Originally published at: https://discgolf.ultiworld.com/2021/02/23/ultiworld-disc-golf-mpo-power-rankings-us-edition-2021-preseason/
2020 Memorial Championship at Fountain Hills. Photo: Alyssa Van Lanen – DGPT
The start of a new season is always exciting. 2021 brings with it a renewed sense of optimism. We hope that the tour will proceed without interruption. We hope that COVID vaccinations continue to accelerate so that American and European players can compete together again. We hope that the return of professional golf helps us all muddle through the ragged end of the pandemic.
What will we see on the course in 2021? Continued dominance by the biggest names? Or will the young guns and rising stars shake things up? The recent trend toward increased parity at the top of the leaderboard has been exciting to watch. Last season featured some surprise winners and several players claiming victory from the chase card. Who will win their first Elite Series event this year? Will we see someone from the third card take home a title? It’s anyone’s guess for two more days until the season gets underway in Vegas.
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 preseason ranking, staff and subscribers considered the following criteria: 1. the results from the most recent Elite Series events, the Jonesboro Open, the USDGC/WNC, and the DGPT Tour Championship, 2. the 2020 UWDG World Rankings, and 3. their super subjective vibes, gut feelings, and premonitions heading into the new season.
Full breakdowns for each player continue below.
1. Calvin Heimburg. Ultiworld Disc Golf’s 2020 player of the year led the tour in parked percentage and Circle 1 in regulation last year. Boasting 85% C1X putting and 32% C2 putting, Heimburg converts a lot of birdie looks. He nailed a comebacker from circle’s edge to force a playoff with Paul McBeth at the DGPT All-Stars event before dunking his drive on hole 1 in the drink. Whatever. We’re talking about practice. Heimburg will compete for the top spot at every event in 2020.
2. Richard Wysocki. The top rated disc golfer in the world is on a mission to resume his winning ways. Though he won a single Elite Series event in 2020, the Ledgestone Insurance Open, he never finished worse than fourth after the restart and picked up four additional A-tier wins during that span. Wysocki remains the number one putter on tour, which makes him an especially tough competitor to beat 1v1 down the stretch.
3. Paul McBeth. He must have gotten wind of his 3-spot in our preseason ranking because he looked like the no. 1 player in the world at the DGPT All-Stars event.1 His putter was on fire: 100% C1X and 43% C2 putting. Again, we’re talking about practice, but those numbers are scary. 2015 scary.
4. Chris Dickerson. The USDGC champ is 2/2 at regional events in Tennessee in 2021, as expected. It seemed like his first go at Fountain Hills was going to be a bit tepid, but his bogey-free, 5-under par tally in the final 9 —7-under over the last 12—was the best in the field. Watching him figure things out on the fly was impressive.
5. Eagle McMahon. 56% C1 in regulation at the All-Stars event during the singles round, but the putter looked a little bit rusty, only 79% from C1X and 0% from C2. Weird as it sounds, I think that bodes well for the young bird. He was 12 percentage points clear of Kevin Jones and 23 percentage points north of McBeth at finding the 10m circle. The putter is bound to come around.
6. Kevin Jones. Will 2021 be the year Jones finds a bit more consistency? He picked up huge wins at the Green Mountain Championship and the DGPT Tour Championship, but he also finished 33rd at the Memorial and 25th at the USDGC. Or is he destined to be a mercurial gunslinger, the guy who can get hot and take it down any weekend, but whiplashes in and out of the top 10 with regularity. One thing we can say with confidence: KJUSA is fun to watch.
7. Garrett Gurthie. The Florida bomber and purveyor of handcrafted jerky turned it on at the end of 2020. Forget about the Music City Open. Fifth at the MVPO, first at Maine States, third at Jonesboro, fifth at USDGC. While his putting is liable to sink the ship, his patented Sonic scramble balances this shortcoming out to some extent.
8. Adam Hammes. Two A-tiers in the desert, two wins. Just like 2020. Hammes has all the skills to be a top five player, he just needs to master the mental game. Despite this admitted shortcoming, he joined the illustrious 1040 club in February. Truth is, Hammes is so good that it’s sometimes easy to forget that his first full season on tour was 2019.
9. Paul Ulibarri. Take a glance at Uli’s UDisc stats or PDGA player page and you won’t see anything truly eye-popping, except maybe his penchant to play more events than any other touring pro. But here he is at no. 8 in our rankings. Sure, his sixth place finish at the Jonesboro Open and seventh place finish at the USDGC have a lot to do with this, but what really propels him up this list is what the sporting types call intangibles. He’s the ultimate competitor, and you can never count him out.
10. James Conrad. Expectations are high for the 2019 USDGC champion. Conrad is a reps and rhythm player who typically finds his best form in second half of the season, but he has to be feeling some pressure to come out of the gates with a head of steam after making the move to MVP. He didn’t look wholly comfortable with the new discs in Arizona.
11. Kyle Klein. The PDGA Rookie of the Year had an up and down season, but that’s to be expected of a first year pro. He finished fourth at the MVP Open, followed up that performance with a pair of 21st place finishes at the Maine State Championships and the Jonesboro Open, and then finished fifth at the USDGC. He showed poise under pressure and handled the spotlight well at Maple Hill and Winthrop Gold.
