Originally published at: https://discgolf.ultiworld.com/2021/06/21/ultiworld-disc-golf-fpo-power-rankings-us-edition-pre-worlds-2021/
Photo: DGPT
It’s that time of year again. Time for the World Championship. Players and fans alike are champing at the bit after two long years building up to this event. The courses look good and they’re playing hard. The conditions will test the competitors physically and mentally. The competition will be stiff. Five-time champ Paige Pierce is on a tear and is unquestionably the favorite to win, but the field is deep. Catrina Allen is on the hunt for her second Worlds title and playing great golf this year. Hailey King is well-rested and has all the tools to conquer Mulligan’s Creek and The Fort. Kona Panis is always right there at the top of the leaderboard, and rookie Ella Hansen is out to prove that her recent run of play is the new norm.
Moreso than in MPO, we’ll truly miss the absent Europeans: Eveliina Salonen, Henna Blomroos, Lykke Lorentzen, Heidi Laine, Keiti Tätte, etc. etc. Fortunately, 2019 USWDGC champion Kristin Tattar sucessfull navigated her way out of the Schengen Area and is on the ground in Ogden. It simply wouldn’t be right if the field was entirely without international representation.
They’re ready to play. We’ve got ’em ranked. Who else is in our top 25? Here’s how they stack up heading into the Pro Worlds.
Note: while COVID travel restrictions remain in place, this list considers players based in America. We will break out an international top 10 once the season gets underway across the pond.
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 second regular season ranking, staff considered 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. their super subjective vibes, gut feelings, and premonitions heading into the Pro Worlds.
FPO Power Rankings
Full breakdowns for each player continue below.
1. Paige Pierce is back to winning everything. The five-time world champion has won five straight tournaments and shows no signs of slowing down. In the 15 rounds since returning from Hawai’i, Pierce has averaged 999-rated golf and pulled her overall player rating up nine points to 985, 12 points clear of Eveliina Salonen (who has run the table for three straight on the Prodigy Disc Pro Tour in Finland) and 16 north of Catrina Allen. Pierce just won the Utah Open by nine strokes. How do you bet against her at Worlds?
2. Catrina Allen remains atop the DGPT points standings and is second on the PDGA National Tour. The 2014 world champion continues to have an excellent season and hasn’t missed the top 5 since WACO. Over her last three events, Allen leads the field in circle 2 putting and has connected on 34% of her attempts between 10-20 meters (16/47). She’s always dangerous off the tee, and when she finds her stroke from circle 1, like she did in Jonesboro and Stockton, she’s neck-and-neck with Pierce. As Josh Mansfield noted recently on the UpShot: Allen lost by nine at the Utah Open, the exact number of strokes lost to Pierce from inside C1.
3. Hailey King has two wins on the PDGA National Tour and leads the NT points series. Since picking up her first big win in Tyler, TX, she won the DDO, finished second at the USWDGC, tied for third at the Portland Open, and only missed the podium once at the Masters Cup, where she finished in sixth place. Her average finish beginning with Texas States is 3.67, third best behind Allen (2.55) and Pierce (2.57) over that same span. At this point in the season, King has firmly entrenched herself in the #3 spot. Heading into the World Championships, it’s worth recalling the last time King played a tournament on a similar two-course setup at the 2020 Green Mountain Championship. There she lost by two strokes to Pierce but was 15 clear of third-place finisher Sarah Hokom and excelled in the alternating wooded/open course setup.
4. Kona Star Panis raised her player rating another seven points with the most recent update to 941. Only once has she finished outside the top 8 this season and her average finish is 5.27 when you drop her 26th place finish at the Texas State Disc Golf Championship. Panis has already doubled her tournament winnings from 2020. Her work ethic and consistency is paying off. I want to see Kona take the next step and finish in the top 5 more regularly. She clearly has the talent and the drive to do it, she just needs to dial in the putt.
5. Ella Hansen can bomb. By her reckoning, only Paige Pierce has more distance off the tee. That gives her a huge advantage in a sport where you drive for dough. Hansen has two podium finishes in her last five tries and only missed the top 10 once in that same span at the Masters Cup. Anyone can be forgiven for a poor first showing at DeLa. I think that this coming week in Ogden will give us a true measure of where she stands. Can she turn in five consecutive good scorecards? Will she be prepared to play two wildly different tracks? I tend to think that her ultimate background will provide her with the physical endurance to handle the conditions, and her power will help combat the effects of playing at altitude.
