Vibram/Player's Cup Match Play qualifier

So I'm the TD for the 'mountain region' for the Vibram/Player's Cup Match Play event. This year the Player's Cup is match play and not singles, and there's 8 regions participating. The skinny is that there will be 64 total players sent to Florida to participate in a huge match play event with I believe a $5k payout to whoever comes out on top. The date of the final matches for the Player's Cup are November 19-21.

I need to have the qualifier sometime in September but Sept. is pretty booked with tournaments already. What I'm doing now is trying to plant the seed to see who all is interested (Alex), who wants to try to qualify, and who can actually go if they do qualify. Idealy I'd charge some entrance fee not to exceed $50, get as many players as possible (I'm going to send out a message board blast to every dg message board in a ~200-300 mile radius) and see what kind of response I get. I believe I'm obligated to send Vibram $1,200 raised from entrance fees so anything and everything I raise beyond that will go to the players who qualify to help pay their way to get there. I'm hoping to raise ~$200/player. Here's where it gets messy:

Top (# or %) of rated players in the country already qualify, I don't recall how many that is. Rovere may or may not be in that category. I'm hosed on weekends in September so I may do like Mark Nielson did last year and just set up matches for people to go play on their own, and report results back to me. If I can get some traveling players to participate (not tour players, but people in the 'mountain region'), hopefully locals can accomodate their time frame/travel schedule accordingly. 

The long/short of all of this is I'm trying to get as many players as possible to all put up some entrance fee (NO payout, just money towards the Player's Cup and travel expenses) and try to qualify to go head to head with the best in Florida. This is the early stages of planning but I have the support of Mile High, Phenix, and BadCo already. I'm planning to use Badlands as the final stage for our qualifier.

Feel free to post any and all thoughts in this thread and I'll have it updated regularly as I figure things out.

http://www.vibramdiscgolf.com/playerscup/

http://www.vibramdiscgolf.com/playerscup/regionals.html

Mitch Sonderfan

iamruffage@yahoo.com

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