It’s an honor to represent a brand as big as Ledgestone in the world of disc golf.
Only a select few have been endowed with the responsibility to promote this institution on tour. In 2022 there were 12 of them.
Missy Gannon and Alexis Mandujano, two forces in the FPO field. Micah Groth and Zach Arlinghaus, a pair of teenagers quickly climbing the ranks of prominence. Tom and Brian Earhart, talented brothers with roots in Illinois. Andrew Marwede and Andrew Presnell, two soft-spoken shredders sharing the same first name. And finally, Paul Ulibarri, Chandler Fry, Ben Callaway and Michael Johansen, a quartet of seasoned veterans with experience beyond their years.
So how did this carefully selected collection of talent do on tour? We analyzed all 18 Elite Series events in 2022, not counting the DGPT Championship (you’ll see why later), and carefully combed through the 119 finishes that Team Ledgestone completed in those tournaments. Each player in the Team Ledgestone lineup brings something unique to the table and all 12 are different players. However, when we can lump them all together into one average performance at individual events, we emerge with some interesting statistics.
We’ve broken down the highs, the lows and several other fun stats from the season for you to enjoy.
Performance payout
The average finish at Elite Series events for Team Ledgestone was 33rd place. Using the Ledgestone Open pay scale which pays out 0.57% to 33rd place, we can say that kind of performance over the course of the entire Disc Golf Pro Tour season would net a player $9,960.57.
Not a bad haul for competing against the best in the world. And that’s not even factoring in A-tiers, B-tiers or the Pro Tour Championship where Gannon and Marwede combined to win $16,500.
The OTB Open was a world-class showing
Only Gannon, Callaway, Fry and Mandujano made the midseason trek to California for the OTB Open, but the four of them joined forces to put on Team Ledgestone’s best performance of the year by far. Three Top 10s, and a respectable 27th, gave them an average finish of just over 10th place.
Best average finish: Missy Gannon (7th place)
Gannon was top-tier in most categories in 2022, elevating her game to an even higher level as she seems to do every year. She notched 12 Top 10s, highlighted by her title at the Ledgestone Open. In fact, Team Ledgestone’s FPO standouts both had stellar seasons as Mandujano averaged the second-best finish on the team (17th).
Best MPO performer at Majors: Ben Callaway (23rd place)
Callaway played in the Champions Cup, World Championships and United States Disc Golf Championship, leading the MPO side of Team Ledgestone in average finish at the year’s biggest events. His average finish at the rest of the season’s Elite Series stops was 43rd. He was clearly able to elevate his game when he needed to the most, highlighted by a Top 10 finish at Worlds.
21 Top 10 finishes
With 18 total Elite Series Events played, that averages out to at least one Team Ledgestone member in the Top 10 at every tournament. This statistic was carried heavily by Gannon and Mandujano who combined to record 17 of those 21 Top 10 appearances.
Dynamic Disc Open and Worlds show team consistency
An Elite Series event was held at the same location as that same year’s World Championships for the final time in 2022. Emporia, Kansas hosted both the DDO and the 2022 World Championships at the Emporia Country Club and Jones Supreme courses with only a few minor alterations made between the two.
In a demonstration of consistency, Team Ledgestone’s average placement on the leaderboard was the exact same at both events: just over 43rd place. Even with only five team members at the DDO and eight at Worlds (and with two very different field sizes between the two tournaments), the final result was still the same.
The Des Moines Challenge was a struggle
The average finish for Team Ledgestone at the Iowa stop was the worst of the season at just over 44th place. The tournament came immediately after the Ledgestone Open and introduced inclement weather, last-minute shake-ups in start times, and more than 18 holes in a day for several competitors which definitely impacted the reliability of statistics at this particular event, but the final results say Team Ledgestone struggled in Des Moines.
A deeper dive into the Des Moines performance shows that six of the eight team members in attendance actually played very well and would have averaged 24th place as a group. Unfortunately, Chandler Fry and Zach Arlinghaus had an off weekend, finding out-of-bounds over 25 percent of the time between the two of them. Fry and Arlinghaus would go on to finish in 102nd and 109th, respectively, significantly distorting the team’s average.
OTB, DDO and Idlewild break the trend
The Players to Average Finish Correlation graph shows the team’s average finish at an event in relation to the number of team members in attendance. As attendance grew, there was a natural tendency for a lower average finishing place on the leaderboard. This makes sense because if more players attend from within the same team, the tougher it gets to average higher up the leaderboard and the higher the chance of variability within the scores, especially when it is much more probable for a blow-up round than it is for a podium finish. The OTB Open, DDO and Idlewild Open broke that correlation trend.
According to the projected total, sending four players to Stockton, California for the OTB Open should have resulted in an average finish of about 23rd place. Instead, the quartet managed just above 10th. Furthermore, with an attendance of eight team members at the Idlewild Open, the projection expected a finish around 37th. Instead, Team Ledgestone defied the probabilities yet again by turning in a 27th place average finish.
And then there was the DDO. The projectiones lined up an average finish somewhere in the 27th-place range. Even with a talented group of five in attendance, the team far underperformed and finished with an average over 43rd place.
DGPT Championship performance was dead on
Using the same Players to Average Finish Correlation graph, we can check the overall accuracy at predicting performance and understand the credibility of just how good, bad or consistent the team’s performance was.
Not factored into the graph is the Tour Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina. The tournament format is different from the rest of the season and introduces round-by-round variables that the players only face once all year. With that said, it’s still the same players and the same competitive field, so the graph should still correctly predict the outcome.
So how did it do? Well, Gannon, Marwede, Presnell and Mandujano all made the trip to Charlotte. So four players competed and, using the rest of the 2022 season as a predictor, the graph estimated a Team Ledgestone finish at about 23rd place. After Presnell and Mandujano were bounced in the Play-in round, Marwede fell off in Round 1 and Gannon was eliminated in the Final, the team finished in an average place of, you guessed it, 23rd.
Blog by Jacob Arvidson
