2023 PDGA Amateur and Junior Worlds | PDGA Live Show | Day 2
The 2023 PDGA Amateur and Junior Worlds | PDGA Live Show | Day 2 brings you a unique perspective on the challenges faced by the world's top disc golfers at this year's championship event in Peoria, Illinois. Grant Zellner shares the latest news from the course, including the suspension of play due to air quality concerns caused by smoky conditions blowing in from Canada. Doug Birkus, Director of Operations for the PDGA, joins Grant to explain their organization's policy regarding air quality and how it affects competition. The duo also discusses the impact on players, particularly those competing at the Junior and Major levels, who were eager to get in as many rounds of golf as possible.
Watch Day 2 of the 2023 PDGA Amateur & Junior Worlds Live - Top juniors and amateurs compete for the title on our live show!
Watch on YouTubeVideo Transcript
foreign welcome to the 2023 PDGA amateur and Junior Disc Golf World Championships from the Peoria area of Illinois I'm Grant Zellner and straight to the news of the day here on day number two in a word smoke in the atmosphere blowing down from Canada suspending play due to air quality concerns this is a written policy of the PDGA and other sports as well Doug birkus director of operations for the PDGA here to shed some light on a smoky situation Doug we had to suspend play early in the afternoon yesterday at all of our courses or at least most of them a few got to play again some didn't get to resume play why is that well we uh as you mentioned uh the PDGA does have a policy regarding air quality and uh the the policy points to the air quality index or the aqi and the guidance is that that number needs to be 200 or below for us to continue play um there is a website airnow.gov which is the the website that we've been using it's the recommended website in the policy to use and we made the decision early on that we would use that that Source um even though that even that Source though has multiple ways to report the aqi so um we've been looking at uh that data and if that data indicates whether through a map of different bands of potential levels for instance there's a there's a map that has different bands that'll show you where it's purple or red based on those numbers there's also just straight numbers there's there's a lot of different data there and and we'll look looking at it all and uh again the policy states that when that aqi gets over 200 we need to uh suspend play and uh that that's what we've been doing uh it it's heartbreaking because a lot it's heartbreaking okay sorry that cut me off a little bit okay go on uh it's it's heartbreaking because this is this is two of our 11 majors and we've got Juniors and we've got ma1 and fa1 players here and we want to get them all the golf we can give them but in the same vein we also need to care about the safety of the disc golfers and I know a lot of people...
