Updated on
74 players made the trip up (or down - with 6 attending from Scotland!) to North Yorkshire for the final BDGA Major event of the year.
Ripley Castle, the newly installed course designed by Richard Hatton (DGUK) was the venue for the re-arranged tournament and was held over the weekend of the 14th/15th of September 2024
This event had originally been slated to take place in May at Fairways in Reading, however had to be cancelled due to the uncertainty around the continued operation of that course.
It had originally been the intention to run just a 1-dayer at Ripley this year to find out how the course played in competition - having never run one before - but with the vacancy on the calendar and the potential of the course for running large events in no doubt, the decision was made to commit to this year’s British Open being the first ever PDGA sanctioned event in North Yorkshire. (Source: Statmando)
With the event approaching, the key dates in the diary that occured were a meeting at Ripley in February, where the subject of the event was first broached, and the idea of running an event at the venue was first mentioned. This was then expedited in April and May when the fate of the original event was sealed and the decision to pursue the event was taken.
Running such an important event at such an untested venue was always going to be a bit of a risk, but thanks to some excellent desire and ambition driven by TD Harry Messenger and operators Jeff and Daz at Live for Today, the activity centre that operates the castle and grounds the event came off really smoothly.
Some of the unique difficulties faced in the build-up included both the local flora and fauna causing issues with the course - almost to the point that this event also was in jepoardy - but luckily a solution to all of the issues were found and the event could proceed.
Further unique challenges included running the event at a course which had never even seen a sanctioned round, designing an appropriate short layout that would challenge the players with less distance - my first attempt at course design! - as well as having to custom produce a full set of tee signs for the event due to the lack of availability of accurate existing signs.
In addition, organising an event so far from any major disc golf populaton - with no local club to the course meaning limited local volunteers - and the TD living over 2 hours from the course which meant taking a lot of help and assistance from the venue on-faith and hoping all the adjustments would be made! Additional issues were presented by having to produce the caddy book and signage remotely without another course visit, as well as finding out there was a wedding at the venue - which in an amazing coincidence turned out to be the wedding of a sister of UK disc golfer Paul Donnely!
Luckily, the work was all completed, the neibouring farmer obligingly moved his cows (a very Yorkshire issue to face!) and mowed the fields beautifully, contractors came in and cleared deadwood from the ground, the grounds staff completed so much trimming and cutting and even lowered 8 of the 18 elevated baskets for us to use for the event.
A huge, huge thank-you to Live for Today for providing the resource and the man-power to do all of these things, they truly made what could have been a disappointing event into such a wonderful one.
All (all?) that remained now was a 10 hour volunteer day to prepare the course, distribute all the amazing signage we had out on the venue and get a good night’s sleep before the event begun
The event itself went very smoothly. The weather (mostly) held out, the venue was incredible, the course played difficult but had some good scoring seperation on most holes and was well-recieved by almost all players.
The 2024 British Open champions in their respective divisions are ….
