Originally published at: https://discgolf.ultiworld.com/2021/10/05/ultiworld-disc-golf-fpo-power-rankings-us-edition-october-5-2021/
Coverage of the 2021 USDGC and TPWDGC is presented by Skybreed Discs.
And with that, the regular season has come to a close. Hailey King goes back-to-back in Vermont and Tennessee, catapulting her to the top of our rankings. King’s wins preserve a curious trend dating back to the Great Lakes Open. Over the last eight elite series events we’ve crowned four different champions, each of whom won their brace consecutively. Kristin Tattar (15) took down the GLO and the Preserve Championship. Paige Pierce (4) won the Ledgestone Insurance Open and the Idlewild Open. Catrina Allen (2) was victorious at the Delaware Disc Golf Challenge and the MVP Open. Now King does the double at the Green Mountain Championship and Music City Open. Missy Gannon (5) is the only one-off winner from the second half of the season, taking home the W at the Des Moines Challenge in early July, and Sarah Hokom (3) is the only player in the top 5 without an elite series win this year. Despite the relatively unsurprising list of champions and totally predictable top 5, it seems like it is anyone’s game heading into the Throw Pink Women’s Disc Golf Championship and the DGPT Tour Championship. A prestigious championship, big bucks, and the race for Player of the Year hang in the balance.
They’re ready to play. We’ve got ’em ranked. Read on to see who else made our top 25 heading into the TPWDGC.
Methodology: We combine an algorithmic objective ranking with subjective ballots submitted by UWDG staff. The algorithm uses a standardized scoring model to compare elite events, awards competition and cash bonuses, and features a decay function that gradually phases out past results. For the subjective ranking, staff consider the following criteria: 1. results from the 2021 Elite and Silver Series events, 2. UDisc and PDGA statistical measures, 3. the previous UWDG Power Rankings, and 4. how well players pass the eye test (aka “film study”).
FPO Power Rankings
Full breakdowns for each player continue below.
1. Hailey King won the DGPT and the PDGA National Tour season finales at the Green Mountain Championship and Music City Open. She now has four elite series victories in 2021, second best behind Paige Pierce (5). Rolling with King is like riding the Jersey Devil Coaster, “the world’s tallest, fastest, and longest single rail [roller] coaster.” The highs are high, the lows are low. You’re upside down before you know it then right side up again. Two quick data points: 1. At the GMC King averaged 992 rated golf over four rounds (excellent). Round 2: 937 (clunk). Round 3: 1058 (B-A-N-A-N-A-S). That’s a 121-point swing for those of you keeping track at home. 2. At the MCO King rang up two, round-ending triple bogeys, the first on Thursday at Cedar Hill and on the second on Saturday at Mill Ridge. But she made the necessary corrections on Friday and Sunday, carding the lone eagle on hole 18 at Cedar Hill, and laying up for the easy par on the 72nd hole at Mill Ridge. Again, for those of you keeping track at home, that’s an eight-stroke difference. In other words, when King finds hole-to-hole and round-to-round consistency, well, you’ve got yourself a new World #1.
2. Catrina Allen preceded King with back-to-back Elite Series wins at the Delaware Disc Golf Challenge and the MVP Open. She wrapped the regular season with consecutive fourth place finishes at the GMC and MCO, which secured second place in both the DGPT and National Tour points series. Though she missed the top spots (by a mere 4 points in the NT race!), Allen boasts the best cumulative points total for the combined tours (1089.75), besting Pierce (994) by 95.75 points and King (959.25) by 130.5. Notable (but predictable) stat: all of her tour wins required a 71% or better C1X conversion rate (Jonesboro – 71%, DDGC – 88%, MVPO – 74%). Notably, achieving that benchmark only resulted in a victory 50% of the time (2nd OTB – 74%, 5th Des Moines Challenge – 71%, 4th Idlewild – 71%), and there is a glaring exception to the rule. At the World Championship Allen only converted 66% of her C1X putts. What this demonstrates to me is that 70% C1X putting could be regarded as the low-end requirement for her to win tournaments.
3. Sarah Hokom nearly forced a playoff with King at the GMC and put the pressure on King again down the stretch at the MCO. She’s clearly been the third-best player since the tour shifted to the Northeast, and with the odd exception of her T-7 at the MVPO, Hokom hasn’t missed the podium since August. (I say odd because she has one win and two second-place finishes at the event since its name change in 2018.) I’ve been really impressed with Hokom’s circle one putting of late. Her season average from C1X is 73%, good for 10th best on tour, but she turned in stellar performances of 83% and 84% at the two season finales. Honestly, I was shocked when her bid to force the playoff in Vermont came up short. I will not be shocked if she takes the top spot at either the Throw Pink Women’s Disc Golf Championship or the DGPT Tour Championship.
