Disc golf has had a problem all along in that it developed upside-down. Frisbee sports developed from a marketing idea at Wham-O that the Frisbee could be transitioned from the sales boom and bust that is the toy market to the sporting goods market, which offered more stable long-term sales for the company. To do that, Wham-O created the International Frisbee Association (paid for out of the Wham-O marketing budget) and propped up a bunch of events financially where professional Frisbee players (many of them on the IFA payroll) would compete for Wham-O's money. From the outside, it looked like a legitimate sports phenomenon. In reality it was a house of cards balanced on Wham-O's checkbook.
We come from that. The original PDGA was set up just like the IFA because it was set up by the same guy who created the IFA. Ed Headrick was the marketing guy behind the IFA and the professional Frisbee players he propped up with IFA events were the players he brought in to play in the early PDGA events. Because of that, there was "professional" disc golf before there was amateur disc golf. Upside-down.
So, what happened? Well you had cool things like the $50,000 Huntington Beach tournament in 1979, but the model was not sustainable. Wham-O was bought out, the new company had no interest in throwing money at Frisbee freaks, the IFA was shut down and Frisbee sports had to find a new path without their cash cow.
Ed Headrick realized the gig was up and turned the PDGA over to the players. Those players were the same IFA guys that just had the rug pulled out from underneath them. The course they set the PDGA on, the course disc golf is still following, was to go on like disc golf was a viable professional sport and wait for the next cash cow to come along. The fact that disc golf wasn't then and isn't now a viable professional sport didn't and doesn't seem to matter. That was in '83-'84, somewhere around there. So for the last 27 or 28 years we have been having this same ridiculous conversation that we are "right there," and any second now disc golf is going to hit the big time on somebody else's money.
The problem with that is A) it's not happening and B) players buy into the dream and get disillusioned when it doesn't happen. It's been the ongoing cycle, and it's nothing new. It might seem worse now, but it's nothing new. It's been going on for almost 30 years now.
The USDGC is a smaller version of the same thing the IFA was. It's a money suckhole propped up on Innova's checkbook. They obviously bit down on the dream when they started it and thought that Coke or some other big $$$ company would have picked the event up off their checkbook by now. It didn't happen. Now they are re-thinking the event and their financial commitment to it, and everyone is screaming that they are taking something away from us. What it really shows is that we were not nearly ready for it when they gave it to us, and the dream is still as far away as it was 27 years ago.
The whole idea of disc golf sustaining a touring group of professional players is absurd. The only reason people don't see it as absurd is because it's been going on for so long. When you really look at the money, it's not there. Not anywhere close. We have a long, long way to go before we can support touring pros. It sucks if you are really good and have bit down on the PDGA dream, but the reality is that it's a mirage.