12. Nikko Locastro. He picked up a big win at The Preserve Championship and finished in the top 10 at four other DGPT events. In his second year with Westside Discs, he should be feeling pretty good about his disc arsenal this year. That said, he withdrew from the DGPT All-Stars event due to injury, so we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out at the start of the new season.
13. Austin Hannum. The Oklahoman only placed in the top 10 at one Elite Series Event in 2020, the Ledgestone Insurance Open, and his player rating has been in a bit of a holding pattern since March of 2019, but when I watch him play, he looks the real deal. His UDisc stats reveal a solid tee to green game. Putting was his weakness in 2020, though it’s not far off. Will he find the next level with his new sponsor Prodigy?
14. Ezra Aderhold. So. Much. Hype. Aderhold is the prospect everyone was after in the offseason. In approximately a year and a half, he’s improved his rating by 57 points from 959 in May 2019 to 1016 in December 2020. The work ethic is there. The attention to detail is there. The high ceiling is there. Will he continue his meteoric rise?
15. Scott Withers. Fifteenth position seems too low for a 1040-rated golfer. He wins virtually everything in his home state of Oregon and has some quality finishes at big events in the past few years. The problem is that he just hasn’t hit enough of those big events to really break through. That could all change in 2021. Withers is registered for five Elite Series events through June, so it seems we’ll finally get to take the real measure of his game.
16. Anthony Barela. He’s played two tournaments so far in 2021 and took third place at each of them. But his bottom-of-the-podium finishes don’t tell the full story. Barela’s lowest rating over five rounds is 1036 and he’s averaging 1045-rated golf overall. Consistently excellent so far, and consistency is key for the lanky bomber from AZ.
17. Emerson Keith. People expected big things after Keith finished in third place at the 2019 World Championships in Peoria. He ranked 10th in DGPT Tour Points in 2020 and was generally solid at Elite Series events. He ranked third in scramble percentage in 2020, and the rest of his tee-to-green statistics fall between 11-18. What does that mean? If he can connect on a few more putts this year, he’ll be in the mix on the regular.
18. Eric Oakley. His rating isn’t climbing as fast as Ezra Aderhold’s, but it continues to steadily rise year after year. If past trends hold, he’ll hit the 1030 mark this season. For the most part, his stats rank about 25th best on tour. One would imagine that if he can raise his 51st-ranked scramble rate to the 25-line, he’ll make the jump into the 30s.
19. Philo Brathwaite. After a hot start to 2020, the road got a bit bumpier for Brathwaite following the restart. Still, his player rating sits at 1030, one point shy of his career high 1031, both achieved in 2020. Such a smooth and accurate thrower. Despite only possessing self-described “old man power,” Brathwaite ranked 21st in C1 in regulation and 18th in C2 in regulation last year. Another key factor to his success is a very low OB rate.
20. Drew Gibson. It’s the archer not the arrow, right? But, like, what if the arrow helps Gibson improve his putting percentage by 5 percent? They guy’s a top 10 thrower from distance. If he can dial in the short game just a tiny bit more, he’ll move up at least 10 spots in our rankings.
21. Jeremy Koling. Big Jerm runs hot and cold. Seventh place at the Memorial followed by 42nd at WACO (where he’s won twice!). Seventh at Idlewild followed by 30th at Ledgestone followed by 29th at the GMC followed by eighth at the MVP Open. Despite the roller coaster ride, Koling has won more Elite Series Events and Majors than most professional disc golfers. Kind of like his buddy Uli, you just can’t count him out.
22. Noah Meintsma. Meintsma is another good thrower who comes up just short on the putting green. To truly be competitive on tour, you need to convert at least 80% of your C1X putts. 77% just doesn’t cut it. But Meintsma has a high ceiling. When everything is clicking he takes fifth at the Dynamic Discs Open, 11th at the Memorial, 12th at the MVP Open.
23. Gavin Rathbun. Okay. I’ll be honest. The Illinois pro snuck up on me. Rathbun has upped his game considerably over the past two years. He’s currently 1028 rated. He won two A-tiers last year and four B-tiers in 2020. He can throw a mile and a half. And he’s still really young. His average finish on the DGPT circuit last year was 24th.
24. Andrew Presnell. AP won 14 tournaments last year, and his worst finish at a DGPT event was 30th. He also led the tour in fairway hits. Number 1. That’s better than a lot of guys ranked higher than him on this list. It seems to me like Presnell is perennially underrated. If I had to nitpick his game, C2 putting is the main weakness. The guy was sixth best at hitting C2 in regulation in 2020 but only converted 16% of those looks.
25. Colten Montgomery. He seized the day last April in Waco by firing off a 1078-rated final round to win the COVID-shortened event from the chase card. The rest of the season was up and down. More so than he would like. But his short game improved considerably from 2019 to 2020: Montgomery’s scramble rate improved by 8 percent, C1X putting by 6 percent, and his C2 putting by 4 percent.
Save for his drive on hole 1 during tough shot doubles. ↩