4. Paige Pierce hasn’t won a stroke play tournament since August when she capped back-to-back dubs at the Ledgestone Insurance Open and the Idlewild Open. Good things really do come in pairs, I guess. Not to be outdone in the northeast, Pierce did manage to take home the biggest paycheck of the swing when she won the inaugural DGPT Match Play Championship. Pierce barely made the cut at the MCO after a wild weekend all around: she finished 13th in C2 in regulation, 15th in fairway hits, parked percentage, and C1 in regulation, and 18th in C1X putting. But the stats I’ve been watching all season are scramble percentage and OB rate. As we all know, an upshot doomed her World Championship bid, but scrambling has been her Achilles heel all season. She only saves par 35% of the time when out of position, ranking her 18th on tour. She is top 5 in six of the major categories and ninth in C1X putting. She ranks 45th (!) in OB rate. To repeat at Winthrop this week she will need to keep her disc between the ropes and scramble more effectively.
5. Missy Gannon had the fourth highest combined DGPT and NT points total this season, finishing with 938. The top five in our power rankings are the only players to finish above 900 total points. Gannon is the only player not named King, Allen, Pierce, or Tattar to win an Elite Series event in the second half of the season, and she recently forced a two-hole playoff with Pierce at the DGPT Match Play Championship. Her $5K payday at the invitational event was her largest so far this season. Speaking of the greenbacks, here’s how her tournament earnings pre- and post-Worlds compare: 1. Las Vegas Challenge through the Portland Open (12 events): $9,050; 2. DMC through MCO (10 events): $21,282. Money ain’t everything, but doubling your tour earnings in the second half of the year is no small thing.
6. Heather Young hasn’t missed the top 10 since Worlds, but she hasn’t quite found second gear either. Her average finish over the last six events is exactly 7, which includes four seventh-place results, one fifth, and one ninth. In watching her most recent filmed rounds, it seems to me that she is especially committed to developing her two-way (backhand/forehand) game, perhaps at the expense of immediate results. We know that she’s going to make her putts and get up and down when she’s out of position. Remember, she tied for third place at the 2020 Women’s National Championship.
7. Though Kona Star Panis hasn’t doubled down in the wins column since her breakout performance at the Waco Annual Charity Open, 2021 is easily her best season to date. Panis finished seventh in the DGPT points series and third on the National Tour. She’s won $18,390 on tour, which is $3,797 more than she earned between 2017, when she turned pro, and 2020. Panis’s rating is up 18 points to her career high 944. Sure, she’s had her fair share of woes on the putting green this year, but she also had the gumption to switch things up mid season in an attempt to raise her average.
8. Welcome back to the top 10 Jessica Weese. Eighth position seems like the perfect fit for a player who finished sixth in DGPT points and tenth on the National Tour. Last month I wrote that Weese has been a bit up and down this year. The description continues to hold true: 7th at DDGC, 21st at MVPO, 5th at GMC, 12th at MCO. Of late, her 10m putting has been pretty good, relatively speaking, but her C2 rate is letting her down. Over the last four events Weese averaged 67% from C1X, nine points better than her season average, but only 4% (3/71) from C2, three points worse than her season average. In those same four tournaments, one or more made C2 putt correlates with a top 10 finish. In the two tournaments when When she hasn’t found the bottom of the basket, she misses the top 10.
9. Will Valerie Mandujano tour more next season? That’s the big question. Her results at elite series events this year have been good, overall, but it seems as though she hasn’t quite found her sea legs. The eleventh-highest rated woman in the world has seven top 10 finishes on tour but zero in the top 3; she hasn’t missed the top 20, but her average finish when she misses the top 10 is 16th. That said, Mandujano hasn’t been denied the winner’s circle, picking up three regional A-tiers and the Mixed Doubles title at Worlds. In her last two starts, she finished 4th at Ledgestone and 5th at the MCO.
10. I love watching Macie Velediaz throw and hope that she, too, tours more in 2021. The positives: with a mere five elite series events under her belt this year, she lays claim to the fifth highest birdie percentage. Velediaz also ranks third in fairway hits and C1 in regulation, fourth in parked percentage, and seventh in C2 in regulation. Velediaz has two, third-place finishes at elite series events. The negatives: her bogey percentage is only 1 percentage point shy of her birdie rate, her short game needs work, and she finds OB too often. In my estimation, she’s a top 5 lock if she can raise her C1X putting percentage to 70%.
11. Alexis Mandujano would be a top 10 player in she played more tournaments. She finished in the top ten 9 times in 14 attempts at Elite Series tournaments and majors this year, including a sixth place finish at the Music City Open (her first tour stop since Idlewild). Mandujano’s stat line is remarkably similar to Missy Gannon’s ledger—she connects on 80% of her C1X putts and 16% from C2—but the disparity between driving and putting is greater. When she finds the center cut, she contends, but Mandujano will need to up her accuracy off the tee in Rock Hill. She ranks 40th in fairway hits, 42nd in C2 in regulation, and 38th in OB rate.
12. Lisa Fajkus missed the cut at the MCO after two quality performances on the northeast swing. She wants another crack at Cedar Hill and the final three holes at Mill Ridge. If she played her first round at Cedar Hill like the second, she makes the cut. If Fajkus plays one stroke better at Cedar and pars out on 16-17-18 at Mill Ridge she makes the cut. She’ll have the fire in her belly headed into the TPC.
