Australia on the world stage

Story and photos kindly provided by Kingsley Flett

In 2014, the PDGA and WFDF agreed to combine in a new jointly sanctioned disc golf event. It was billed as a ‘World Cup’ of disc golf and for the first time involved national teams competing in match play. Australia was one of six nations to answer the call and that inaugural Australian Disc Golf team, yet to be named the Sugar Gliders, was entering uncharted territory when they made the journey to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in August 2016. The collaboration between WFDF and the PDGA didn’t last, but from that first contest in 2016 the World Teams Championship has grown in size, significance and prestige.

The event was played on a course that traversed the ski slopes of the imposing Grouse Mountain overlooking Vancouver and through Queen Elizabeth Park downtown; both dramatic settings for a historic occasion. In a field of six, Australia finished fifth, ahead of Brazil. Many of the lessons learned from the 2016 campaign have been carried forward to become the foundation of future Sugar Gliders campaigns: especially in honing the strategies of match play and seeing the importance of taking a big enough team.

The team in 2026 was made up of:

• Dave Bandy, multiple Perth, Victorian, South Australian and Two heads (Tasmania) Open champion and consistently one of Australia’s best players over a decade. Dave went on to serve as ADG president for a couple of years.
• Patty Robinson, who at that stage was a rising star in Aussie Disc Golf, fresh of a 12 placed finish among some of the worlds best pros in the Aussie Open, patty would go on have 35 career wins, including three Australian championships and to co-captain the team to a silver medal eight years later in Perth in 2024.
• Sally Hill, who had been on the podium in three Australian Championships and won 6 Australian A-tier events. Sal even had a win in a lead up event – the Raymond Seick Open in Washington, USA. Sal went on to serve on the AG high performance committee for 2 years.
• Kingsley Flett, two time Australian Masters tour champion and 2014 Queensland Open champion. Kingsley’s pictures and writing from the 2016 World Teams was at the beginning of his disc golf journalism career which has seen him go on to take pictures and tell stories about disc golf across Australia and Asia for Ultiworld, WFDF, the PDGA and the ADG in the following years.
• Local Vancouver player Craig Sheather (an Australian citizen and now PDGA internal Director) was able to provide backup and became the fifth team member.

A nationwide fund raising effort helped get the first Australian team to Vancouver which involved Australian team supporter shirts and even future Perth Disc Golf Club president, Al Robertson, shaving his head for the cause.

The largest team Australia had ever assembled for international disc golf made the long journey to remote Ida-Virumaa, Estonia, to compete in a 17-nation field. For many it was their first experience of international team competition under a national flag. The format of country-versus-country match play was one rarely played in Australia, adding a layer of tactical complexity to an already challenging environment.

Before leaving, the team had resourcefully sought out the one Australian who knew match play at the highest level: Chris Himing, ADG Hall of Famer and 1993 World Team Champion. Himing had competed in the very first World Team Championships in Hitachi, Japan, where his team of four (two Americans, a Japanese player, and himself) famously defeated the favourites, a team featuring 12-time world champion Ken Climo. He shared that knowledge generously with the 2019 squad. “The feeling of standing on the podium with your team-mates, being crowned World Team Champions, was an honour, privilege and true thrill,” he told the team.

Co-captains Jonathan Jonas and Ken Summers handled rostering, tactics, and coordination throughout the event. On Day 2, the squad welcomed a replacement player: Natalie Jones stepped in using the spare registration spot left by Ken-Kristjan Toomjoe, who had registered but was unable to travel. She partnered with Ken Summers in the FPO/Masters doubles on Day 2 — and they won.

Kairi Koobakene opened the campaign with Australia’s first win, defeating Spain’s FPO player in six holes. By the end of the Russia match on Day 2, the team had collected four wins: JJ and Andre in MPO doubles, Archer Shaw in the junior singles, and Ken and Natalie in the Masters/FPO doubles. Jacob Stanley’s singles match went down to the wire, with the Russian player sealing it with an ace on the final hole.

The scoreline (16th of 17) doesn’t tell the real story. This campaign established the team’s identity and a culture that would fuel the dramatic improvement seen three years later in Croatia. The seeds planted in Estonia grew into a silver medal.

Twenty-six nations. Two hundred and fifty-four athletes. Four hundred and fifty-six rounds of match play. The largest World Teams Disc Golf Championship ever held, played on two courses on the banks of the River Drava in Varaždin, Croatia — and Australia, seeded 11th, went and finished 5th.

They lost to Canada in a heartbreaking quarter-final. Canada went on to win bronze. Australia regrouped, won a tense 5th-place playoff against Germany, and then received an award no scoreline can capture — the Spirit Award, voted for by every other nation at the event. It was a powerful endorsement of the culture the team had built.

The first WFDF Asia-Oceania Teams Disc Golf Championship was organised at relatively short notice, and Australia’s team of nine was assembled quickly. Some players barely knew each other before they arrived in Taipei. Captain Aaron Moreton made it his mission from day one to turn near-strangers into a unit, instilling a sense of national pride in the jersey from the opening team meeting.

It worked. Australia matched and beat higher-ranked opposition throughout the event, coming within two holes of the gold medal match. The bronze they came home with was hard-fought, and for many players in the group, the experience lit a fire that wouldn’t go out.

Australia hosted the fifth edition of the WFDF World Teams Disc Golf Championship, the first ever held in the southern hemisphere, at Mundaring Disc Golf Venue in the Perth Hills.

Seeded 8th, the Sugar Gliders powered through the draw to face back-to-back world champions Estonia in the final. They pushed hard. Estonia held on, finishing the tournament with a record of 30 wins, 3 draws and 1 loss across the entire event. The silver medal Australia took home was the best result in the history of Australian team disc golf and it earned them a place at The World Games 2025 in Chengdu.

Behind the numbers was one of the campaign’s defining stories. Co-captain Cassie Sweetten broke her ankle during practice the day before competition began. She couldn’t play a single competitive round. Instead, in a moonboot, she spent the week as co-captain, selector, caddy, motivator and mentor trekking over 35km through Australian bushland across the full event.

Disc golf returned to The World Games for the first time in 24 years, and Australia earned their place at the table. Blake Houston and Cassie Sweetten, one of the youngest and one of the most experienced players in Australian disc golf, represented the country in a mixed doubles alternate-shot format against 15 other nations at Guixi Ecological Park in Chengdu.

Competing against the world’s best pairings, including world number ones Gannon Buhr and Missy Gannon for the USA, Australia drew with Lithuania before losing to Norway and Canada. Most rounds were shortened from 18 to 12 holes due to significant Chengdu summer heat. Australia finished 14th of 16 nations and did not advance past pool play.

The campaign mattered beyond the scoreline. Australia qualified for this event on the back of their silver medal in Perth, and competing at a multi-sport world games alongside the sport’s best nations is a marker of how far Australian disc golf has come since 2016.

The sixth edition of the WFDF World Teams Disc Golf Championship takes place at Pūčkorių Disc Golf Park in Vilnius, Lithuania. For the first time in the event’s history, Australia fields two separate teams: an Open team (MPO and FPO) and a Masters team (MP40, FP40, MP50) — the largest Australian disc golf campaign ever assembled for a single international event. Both squads are led by players who were part of the silver medal campaign in Perth, alongside fresh faces making their international debut.