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Am Worlds Competitors Ready for Day Two

Am Worlds Competitors Ready for Day Two

The Great Shuffle Awaits

Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - 11:46

Colin Poe (left) and Alec Anderson (right) on the Round 2 lead card. Photo by AJ Risley.

After a world-class Players Meeting on Monday night and 12 straight hours of disc golf on Tuesday, the 600+ competitors here in Quad Cities for the 2017 PDGA Amateur & Junior Disc Golf World Championships are already back on the courses this morning teeing off for either their second or third rounds.

Am Worlds is as much of an endurance competition as it is one for disc golf itself. With the opening day in the books, one powerful yet elegantly simple concept applies to both those that played well and those that know they could have played a lot better; there’s a lot of golf left. And we mean, A LOT. By the time the dust settles this evening to mark the end of day two, there will still be three more days and several more rounds of golf remaining.

Trevon Crowe of the Junior I Boys division gets an ace just a few holes into his opening round on day one (hole 15, Richmond Hill).

Iowa’s Colin Poe and California’s Christopher Keseloff teed off this morning at Eastern Avenue Park as the co-leaders in Advanced (A-Pool) after a brutal four and a half round at West Lake Park on Tuesday morning and afternoon. Minnesota’s Alec Anderson and North Carolina’s AJ Carey joined them on the lead card just one and two off the lead, respectively.

If the names Poe and Anderson sound familiar, it’s because they’re the same two names that have played on the lead card together multiple times this year including the final round of the 2017 United States Amateur Disc Golf Championships just a few weeks ago in Milford, Michigan. Sharing a similar “the most fun wins” type attitude, the two of them put on a show that is always fun to watch.

2016 Points Leader for Advanced Women Lauren Butler of Elk River, Minnesota jumped out to an early lead in the Advanced Women’s division, ousting Colorado’s Missy Gannon and Iowa’s Becca Sobolik by one after their one and only round on Tuesday at Middle Park. With a slew of women on their heels, they’ll take on Camden Park 1 for back-to-back rounds this morning and afternoon; a short but technical course that should create a bit of a scoring spread by the day’s end.

The Great Shuffle Is Coming

The Advanced division is far and away the largest at the event, where 240 players representing 39% of the entire competition’s field are split between the A, B, C, & D Pools. Much like the Advanced Masters M & N Pools as well as the Advanced Grandmasters G & H Pools, the Advanced competitors were assigned to their pool based on their PDGA Player Rating. To put it simply; the higher the Player Rating the lower the letter.

After today’s round or rounds are complete, the Advanced, Advanced Masters, and Advanced Grandmasters divisions will fall victim to what has come to be known as the Great Shuffle. This process of reordering and reassigning pools can only be done after all competitors have played the same total number of holes on the same courses.

Once the Great Shuffle has taken place, pool assignments for the aforementioned divisions will be listed with two letters – the first being their original pool and the second being the pool they moved to (or remained in). A player listed as BA-Pool, for example would be someone that, because of their Player Rating, played the first two days in the original B-Pool, but played well enough to move into the A-Pool. Keep in mind that a single pool contains a maximum of 72 players meaning an A-Pool assignment after the Great Shuffle puts that competitor in 72nd place or better.

Current Leaders

There’s a lot of golf left, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of players that deserve to be recognized for emerging as the leaders of their respective divisions after the opening day of the 2017 PDGA Amateur & Junior Disc Golf World Championships.

Division Name PDGA # Par Score (total)
Advanced Colin Poe
Christopher Keseloff
74005
91498
-7 78
Advanced Women Lauren Butler 65489 +5 61
Advanced Masters Roy Quilantan 70269 -6 50
Advanced Masters Women Kimberly Giannola 76910 +4 60
Advanced Grandmasters James Elkins 31524 -13 104
Advanced Grandmasters Women Lorena Dostal 69794 +9 65
Advanced Senior Grandmasters Paul Wright 32290 -18 92
Advanced Senior Grandmasters Women Patti Joseph 55149 +21 77
Advanced Legends Rob Lee 13218 +2 63
Junior I Boys 18 & Under Laurenz Schaurhofer 77497 -20 91
Junior I Girls 18 & Under Alexis Mandujano 62880 -3 58
Junior II Boys 15 & Under Silas Schultz 79047 -13 105
Junior II Girls 15 & Under Cynthia Ricciotti 75029 +3 64
Junior III Boys 12 & Under Gannon Buhr 75412 -6 49
Junior III Girls 12 & Under Hope C. Brown 62397 +14 125
Junior IV Boys 10 & Under Nathaniel DeLisle 87305 +8 119
Junior IV Girls 10 & Under Virginia Polkinghorne 76009 +62 173
Junior V Boys 8 & Under Wyatt Mahoney 89460 +15 76
Junior V Girls 8 & Under Ava Meyer 83000 +60 121
Junior VI Boys 6 & Under Kaidin Bell 86201 +49 110