Cameron J. Harbachuk

Good Evening Cameron and thank you very much for the contact and feedback. For a bit of history and in all transparency, the Gulf Coast Charity Open has traditionally been an A - Tier for amateurs and a B - Tier for pros up until our 2022 event when Dynamic Discs stepped up with some additional supp ... more

Good Evening Cameron and thank you very much for the contact and feedback. For a bit of history and in all transparency, the Gulf Coast Charity Open has traditionally been an A - Tier for amateurs and a B - Tier for pros up until our 2022 event when Dynamic Discs stepped up with some additional support. At that time, we looked at the grand scheme of our event and the funds we had allocated to our amateur experience, the funds we had earmarked for charitable donation (our primary goal), and the funds we had set aside for our professional experience. Through this analysis we identified that there was an imbalance and the most equitable thing to do with that additional funding was to move it to the Pro payout and make the event a full A - Tier. In addition to this consideration, we also restructured the event to allow for a larger pool for the professional players in the hopes that they would respond positively to that. We received a positive response, but it was not the ‘rush to break down the doors’ we had expected given the additional financial contribution we made to that side of the event. So much so, that the pool with professional players did not even fill last year, and was the only pool not to fill. As such, as we started planning for this year's event back in June we took another hard look at our divisions, added a 7th course, reduced our pool sizes so that we would only have 4 packs out on the course (a much requested change), and still found a way to allocate additional spaces to the professional divisions at large. At the time those decisions were made, we felt good about the direction we had taken the event given what our expected audience was; primarily local pros in Florida. Fast forward a few months and the DGPT announces that they are going to start the season in Florida, and ironically enough, on our traditional weekend that we normally run the event. This obviously threw us off guard because we were not expecting it, and even as PDGA State Coordinator, I had no preconceived notion that was going to happen. Unfortunately, planning for this year's event had already surpassed a point where we could go back and revisit our pools and their division distributions given the scale and complexity of our operations. In a perfect world, yes, we would have more spots available for pros as they make their way down to the Sunshine State to start their year and hopefully we can count on that in the years to come so we can better adjust our event to align with our expected audience as the DGPT continues their residency here. In regards to “monopolizing” a weekend, I work very hard with the other directors in the state to coordinate our events and ensure that we are creating a schedule that is advantageous to the players and the volunteer staff of those events. I think your comment makes an assumption that should our event drop to amateur only, that another pro only A - Tier event would materialize and want to be on that same weekend. My perception is that even if we dropped down to an Am only A - Tier, we would still field nearly 400 players drawing away potential staff members, volunteers and spectators for a prospective pro only A - Tier event on the same weekend. I think most would agree that it would not be beneficial for an event, any event of that matter, to run on the same weekend as an event of our scale and that the experience we provide to professionals, while limited is some people's opinion, is still working towards the greater good of the sport of disc golf. Again, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to provide this feedback. It is feedback like this that has helped mold The Gulf Coast Charity Open into what it has become over the past 6 years and we acknowledge that this is another area of opportunity for growth with our operations. I wish you the best of luck in your travels and look forward to seeing you at our event in February! Thanks!

Buz Ryalls-Clephane

Wow! You're the bomb. Well reasoned response.