Jim Van Lanen “was this crazy guy hacking through the brush” when Matthew Strathmann first met him a decade ago.
As one does when they see a middle-aged man alone with shears emerging from the greenery of a public park, Strathmann paused his round of disc golf and struck up a conversation. If it wasn’t for that chance meeting and subsequent friendship, Wisconsin wouldn’t be hosting an international sports championship with a six-figure purse later this month.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
The 2025 United States Women’s Disc Golf Championship will be June 19-22, to be held across four courses in and around Manitowoc. Five-hundred fans are expected to spectate on each of the first two days, then 1,000 on Saturday and 1,500 for the Sunday finale. That’s in addition to the 374 discers expected to compete, traveling from as far away as Estonia and New Zealand.
Wisconsin has the second-most courses of any U.S. state with 379, behind only Texas’s 538. Four of the top 100 rated courses in the world are in the Badger State. it’s thanks to the efforts of Van Lanen and his fellow aficionados who have loved this game since 1981, when there were only four recognized courses in the state.
The disc golf community to this day is largely volunteer-led, even if many of the courses are located in public parks. Devotees spend their weekends (when they aren’t tossing discs themselves) ensuring their local courses are play-ready by repairing course equipment, cleaning up tee boxes and cutting back overgrowth. That’s why Van Lanen was hacking through the brush on that fateful day in 2006.
It’s because of the friendship between Strathmann and Van Lanen that Strathmann was in the position to start submitting bids to the sport’s organizing bodies in order to lure international tournaments back to Wisconsin.
After Strathmann’s first three bids ended in rejection, he was beginning to lose hope. But in 2023, he gave it another shot, applying for the Manitowoc area to host the U.S. Women’s Disc Golf Championship in 2025.
When he heard back that the bid was successful, Strathmann remembers feeling “elation, relief.” Then, within five minutes, reality set in. “Oh shoot. We’ve got a year-and-a-half to get this together.”
It will likely be the largest tournament Wisconsin has seen in the sport’s history, except perhaps the 2007 Amateur Disc Golf World Championships hosted in Milwaukee. But 2007 was also a different era in the game. At that time, the Professional Disc Golf Association only had 11,943 active members. By 2023, there were 136,636 members. That’s a 1,044% increase in just 16 years.
This tournament will keep our state on the map for one of the world’s fastest-growing sports. “Wisconsin is a place for future events,” says Lindsey Krause, another disc golf organizer and volunteer who helped Strathmann compile the successful bid.
You can purchase tickets (for just $15-50) and learn more about the tournament here.
Get Your Lingo Up
Discers = What many disc golf athletes call themselves
Ball Golf = What discers call “golf”
Frolf = Nobody in the know calls the game “frolf,” in part because “Frisbee” is a trademark.
Hyzers and Anhyzers = What discers call “hooks” and “slices”
Basket = The term for the “hole” discers aim for
