April is a major month for disc golf, both metaphorically and literally. The beginning of the month introduced the first PDGA Major event of the year, the Amateur World Doubles Championships. Less than two weeks after the last putt hit the chains at Am World Doubles, the National Collegiate Disc Golf Championships began. The NCDGC ended just a few days ago and we’re already in another city, prepping for yet another PDGA Major.

Hundreds of players will take the tee pad Friday morning here in Tulsa, OK to start the 2014 Tim Selinske US Masters Championships. The term “Masters” in the title of course refers to the age division requirement for competitors in the tournament. All players must be at least 40 years or older to compete in this unique weekend of disc golf. Well, sort of.

Whether or not you are eligible for an aged-based division is determined by how old you are at the end of the calendar year, not by how old you are during the tournament. For example, if you’re 39 years old and you’re 40th birthday is on August 10th, you can legally compete in the Masters division at any point during the 2014 calendar year. All of this is explined in detail in the PDGA Competition Manual for Disc Golf Events.

Running a prestigious event with this many competitors requires an enormous amount of planning, organizing, volunteers, elbow grease, etc. More importantly, it requires a lot of courses, and in Tulsa that’s not really an issue. Drive around the city for an hour or so and you’ll start to notice that almost every time you see a park, you see discs flying, tee pads, and baskets. It's something that's always a joy to see no matter what city you're in.

The tournament itself will be played on five different courses across the city. The two premier courses, Redhawk DGC and Blackhawk DGC, are both located in the middle of the vast and beautiful Mohawk Park. This 2800 acre park is the largest park in Oklahoma and one of the largest city parks in the country. If you get sick of disc golf (if that's even possible) there are plenty of other available activities including a traditional golf course, camping, swimming, hiking, biking, the Oxley Nature Center, and oh yeah, the Tulsa Zoo, just to name a few. For a complete list of all the courses being played and other details about the event, check out the 2014 Tim Selinske US Masters Championships page. 

The US Masters Championships is named after the man that created the event many years ago, Tim Selinske #2026. Tim was one of the most important figures in the history of disc golf and in flying disc sports in general. He was one of the four co-founders of Innova Discs and eventually was known by many as the face of the company. In his earlier years he also worked to grow flying disc sports with the International Frisbee Association.

In August of 2009, Tim Selinske passed away after fighting for 8 months against a rare disease called Langerhans' Cell Histiocytosis. Please read this farewell article on Innova Discs’ website for more information about Tim and the impact he had on the disc golf community. As they put it, “…Tim's affability gave us a warm friendly persona that we cannot replace. The Frisbee family will miss him. Disc Golf will miss him. We were all richer for having known him. We will all be poorer for his passing. All of us will miss him more than words can tell.”

Starting on Friday afternoon, we’ll have live coverage of the lead Masters division card on PDGAlive.com with live hole-by-hole scoring and throw-by-throw commentary via @PDGAlive on Twitter. Check the results page on PDGA.com to see the scores each night and check out our Flickr page for high resolution pictures, posted every night after the rounds.