A new spot on the tour, a new course, but a couple of familiar names on the top step.
March 17, 2026 by Zack Davis in News
Coming into the debut of the Big Easy Open in New Orleans, the first-ever Disc Golf Pro Tour stop in Louisiana, social media was abuzz with conversations around the brutally challenging new Grand Cypress Bayou course. John Houck, a legendary course designer known for his iconic wooded courses with tight lines that extend for hundreds of feet into landing zones that seem to evaporate on approach, built out the board-flat swamp course with the tightest gaps he’s ever designed. Walking the course is mesmerizing: the view from the sometimes massive tee pads feels like something out of a fever dream set deep in the bayou. The cypress trees are in abundance, looming tall over every hole, walling off sight lines, and blocking shots. Spectators and players were familiarized very quickly to the smack of plastic on wood.
As if that wasn’t enough, lining the edge of every hole is a thick bramble of thin red maples, sweetgum trees, vines, and a healthy underbrush of rotting logs and weeds. Notably absent is any forgiveness. In the words of Nathan Farber, the New Orleans Disc Golf Club (NODGC) President and Big Easy Open tournament organizer, “We want to reward spectacular shots.”
To get there, the crew had to clear “roughly 50 acres in the last six months of really bad invasive trees” in addition to planting 88 acres of grass “to accommodate spectators, longer fairways, and a more competitive layout for the open field.”
Houck, who designed the original course at the Parc Des Familles and led the redesigns necessary to bring it to DGPT standards, knew the original layout already had great bones. In the blueprint phase, he said that “we knew that the blue tees out here were already going to be great for the FPO. Jeff Spring had already been here in the process of getting everything set up. He had some ideas — like they wanted to use hole 17 as a warmup area, so that was going to go. He picked three other of the shorter holes that would make more sense for vendor areas or spectator areas, so he got the framework started, but as soon as we started talking about it I was immediately thinking about ‘how are we going to get all the rest of these holes appropriate for the MPO?'”
He knew it would take a great deal to challenge the top echelon of the sport — players who can throw 500-foot shaped shots as a matter of course. He acknowledges it’s a particularly tough track, saying, “When people look at it, they think it’s going to be too much, people at the beginning of the week are thinking that six or seven was going to be the best round, but I’m always amazed at how these players step up.” He said this at the close of day two, when both the FPO and MPO fields had improved from day one, highlighted by an eye-popping 1o-under performance from Ricky Wysocki. “Players are telling me every day ‘I understand it better than I did yesterday. I like it better than I did yesterday,'” he continued.
Another small controversy headed into the weekend was the tee pads, which were poured and designed ahead of the event. Dee Leekha-Houck, co-founder of Houck Design and Founder of 3DISCgolf — which aims for safer, smarter, and more sustainable disc golf — was largely responsible for the design. She said her aim was to make the tee pads safer by having “the same type of feel and at the same level” throughout the whole throwing motion, regardless of a player’s style. The painted lines, she says, are “a point of reference” that allows players to “really assess their footwork.” She’s also looking to the future: “Eventually, we’ll have drone shots on these kinds of events and we’ll be able to study the style of how maybe Simon runs up, or how Ricky runs up and what their preferences are on the type of shot, not just what kind of disc they’re throwing, and then eventually there might be some use for data collection.” She hopes that when these things come to pass, “the spectators are really going to enjoy a deeper conversation with each other and the players will have an ability to showcase their own style of driving.” NODGC Treasurer Rob Delaune was also crucial in the implementation of the tee pads, according to Farber, who said Delaune “came in and did so much work to make them big and grippy and porous so that you don’t get water retention on them.”
Thoughts on the Course
Farber, Houck, the players, and the DGPT know it’s far from a perfect course, but everyone agrees it has amazing potential. Most pros on both sides liked what they saw. Paige Pierce was among those who liked the course, saying, “We don’t play too many wooded tracks that you get to rip full drives on like driver shots, so it’s awesome.”
Ida Emilie Nesse, who finished 8th in the FPO field with a +3 final score, said, “The course is really beautiful, but also really challenging.” She elaborated: “I do think there are some holes out here that you’re just walking to the sweet spot and then you’d be like ‘Where am I supposed to go now?’ because there’s no line, but I really do like this difficulty and it challenges your game to another level.”
The main complaint among the pros was the number of small trees left between the cypress trees, and the low ceiling caused by some errant limbs that hadn’t been cut down. Madison Walker, who was loving the wildlife (particularly the birds), said that even though the property was beautiful, “there’s a little bit of [randomness] because the gaps are so small and a lot of them are far down the fairway that you’re trying to hit. A lot of the greens are really guarded, there’s a little bit of luck of the draw happening.”
Ohn Scoggins had a slightly different issue. “I wish I could play out here every day, except the snakes, you know?” As for the difficulty, the SFO 2026 champion had a simple message: “Keep it this way. I feel like we own this level.”
