WACO, Texas — The 39th Waco Annual Charity Open kicked off as the Disc Golf pro tour took over Brazos Park East.
"To be here and to represent my home state of Texas at a Texas event means a lot to me and just to be able to be here and see, I guess the whole tour come to somewhere where I kind of grew up playing just that alone just means a lot to me," disc golf player Mason Ford said.
"This takes, you know, months and months of planning," tournament director Ryan Draper said.
"When the actual event gets here, it's actually kind of relief and excitement to watch all the planning unfold and watch the players play on the course," Draper said.
Professionals and amateurs competed at the beast course as it is called as fans get to see disc golfers from all over the world come together.
"We have all the best players from all over the world. There are people from Finland, Estonia, Japan, Australia. I mean, just anywhere you can think of, we have players here," Draper said.
For nearly 40 years, the disc golf pro tour has been coming to Waco and the sport has seen a lot of expansion.
"This sport has grown so much in the last five years that we are getting real athletes that could have played other sports like division one. It's something that you can't get anywhere else," Draper said.
"Well, for me and my wife, it's our living," Ford said.
"It's our livelihood, it's our passion. It's something that we connected on. It's how we actually met and disc golf kind of is our life in a way and traveling and on the road just means, I mean, it means the world to me. Without it, I don't know who I would be," Ford added.
The event itself runs through Sunday and they added a temporary new course at the Lake Waco golf club.
