to take double bogey and started a string of losing four strokes in four holes that created a gap she couldn’t bridge.
It’s easy to string a few isolated events together and mistake them for a pattern. The truth is, Silva has been steadily coming into the picture in the last few years. In all DGPT events, Majors and Throw Pink in 2024, Silva averaged over 9th place; in 2025, this average was under 4 and included big wins at Ale, Preserve, Finnish Nationals, Turku, and the European Disc Golf Festival. Expect her to be in the mix even more next year.
8. Your Sports Psychology Homework
“And bad mistakes, I’ve made a few”
Let’s not be too hard on Goose. He did run into a perfect storm of bad luck on hole 14 which must have been all the more difficult to accept with the $30,000 payout it was impacting. But if you are all interested in the mind game, it would be educational to watch the replays and compare Gossage’s self-talk (and the story he appears to construct around what happened to him) with how Holyn Handley treated the adversity from the Worlds last year to create a different narrative for herself this weekend. Have your 2000 word essay on my desk by next week.
9. Build it and They Will Come
“I consider it a challenge before the whole human race and I ain’t gonna lose (and I mean to go on, and on, and on, and on)”
It’s clear that the DGPT is still tweaking the formula for the DGPT Championship and haven’t got the recipe perfect just yet. Critics of this year’s playoffs say that not enough people were eliminated early so that almost the entire field in late season tour events could have made the finals. Others said that the points advantages given to the leading players were so flat as to render them meaningless. If we consider that the Pro Tour Championship is a five round event where round one is the season, then I’m sure that magic formula is out there. Incentive drives behavior after all.
One of these days the Pro Tour will be like Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – that’s the one that finishes with cannons.
10. Luke Likes Lynchburg
“Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see”
Luke Taylor’s PDGA rating is 1033. For his rounds at the 2024 World Championships and the 2025 DGPT Pro Tour Championships, he has averaged 1049. On the Ivy Hill course that average rating is 1047 and New London it’s 1051. When the sixth year pro out of Michigan translates that form to other courses, he’s going to be dangerous. And definitely don’t sleep on him at next year’s Champions Cup.
Thanks for reading! On to the Match Play Championships.
