FPO Event Rankings For Dynamic Discs Open 2024

Post event update: It took a playoff to determine winner of DDO in 2024. Using the atypical 3 hole playoff format, or newer rule for Pro Tour to confirm who was the victor. Missy gets her 2nd big win of the season, and first Elite event win of 2024. 

Shot of the tournament: We began with this addition to our lineup as of last week, with Champions Cup. And if we’re being honest, we have no solid contender for what one shot lead the winner of the event to assuring themselves they had the lead for good. As best we can determine, it was more about Hailey (runner up) not performing well on 2nd hole of playoff, rather than Missy throwing a shot that solidified things. Though Missy sticking the island on first playoff hole, after touching water, and then her decision to go for and make that putt are worthy considerations, even if it resulted in just tying Hailey at that point.

Our projections did quite well for the 3rd consecutive week, with us getting 3 of the top 4 correct. It needs to be stipulated that we were working with less of a field size than we have typically been using, making for slightly easier predictions, and easier to gain a higher percentage. In fact, this is the highest percentage we’ve achieved all season for correct picks. We also reached our goal of 20% correct, for the 4th time this season and 3rd week in a row. Here are the numbers:

• 24% (6 of 25) were spot on, with 1 of the 6 being exact match
• 52% (13 of 25) were spot on or better (yellow and green combined)
• 32% (8 of 25) were somewhat off (orange)
• 16% (4 of 25)were well off or worse (red and gray combined)

With 4 weeks now of reaching the goal we set out, it might be time to adjust the goal soon. Another week with 30 in the field and us reaching the goal is the updated barometer we’re running with.

What’s below is what we published before the event started.

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Art’s Fudge Event Rankings are a dynamically updated list of pros registered for the next big event on the pro tour. This page starts with a top 10 list published 7 to 10 days before the tournament starts. The list for FPO then grows to a top 30 list of fantasy projections, once the most recent Major event preceding it has completed, and our standard rankings are updated.

Event rankings are the new kid on the block for listing pro players in an orderly way for upcoming events of the pro disc golf season. Our hope is these rankings inform fantasy disc golf participants as well as entertain fans of pro disc golf for this particular event.  

First published: 1 pm on Wednesday Apr. 24 (original top 10)
Last updated: Thur. May 2nd, 6 pm (replace top 10 with top 25 list)
Last checked: Fri. May 3, 7:30 am (no changes) – event is about to start

A Winning Formula

…is what we someday hope to write about our Event Rankings, and show off just how good AF is at predicting results for pro disc golf tournaments. It continues to show up as challenging, quite humbling, and addictive fun. Predictive analysis is certainly important, though we are learning it takes courage no formula can reasonably obtain.

With that said, our modest goal is to achieve 20% accuracy in our predictions for the top 30 in FPO, and top 75 in MPO. We count 1 place off in FPO as correct (enough), while exact matches are the ideal. Most weeks we don’t quite hit the goal, but so far in 2024, we have hit the target thrice, getting 20% accuracy for both Jonesboro and Champions Cup, and 23% on Texas State predictions.

Keeping It Simple

The event predictions are truly meant to be viewed as simple list, depicting projected order they’ll finish from 1 through 30, along with their AF latest ranking (updated earlier this week), then player name, rating, and actual place they end up at 2024 DDO.

Colors are adding in layers of added information, that convey how well AF assesses they are doing so far this season, as well as historical performance at DDO tournaments in the past 5 years. Please use this link for details on our color scheme, pertaining to this list.

Update to Event Rankings – Early May 2024

Event Rankings continue to be a work in progress that is also exclusive content provided by the AF brand. We are especially pleased that this list enables us to share additional insights and analysis on a greater amount of players in the sport, or ones we consider relevant in fantasy disc golf. 

With that said, there are 3 notable changes we are making to our event rankings. FPO is getting 2 of the 3 changes, though for DDO 2024 particularly, all 3 are in play, even for FPO. Thing is, for DDO, the amount of fantasy relevant players registered for the event is the lowest we’ve come across in any Elite or Major event in 2024, so far. On FPO side, we had to lower it from 30 to 25. There may be another event or two like this on the schedule in 2024, but we fully anticipate presenting lists of 60 for MPO (new) and 30 for FPO (continued) in most to all fantasy relevant events for remainder of this season. 

The other 2 changes are in how we are layering data, via color, in 2 of the columns of our Event Ranking lists. We are basically using broader scales, and less colors to convey the same information, albeit with slightly less nuance. While we track for around 10 tiers in each division with our standard rankings, for the Event Ranking lists only, we will essentially be basing it on 4 tiers that cover the full list of players. This pertains to the “AF Rank” column in the lists below. Likewise, the scale by which the Rating column is conveying player value, relative to their event ranking is scaled over wider set of numbers. It is same amount of colors, just tougher now to meet threshold of great or poor value. Both of these color changes are easy to ignore in reviewing the lists, and the nuances are being greatly glossed over in this paragraph. A Guide is forthcoming to provide details of the methodology being briefly explained here. 

Art’s Fudge (AF) prides itself on crafting quality presentation of data tables, that layer information in creative ways, and are utilizing human judgement along with basic formulas and sorting to achieve a ranking order. Perhaps we are a dying breed, or perhaps we purposely went this route knowing AI won’t have as easy of a time mimicking what our brand delivers. Crafting the tables is very much a labor of love, yet is also time consuming and this latest update is designed to expedite the production and publication of this content, while giving very little up. Besides, we can always grow (back) to a more extensive list.

Ranked Players and the Unranked

Of the 15 or so FPO in the field that are playing, but not part of our list, there are 3 types of players in that mix. Some are ones we rank who are outside top 25, and saved as a sort of waiting list in case others on the list drop from the event. The 2nd type are players who we are tracking, but are not quite fantasy relevant. They could be by the next event, and we will continue to monitor them. The 3rd type are lower rated players who may surprise many and do well at the event, though typically over 3 rounds of elite level play, they tend to settle near the bottom of the standings. Our hope is to rank them someday based on them rising up. With that said:

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Tip: Put mobile phone in landscape mode for better view of table below.

quick color guide

Top 25 FPO Tournament Projections at DDO