Without 890 guy and ams and player who are not competitive donating 90% of the purse and 99.5% of the labor—including hustling up the sponsorship dollars to meet the added cash requirements—at every "tour" stop, there ARE no traveling pros. Period.
Yup, and I have no problem with an 890 guy taking a spot in an A, B, or C tier tourney, but this is Worlds, not some random tourney. It's the premier event. I don't hate the individual players that signed up for this year's Worlds, it's not their fault they were invited to Worlds. If I got the invite, I would be tempted to sign up, and wouldn't feel bad about playing. The problem is with the PDGA's process to their Majors, NTs, and the Worlds. There are people out there that those tournies are meant to showcase, and they should get priority. Nothing big, just a priority. The current qualification process is actually quite low.
Many of the lower rated players are playing 930-950 rated golf in less than 10 tournies and still qualifying for the invite, often times the majority of those points come from playing 950 rated golf in the previous year's worlds, which is weighted higher in points. This almost creates a vicious cycle, but it's not really that extreme, but it could be.
The 1000 or 1020+ rated touring pros should be entitled to something, they have earned it. They play at the top of our game, and they are who we want to see playing in our most important event. Yes, they benefit throughout the year from low rated/less skilled players playing small events in MPO and basically taking their money, but there's 100s if not 1000s of those tournies each year. This is the Worlds, which should showcase the top talent. I help run a couple B-tiers a year, I have a crappy rating, we have lots of players sign up for MPO that are rated around 900 or below, and we often fill. I've had to turn away 1000 rated players before (usually them calling midnight the night before, but that's another topic), and I just have to say I'm sorry, you can't get in.
The National Tour is for the touring pros and the top talent to showcase disc golf at its best, and the Worlds should be even a stop above those standards. A few NTs this year are using tiered registration, the PDGA Euro-Tour already does this, what's wrong with doing it for this event and all NTs in the US?
And yes there are traveling pros. More and more now. There used to be just a handful, and now you are seeing more and more 1000 rated local pros starting to do mini-tours and full blown national tours. That number has probably quadrupled if not more in the last 5 years, which is a good thing for our sport.