Emily Beach is on the lead card heading into round two at DGLO. Photo: Kevin Huver / DGPT

Emily Beach grew up around the sport, but it took a little while for her to come around to it.

Once she did, she found role models and success and now, in her busiest season yet, Beach is turning in a consistent year competing with the best of the best.

“I started playing competitively in 2013, but my dad has been playing since 1985 so I was born around disc golf,” Beach said. “It took a little while for me to get into the game and I honestly didn’t like disc golf for a while, but I warmed up to it.”

The female fields, especially at the junior and recreational level, were small in Oklahoma around that time, but Beach got a little push.

“Growing up, there weren’t a lot of ladies in the area to watch and to play with,” she said. “I was the only junior girl in the area so that made it tough to have to compete against the boys.

“Jen Allen, she’s still one of the ladies that I look up to, lived like 30 minutes away at the time and there were a couple of more ladies that got me into it. They were encouraging me and that helped a lot. I saw a different side of the game.”

She won the first two tournaments she entered in 2013 and placed sixth in Junior II Girls at the 2014 PDGA World Championships. In five intermediate tournaments that year, she won three and finished second in the other two.

Flash forward eight years — “My PDGA number used to seem so high in the 60000s but now it’s like I’m a veteran,” she said — and Beach is consistently finishing in the top 20 on the PDGA Elite Series in her busiest, and most widespread, year of competition in her career.

Emily Beach finished third at the 2022 Dynamic Discs Open. Photo: Kevin Huver / DGPT

She had two top-10 finishes on the DGPT in 2020 and another in 2021.

So far this season, Beach finished third at the Dynamic Discs Open, fifth at the Memorial Championship, and had top-15 finishes at The Preserve Championship, OTB Open, Las Vegas Challenge, USWDGC and Texas States.

After her first tournament round on the Toboggan at the Discraft Great Lakes Open on Friday, Beach finds herself in a tie for third with Valerie Mandujano, just one stroke behind leaders Paige Pierce and Catrina Allen.

“It’s kind of a lefty course so it played right to my favor,” Beach said. “Just placing it in the right spots, playing for par, getting birdies when I could and had a few lucky breaks.

“I thought the course was refreshing. I liked the “natural OB” – there wasn’t just a ton of OB strung around everywhere. You’re punished if you have a bad shot and you’re fine if you have a good shot. I like that.”

From having to compete with the boys growing up to hanging with the top players in the world on a consistent basis, Beach is quickly become a mainstay in FPO.

“Everyone is getting so much better,” she said. “Every week, I see a lot of people putting in so much practice. I see women out there on tour playing two rounds a day, just putting in the work. It’s really cool to see.”

Round 2 coverage of DGLO begins at 9 a.m. ET on DiscGolfNetwork.com.