Jeremy Koling summed it up well. “This place is special, and it has the grounds for something next level.” He added: “I think what we’re going to see over the course of this next year is some of the removal of some of these low ceilings, opening up opportunities for risk reward, giving players options to go across ponds on hole 14 instead of having to lay up, or a little more room to work with left, right, up, down. When that happens, when they start removing some of the trees that aren’t cypress in the fairways, and then you have a more defined tunnel, I think we’re going to see scoring feel more rewarding.”
It’s clear that a lot of effort was poured into the event, and the fans responded. Josh Edwards, a local from Prairieville, LA, described the course as “intense” and “a beast,” but as a spectator he was enjoying watching the pros tackle it. “This is cool. It’s just different. It’s a challenge for them. I think it’s awesome.” He, like the pros, also thinks some holes are a bit too tough — if the skinnier trees were removed, “you still have the natural beauty, and it’s good to have obstacles, but at the same time too many is too many.”
The Golf
Walker made one prediction on day one that turned out to be prophetic: “A power forehand is going to be a game changer. I think this course is going to be great for like a Holyn Handley.”
She wasn’t wrong. Handley won the tournament at 9-under over three rounds, having built the majority of that lead on day one with an FPO course record of 6-under. She shot a comfortable 1-under on day two, feeling early pressure from Rebecca Cox while Missy Gannon surged with a day-two 5-under, but ultimately Handley shut the door with a tidy 2-under on day three that started wobbly but finished clean. Valerie Mandujano and Lisa Fajkus ended the weekend tied for second at 1-under to round out the podium.
The trophy celebration featured a second line led by the Hacienda Brass Band that guided Handley and her fans to the stage, where she fielded questions from the DGPT’s Nate Perkins for the broadcast. Handley, surprised by the band, said afterward, “That was insane. I didn’t know there was going to be a band. I was kind of joking that they should have told me and I would have brought a trombone — I used to play in high school. I didn’t know what to do with my hands! I’m not much of a dancer.”
Handley, for her part, liked the course but offered some measured critique: “It’s still hard. It has a lot of teeth. I think the first four holes demonstrate that pretty well. I think the design will need a little bit of refining to really be good, because there’s that middle stretch where there’s just kind of a lot of pars. Some of the greens are a little difficult to access, so you see a lot of people just having to pitch up for par, so I think there’s some room for refinement. The par threes are gettable — they look easy because the rest of the course is so hard. It’s a course that makes you adapt and pick your lines and just fully commit.”
The MPO field ended in a bit more drama.
After Wysocki used day two to crack the course wide open, setting the MPO course record — capped by the sole eagle of the weekend on 13 — took his total to 12-under heading into the final round. Gannon Buhr, steady with a 3-under on day one and an impressive 5-under on day two, found himself four strokes back as the lead card teed off on Sunday.
Buhr chipped away throughout the final round, and Wysocki obliged with late bogeys on 15, after a short missed putt for par, and 16, after a controversial clearing of sticks that were in front of his lie. With two holes to play, the lead was one. On 17, Buhr drained a 90-footer for birdie while Wysocki converted his own circle’s edge birdie putt to hold serve. It came down to 18. Both players found the fairway and the landing zone, but Wysocki’s third shot clipped a tree and kicked into the rough, leaving him a circle-two putt for bogey. Buhr threw a masterful backhand up over the canopy and crashed the disc down inside circle one for a par look. Wysocki sank the 55′ bogey. Buhr tapped in. They were off to a playoff.
On the replay of hole one, Wysocki’s drive landed too far left to find a clean look at the landing zone between the ponds. Buhr found the same target easily. Wysocki launched over the trees and the water but found the pond by the basket. After a ruling with the spotter confirmed the disc hadn’t crossed in bounds on the basket side, Wysocki faced a jump putt from outside circle two to stay alive. It sailed over the basket. Buhr tapped in for par. Cue the brass band.
No MPO player had ever won back-to-back tournaments to open the tour, and Wysocki ran out of gas when it mattered most. The crowd was enormous and passionate throughout — Ohn Scoggins, who teed off at 9:00 AM Friday, was still there signing discs and talking to fans following the close of MPO play at around 6:30 that evening. “As we can see from this turnout this week,” said Koling, “the people are here. They’re responding.”
Buhr, who stayed well after dark snapping pictures and signing discs, put it simply: “I think the course has a ton of potential, and that’s why it keeps me hopeful. And the other part is the fans are amazing here. They came out really strong.”
Even Ricky Wysocki, whose day ended in heartbreak at the hands of Buhr once more, stopped to sign a young fan’s disc as he made his way back to the players’ area.
There was a lot of speculation and course concerns headed into the weekend. But with an instant classic finish in MPO and a superb turnout from the fans in the first year of the event, the Big Easy Open might just be a new favorite of the tour.
