For the second straight year, Maple Hill Disc Golf in Leicester will host the MVP Open x OTB, a part of the Disc Golf Pro Tour and the final playoff event of the season. The best disc golfers from around the world will assemble in Leicester for four days, September 24-27, to close out the season on the sport’s most storied course.

“We’ve been lucky enough to be the final event,” Maple Hill General Manager and event organizer Steve Dodge said. “This is a premier, major event.”

According to Dodge, the event is three-fold for the participants. First and foremost is winning the MVP Open x OTB title and grabbing the purse. This year the men’s first-place winner will take home $15,000 while the women’s first place winner will take home $10,000. The top three athletes who accumulated points throughout the year will be announced, including the crowning of the year’s overall champion for the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA). Finally, the event is the final playoff event of the year that will allow another eight athletes to qualify for the tour championship in October at Rock Hill, South Carolina. 

Disc golf — or frisbee golf, as some call it — is a 9- or 18-hole course where athletes throw a disc from the tee pad toward a target, usually a basket equipped with chains to catch the disc. Much like golf, participants continue to throw their discs until they are in the basket. The PDGA recommends that baskets are an average of 200-400 feet away from the tee, with none being closer than 100 feet away. 

Modern disc golf started in the 1960s but there is debate over who invented the sport. Ed Headrick, while working for Wham-O, helped redesign the flying disc and soon after left to focus on his new interest – disc golf. In 1976 he started the Disc Golf Association (DGA).

Today the sport is in 40 countries and as of 2025 there were 317,870 PDGA members, including 112,509 subscribed members. According to the UDisc course directory, there are more than 16,000 disc golf courses, 90 percent of which are accessible for free.

Maple Hill was built in 2003 and opened the following year with its first big tournament. The sport took off and continued growing until Maple Hill was the number one disc golf course in America. The site has added barbecues on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a weekly farmers’ market, and other events.

During the Covid pandemic, Maple Hill grew 50 percent each year over the two-year span.

“It was a fun and affordable outside activity,” Dodge said. “One that just about everyone could enjoy and understand relatively easily.”

Much like golf where a player has numerous types of clubs, there are numerous types of discs, and some players carry 15 to 20 discs with them at all times. The discs are very different than the average frisbee you can buy at a toy store. Because the course is designed for play in open fields as well as wooded areas, some discs are designed for distance while others are designed to go left or right depending on the course layout.

“This game challenges distance, accuracy, different turns, up and down hills and over water. Maple Hill has everything that will challenge the top players of the game,” Dodge said. “In my opinion, the game is much better than golf and watching the best players in the world on the course is nothing short of mind-blowing.”

Don’t know how to play or want to learn more about the sport? Maple Hill also has a beginner’s course. Who knows? In years to come, you could be part of the hottest sport, taking your skills to the best disc golf courses all over the world. To learn more about the tournament, go here: themvpopen.com W