Top 5/10 All Time Greats List

[ThomasOrion]

Who are the top five greatest disc golfers of all time? Think about it. Dylan... Dylan... dylan,dylan, and Dylan because I spit hot fire .






Oh...you want some of this hot fiyah?




YOU'RE TOO CLOSE MON'!

 

[dreadlock86]

what is a world championship worth?


there are a dozen guys who have a world title that are not in the conversation. what does it mean to win ONE tournament? of course it's the most prestigious of the year and most players' highest goal but i don't know that it compares to POTY, especially if it's a one-off thing: Barsby, McCabe, Avery.

if Ricky had lost 6x in a row to McBeth, would he still be in the conversation? who thinks he still should be if that were the case? and if that's the case, how come nobody under 40 can name guys who came in 2nd to Climo?

 

[ThrowBot]

All good questions, Dread.
I'm under 40, and I just assume it was Barry coming in 2nd every time Climo won something.

And yeah, tough to know how much "value" people place on a single World's win. Barsby is an interesting case, because I feel like he also has a virality factor: has had a number of notable aces caught on film, which in my opinion raises his profile just from the number of extra clicks and youtube views he gets. Same for Philo with the albatross at BSF and that 400'+ ace at Maple Hill. And I'll throw Simon in the same category with his trick shot videos. (Also maybe a slight extra nod to Simon as a former distance record holder, not sure if that moves the needle or not.)

Now I'm not saying any of those guys crack the top 5, but when you start looking at 6-10 it might be worth considering those extra factors. Because we pretty quickly run out of guys that obviously qualify by the formula of "X World's + Y USDGC + Z other Majors and Tour Wins."

Although thinking through it, maybe the "virality" thing is more of a measure of the most famous disc golfers. Not sure if that necessarily equates to Greatest or not. And before all the geezers start complaining: yes, I understand that there's a massive recency bias associated with assigning any value to youtube views, because previous eras didn't have the same type of exposure.

 

[Cgkdisc]

World Rankings started in 2005. For the first ten years, Feldberg had the highest average ranking. For women, Val Jenkins was tops.

 

[BuzzzChief]

All good questions, Dread.
I'm under 40, and I just assume it was Barry coming in 2nd every time Climo won something.

I bet most people assume that just because of the rivalry in the later years. Reality is that for Climo's 12 championships, Barry was only the runner-up once!

There were 11 different guys in 2nd place, only Stokely did it more than once. Says a lot about Climo's longevity.

 

[dreadlock86]

World Rankings started in 2005. For the first ten years, Feldberg had the highest average ranking. For women, Val Jenkins was tops.

Feldberg also in the top 5 for 9 straight years; that's pretty impressive!

 

[dreadlock86]

Now I'm not saying any of those guys crack the top 5, but when you start looking at 6-10 it might be worth considering those extra factors. Because we pretty quickly run out of guys that obviously qualify by the formula of "X World's + Y USDGC + Z other Majors and Tour Wins."

for sure! and i agree with whomever said earlier that 6-10 is probably the more interesting conversation.

Although thinking through it, maybe the "virality" thing is more of a measure of the most famous disc golfers. Not sure if that necessarily equates to Greatest or not. And before all the geezers start complaining: yes, I understand that there's a massive recency bias associated with assigning any value to youtube views, because previous eras didn't have the same type of exposure.

agreed, and i'm not sure it equates to greatest either. but i do have to confess, that is probably a contributing factor in my putting Nikko at #5. the "virality" of his character, personality, behavior, etc. was blowing up right around the time i started paying attention to professional DG.