13. Despite tweaking her back during a practice round at the Tim Selinske U.S. Master’s Championship, Ohn Scoggins still managed a third place showing in Missouri. She went into the final 9 with a one-stroke lead over the eventual champion Jen Allen, but didn’t have her best stuff to hold on for the W and missed a playoff by one stroke. No matter, Scoggins bounced back with a playoff win of her own back in California at the San Francisco Safari, where she took down Holyn Handley in extra innings.
14. Ella Hansen is in the same camp as the Mandujano sisters and Velediaz. Will she or won’t she tour more extensively in 2022? Hansen boasts elite distance and strong competitive mindset that set her up well for success. I am really curious to see how she plays at Winthrop. We know that she can air it out with the best of them, but can she keep it between the ropes? Hansen’s worst performances have come on courses with extensive OB and hazards.
15. Kristin Tattar tried to make it back to the States for the TPWDGC, but was denied departure by customs and border patrol despite spending more than two weeks outside the Schengen Area. Such a shame. Tattar kicked off the back-to-back victory trend in FPO back in July when she won the Great Lakes Open and the Preserve Championship. Tattar was my pick to win this weekend. Her accuracy off the tee is unsurpassed, and that’s the key to success in Rock Hill.
16. Erica Johnson followed up her 23rd place finish at the MVPO with an 11-spot at the GMC, bumping her up nine spots in our rankings. The key to her success in Vermont was a top notch scramble game—4th best in the field—quality putting, and a low OB rate. That’s it for Johnson on tour, so #16 will invariably be her high water mark for the 2021 season.
17. Maria Oliva turned in a real stinker at the GMC, where she finished in 30th place and missed the cut, but otherwise continues to play better than her position here suggests. She tied for 12th at the MVPO and took solo 11th at the MCO. Oliva is like Velediaz in that she gives away too many strokes relative to her birdie rate and finds OB too often, but her upside is tremendous.
18. Juliana Korver will be back in the booth for the Throw Pink Championship. She and Hannah McBeth were a great duo last year – number 1 in the post USDGC/USWDGC media power rankings. Tha said, while I respect her decision, I really wanted to see her compete this weekend. Korver is the only woman ever to cash at the USDGC and has the tee to green game to contend on the ropes course. Fortunately, she is registered for the DGPT Tour Championship, so we’ll see her test her mettle in Charlotte.
19. Ellen Widboom notched her best finish on the elite series in Delaware (4th) but has been on a downward slide since: 11th at Maple Hill, 15th in Vermont, and 18th in Nashville, where she missed the cut by one stroke. Though Widboom qualified for the Championship in Rock Hill, she isn’t listed among the registered competitors. We may have seen our last of Widboomshakalaka on tour this season.
20. Rebecca Cox drops ten spots after missing the top 10 at every event on the northeast swing and missing the cut at the MCO, where she finished tied for 23rd. Putting continues to be her bugaboo, and she is on pace to turn in her worst season average to date since 2017. Cox is only connecting on 47% of her C1X putts. That said, she ranks 15th in C1 in regulation and 16th in C2 in regulation. It’s hard not to view her as a contender based on those numbers, and I’m rooting for her to find her stroke on the green.
21. Simply put, Natalie Ryan is ranked too low. In her last three elite series events she took 12th at the MVPO, 10th at the GMC, and 13th at the MCO. This past weekend Ryan posted her first 1000-rated round at the Carolina Clash and finished tied for second with Holly Finley. Notably, she beat Gannon by two strokes, Allen by six, and Fajkus by seven.
22. Erika Stinchcomb had a rough go from late May through mid August. In five events beginning with the Masters Cup and ending with Idlewild, her average finish was 25th. Stinchcomb has turned things around of late and hasn’t missed the top 20 since. She nabbed eighth at the GMC, her best result and first top 10 since Jonesboro.
23. Tiger Borth showed up in a major way at the MVPO, where she took fifth, and kept the hot hand in Vermont, where she finished 12th. Nashville had her number, though. So which Borth shows up at the TPWGDC? Northeast or Nashville?
24. For my money, Deann Carey is the FPO breakout player of the year. I noticed her Insta handle popping up more frequently earlier this season, but her results on the course beginning with her strong showing in Oregon have me paying attention. I’m not sure what configuration of Hornet’s Nest was used this past weekend at the Carolina Clash, but Carey shot 64-63-61 en route to the A-tier title. The hot round from last year’s DGPT Tour Championship was a 982-rated 64. Carey’s final round 61 clocked in at 985.
25. We got a taste of Alex Benson’s game during first round coverage of the Green Mountain Championship when she was featured on the live coverage. Though she looked a little jittery to be on camera, she clearly possesses a strong two-way game and a solid putting stroke. Vermont’s top rated pro (by nearly 100 points) looks to repeat her Delaware success this weekend in South Carolina.