Man, it's been seven weeks without writing anything. You guys must think I gave up on this thing. Nah. There has been a lot going on in the World of Disc Golf in the past couple of months. Somehow I find myself in the middle of everything. I need a staff. ;)

Let's run down the list of what's going on.

-Pro Worlds is on the way! It sounds like everything is under control in Houston for this year's Pro World Championships. With probably the least amount of time to prepare for the event in history, the staff seems to be rolling along nicely. It's going to be hot, and it looks like it might be under-attended. If you always wanted to finish in the top 100 at Pro Worlds then it looks like this will be a good year to do it!

-Even closer on the calendar is the 2002 Am Worlds. Most of Florida came to the aid of TD Keith Johnson, who will put his tournament know-how to good use, ensuring big fun on challenging courses. This should be a big success.

-DiscTV is now about ten shows into it's first season. I would say that the show has been successful so far. I can't believe these guys can pull it off every week. They spend Friday thru Sunday at a tournament (usually the tournament isn't near their home base in Chicago) then head into the studio on Monday and have an entire show on the air four days later.... pretty impressive I think. They got the show on a satellite station so that just about anybody can see it (wow) and now they are working on getting some sponsorship. I mean it's only three guys doing all this every week. I'm very impressed and I hope that they can keep up the pace for the whole season.

-The PDGA is a whirlwind of activity. You wouldn't believe the stuff that has to be done by these guys! It's been crazy. We've had to do a lot of legal stuff that just has to be done if we really want the organization to grow. Guru and Lori have been extremely busy at the office. Pat Govang continues to work night and day for the PDGA. If he wasn't a volunteer we couldn't afford to have him working for us. Pat is the best thing disc golf has going for it right now and he came along just when we needed him. Thanks Pat. I, for one, appreciate the hard work. It makes me wish I could do more to help you out. All the other board members and committee volunteers are working hard too. I can barely keep up with all the emails.

-The growth of the sport seems to be taking our disc manufacturers to the limits of production. New molds, new plastics, everyone is buying more machinery... new disc companies, such as Gateway, are enjoying the expanded business from the growing market. Way to go Davey-Mac.... you just needed to stick with it! I really enjoyed helping Dave make his first discs and I even still have a few! Each company seems to have a little more money to spend on players. Some distributors sponsor players too. We've had some people asking if we'd like to play for them but we're still in love with Innova.

-We've seen a lot of new people giving it a try on tour. Some are making it, some had to pack it in. We do what we can to help the new guys along but it's still a weekly struggle to make the long drives, get the clothes washed, keep the Winnie running, and scrape up some cash. We all have great ideas on how to make stuff work but I'd pretty much have to quit playing to find the time to put plans into action. I'm not ready to quit... not by a long shot.

-Chuck Kennedy and staff have been working hard to bring the ratings system up to date... I think they're close to current! The numbers are smoothing out. With more data comes better accuracy. Soon the PDGA will put the ratings to good use.

Well, that's about all I can think of for now. I'll be writing up some tournament reviews from the past several weeks over the next several weeks. It's a short drive to the next couple tournaments. I should be able to find some free time out here. Hopefully Brian will be able to find time between DiscTV episodes to post them all. You disc golfers out there have a lot of cool people working for you. Do your part to bring new players out to the course and to make sure that they have a fun time!

-Todd and crew

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