6. Jessica Weese has finished on the podium four times this season, has nine top 10s, and ranks in the top 10 for every UDisc statistical category except putting. She remains one of the best two-way players on tour, but needs to find her mojo on the green. That said, her confidence should be high heading into Worlds, she typically plays well in Utah. Weese won the Utah Open in 2019 and finished in second place in 2017 and 2018.
7. Missy Gannon would be ranked higher if not for her two most recent tournaments. She hadn’t missed the top 10 at all this season until the Masters Cup (11) and the Portland Open (19), and her average finish before those events was fifth best on tour at 5.4. What stands out about these most recent events is how much Gannon relies on the putter. Her C1X putting saved her at DeLa, where she only missed the top 10 by one stroke and converted 81% of her putts inside the circle. However, Gannon only converted 56% of her C1X putts at the Portland Open, which put her nine strokes out of the three-way tie for ninth. Portland was clearly an aberration, clocking in 20 points shy of her season average, so I expect her to bounce back at Worlds.
8. Lisa Fajkus doesn’t garner enough attention. Some media types have labeled her a member of the old guard, but she wields the veteran mantle like Excalibur. Fajkus hasn’t missed cash yet this season in 16 events. She has four wins including a DGPT Silver Series tournament, a cash-infused, off-week B-tier, and early season regional A- and B-tiers. Generally speaking, tournaments that require extra distance off the tee are more likely to be her undoing, especially those set up on traditional golf courses, but she also won at Goat Hill and finished fifth at the OTB Open, so perhaps its more of a mixed bag. She only finished one stroke behind Pierce and Allen at Mulligan’s Creek during the Utah Open, but navigated the woods at The Fort less well. She’s a good technical player and I expect her to score better at The Fort this week.
9. Juliana Korver is hitting the road for the rest of the year, and literally everyone is stoked. No one is not stoked. Korver’s rating jumped +25 to 950 with the last update! There are only 11 women in the world currently rated 950 or higher. Everyone knows about her five world titles, but did you know that she was rated above 950 for all but three updates between April 2000-April 2007? In 2002 she was 968 rated. I asked Ultiworld Statistician Aaron Howard for the modern equivalent of 968 in 2002 adjusted for ratings inflation. It would fall somewhere between 985-990 today. Suffice it to say that Korver is playing below her ceiling. If she can bump her putting percentage by 10 points, she’ll be in the 960 club.
10. Ohn Scoggins has finished on the podium twice, in the top 10 seven times, and outside the top 10 three times. Really, the only tournament she wants another crack at is the USWDGC, where she finished in 17th place. Scoggins has been trending upward since then finishing 11th, 7th, and 4th in her last three tournaments. She leads the tour in C1X putting at 84% and is a top 10 C2 putter.
11. Valerie Mandujano just won the PDGA Mixed Doubles title with Mason Ford, which has to feel good. While she has yet to podium at an Elite Series event, she did just take home third place at the Utah Open where the field was of similar strength. As I wrote for the staff picks, Mandujano had the second-best cumulative score at Fort (124), and her putter was finding the bottom of the basket at a higher rate than her season averages from both C1 and C2.
12. Maria Oliva is on Hailey King’s shortlist of players to watch. Watch we did at DeLa, where she bagged her best Elite Series finish this year (7th) and her second top 10 after the DDO. She performed well under lead card, CCDG pressure, and only finished one stroke behind her buddy King and three strokes off the podium.
13. Kristin Tattar is on this list despite not playing a qualifying tournament because I ranked her fifth on my ballot. No way I leave her out of our pre-Worlds ranking. Because I’m the only one who picked her, she falls to 13. What we know: she’s been training hard in Estonia, her rating is up two points to 962 with the most recent update, she’s won all five of her COVID C-tiers. That said, it’s hard to predict how she fares in Utah. Ultiworld reported that the heat and altitude took a pretty serious toll on her during her first practice day. Fingers crossed she acclimated to the conditions.
