DEXTER, Ore. — Hundreds of amateur and professional disc golfers came to Lane County on Memorial Day weekend to compete for a national title.
The 2023 Tim Selinske U.S. Masters Event is happening at Dexter State Park over Memorial Day weekend. The work to bring the event to Lane County started a few years ago with Travel Lane County. Rebecca Duffy, the Assistant Tournament Director for the event, said they had to put in a bid for an event, and it was a dream come true when approval came through.
“Having it here has become a dream come true,” Duffy said. “With the local disc golfers and the Eugene Disc Golf Club, there’s a lot of legends in our area and it’s so great to have people from across the United States and from outside the United States in Canada to come here and play our local courses.”
Many companies suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, but tournament organizers said disc golf as a pastime saw major growth during the pandemic with people looking for things to take up their time. Organizers said membership in the Professional Disc Golf Association went up 119% in the pandemic era.
Steve Wyatt is one of the competitors at the event. He said he started playing disc golf in 2010 when he weighed 350 pounds. A couple years ago, he heard about GOLO, a health and wellness company that’s also one of the sponsors of the event, and became a client, losing 138 pounds in 9 months. Wyatt said he was super excited to compete in the event, and has been training hard to do his best. While he said nerves impacted his performance on the first day of the tourney, he was doing better by the second and expects to do even better as the tournament progresses.
“Between the disc golf and GOLO, my health and wellness has just skyrocketed, and so when this opportunity came up for GOLO to be one of the sponsors for this and for me to have a chance to play in a PDGA major is just like, absolutely gigantic,” Wyatt said. “I am, I can be honest, I’m not the caliber, but I’m having an absolute ball and it’s the neatest experience for me ever.”
Event organizers said this year’s tournament in Dexter is breaking records and that there’s never been so many competitors for the U.S. Masters. Organizers said there were over 424 registered competitors.