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Schultz, King Each Win 14th Major at US Masters

Schultz, King Each Win 14th Major at US Masters

Monday, September 9, 2019 - 16:14

Elaine King (left) and Barry Schultz (right) earned their 275th and 242nd career wins at the 2019 US Masters. Photo: Greg Babineau

It’s hard to truly wrap your head around the accomplishments that Elaine King and Barry Schultz have pulled off in their careers as professional disc golfers. Whether it’s their career wins, PDGA Major titles, world championship titles, NT wins, A-Tier wins, etc., the numbers are astonishing. What’s equally impressive is that they are nowhere close to done padding their stats. Both King and Schultz picked up their 14th PDGA Major victory this weekend at the 2019 Tim Selinske US Masters Championships in Leicester, Massachusetts, the third US Masters title for King and the seventh for Schultz.  

King’s sits at or near the top of many different lists, most notably career wins, which is now at a ridiculous 275. Only eight PDGA members in the world have hit the 200 mark and no one is on pace to catch King anytime soon.

Name PDGA # Career Wins
Elaine King 3090 275
Brian Schweberger 12989 254
Mike Moser 5557 243
Barry Schultz 6840 242
Barrett White 16737 231
Juliana Korver 7438 223
Ken Climo 4297 223
Fred Needham 46326 206

Click on the number of wins to see all the career wins for each player.

King’s US Masters win this year came with ease, finishing 21 ahead of Melinda Ring with an overall score of an 11-over par 239 for the four rounds of the weekend.

The inaugural Tim Selinske US Masters was held at the International Disc Golf Center in Appling, Georgia in 2010. As a close friend of Selinske before his untimely death a year prior, Schultz would eventually emerge as the winner after a sudden-death playoff against Patrick Brown. In the nine years since, Schultz has competed in all but one of the US Masters, and after tapping on 18 at Maple Hill on Sunday, he has now won seven of them.

Schultz teed off at Maple Hill Gold with a lead of just one over fellow North Carolinian Michael Johansen and New England pro Bobby Cowperthwait, joined by Alan Hermosillo who was sitting a few strokes back. The front nine was unforgiving to the men of the lead card and Schultz quickly added a couple of strokes to his lead by simply carding pars while the other took bogeys and/or double-bogeys.

The course played difficult for nearly everyone on Sunday, as only three men finished under par on the track the entire day: Schulz with a 1-under par 58, Steve Rico with a 3-under par 56, and Jonathan Ray with a lights-out 1082-rated 7-under par 52. While this meant a lot of movement for the players of the top four cards, it also meant that no one was catching Schultz.

The one-stroke lead that Schultz held when the round began was never touched and he eventually tapped in on 18 to win by three. Johansen held onto his second place spot while Rico’s efforts allowed him to jump to a third place finish overall, one behind Johansen.

Patrick Brown crushed the competition in the Masters 50+ division, winning by 15 overall and shooting one of the best rounds on Maple Hill Gold of the day with an even par, matched only by second place finisher Brian McRee. Bobby Jones edged out a one-stroke victory over Robin Billig in the Masters 55+ division and Johnny Sias earned his fifth PDGA Major title with a six-stroke victory over Doug Werner.

The 2020 PDGA Tim Selinske US Masters Championship will take place in May in Columbia, Missouri. Stay tuned for coverage of this year’s event from Gatekeeper Media on YouTube.

Final results and round ratings for all 12 divisions »