14. Holly Finley hadn’t finished worse than 12th since the LVC until the Portland Open, where she took 24th. Drop that finish and she most certainly ranks higher here. What’s really important is that she bounced back with a 5th place finish at the Utah Open. Her ability to assess what went wrong, adjust her game accordingly, and bury the past demonstrates a strong mental game, perfect for a grueling, five round world championship.
15. Madison Walker hanging out in the mid teens like she do. In her first five tournaments this season, Walker finished in 11th and 13th place exclusively. A 19th place showing at the Masters Cup broke the streak, not in a good way, but then she tied for 9th in Portland for her first top 10 of the season. There she was finding C2 in regulation at a 39% clip and converting 25% of those opportunities. The second-best scrambler on tour will see her short game put to the test in Utah and hopes to keep a hot hand on the green.
16. Sai Ananda is likely flying under the radar for most folks but could make some noise in Utah. She finished in 9th place at the USWDGC and the Portland Open, her first events on tour since the Las Vegas Challenge. In fact, she’s only played one other tournament this year, a Women’s Global Event in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, which she won handily by ten strokes.
17. Alexis Mandujano found the podium at an Elite Series event for the first time this season at the Masters Cup, tied with Juliana Korver and one stroke behind Catrina Allen. Penalty strokes at Mulligans and a suboptimal day on the greens during the final round of the Utah Open caused the forth-best circle 1 putter on tour to slip down the leaderboard at the Worlds warm-up. All told, her average finish at events scored by UDisc is 12th – a solid season so far.
18. Stacie Rawnsley broke through at the Vintage Open, where she was tied for the lead after the first round a finished in solo 7th. The newly minted member of Team Innova has been a stalwart on tour this season, and consistently finishes in the mid-teens. How’s this for consistency? Beginning with The Challenge at Goat Hill, here are her last six finishes: 12, 14, 15, 14, 14, 14.
19. Erika Stinchcomb hit a speed bump at the Masters Cup (26th) and performed slightly below expectations at the Portland Open (16th). Over a the five-event stretch preceding DeLa and the Rose City, Stinchcomb finished fifth at the Jonesboro Open and just outside of the top 10 at the other four events. I expect a return to form in Ogden.
20. Deann Carey picked up her first Silver Series victory at the Resistance Open one week after the Portland Open. She led the field in every major statistical category except parked percentage, and had a stellar weekend on the greens, converting 81% of her C1X putts and 27% from C2. Carey waltzed through the rain to a 15-stroke win.
21. Macie Walker won’t be at the World Championships and that’s a real shame. She continued her strong run of play back home in Tennessee and most recently bested Heather Young by nine at the State Championships. There she fired off a 987-rated final round to pull away from the field, the best round by rating on the weekend.
22. Heather Young will be at the World Championships and back on tour beginning with the Great Lakes Open in July. We’ve missed the cool-headed, hot-handed lefty, and her low ranking is entirely to do with her tour hiatus. Charlie Eisenhood thinks that putting could decide the World Championship this year, and Heather Young is the best all around putter on tour, with a killer scramble game to boot. Don’t forget, she took 3rd at the DDO, a longer track than Mulligans, and won the woodsier Mid-America Open in her last two starts on tour.
23. Sarah Hokom hasn’t played competitive golf since the DDO and that worries me. She has not fully recovered from her ulnar nerve impingement, which is causing loss of strength and grip issues in her throwing arm and hand. A healthy Hokom is a top 5 player on tour, and it is easy to forget how good a season she was having before the injury. She won the Vintage Open, finished 3rd at WACO and Jonesboro, and hadn’t missed the top 10 in five events.
24. Sami Keddington is back in the top 25 after an excellent performance the USWDGC, where she took 14th. Only two players rated in the high 800s finished in the top 20 in NorCal, Keddington and Leah Tsinajinnie (17th). The average player rating for the top 13 was 943, 58 points north of Keddington’s rating at the time. On top of that, she shot the fifth best round at Shady Oaks.
25. Vanessa Van Dyken is definitely underrated in our rankings. Excluding her first tournament of the year in Waco, where she finished 26th, she’s finished no worse than 16th since, tied for second at the Mid-America Open, and barely missed the top 10 at the USWDGC. She’ll need to improve upon her performance at the Utah Open, particularly at The Fort—where she only notched a single birdie over two rounds—if she wants to keep the current streak alive.