For the Love of…Holy Shot, Please Stop!

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If you have watched any disc golf live coverage in 2022 you’ve probably seen a string of commercials featuring James Conrad’s Holy Shot from the 2021 World Championship. For days and weeks after the tournament on reddit, twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook clips of the shot were circulating. The Holy Shot made local sports broadcasts around the county and even featured on ESPN. Overnight James Conrad was a disc golf celebrity and MVP was on the map. Suddenly everyone wanted an Envy or to try out the MVP Gyro plastic. The Holy Shot was the Ultiworld Disc Golf Shot of the year in a landslide. Everyone, except maybe Paul McBeth, loved the shot. I got chills watching the replays

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But if you watched the Las Vegas Challenge on the Disc Golf Network, you’re probably sick of the Holy Shot. It felt like it was played during every commercial break and more than once I thought it was the only commercial played. Several Reddit threads were started talking about how they can’t stand the Holy Shot. People on twitter dogpiled on with the sentiment boiling down to please pick something else to run. While it’s impossible to read every single thing posted about the Holy Shot commercial, I can agree with the general sentiment. It’s over played, and the live disc golf fans as a whole are sick of it, and it’s only been one tournament.

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Now some have posted counter points. Tiger’s shot winning the Masters in 2005 or Michael Jordan’s The Shot from 1989 beating the Cavaliers. Those have all been played hundreds of times across a multitude of different commercials and sports. In my opinion there is one main difference between these and James Conrad’s the Holy Shot. They don’t play the entire thirty second plus length of Jordan’s or Tiger’s shots. Typically, you see the few seconds of the shot and celebration with the athletes and crowd. If they want to play the Holy Shot ad nauseam, shorten the clip. Show Conrad right before the point of release, cut to the disc going in, and finish with the crowd going nuts for a few seconds. Or even just the disc going in and the crowd reacting.

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In the span of one tournament, I have gone from thinking, “this is one of the iconic moments of disc golf” to, “for the love of all that holy please make it stop!” I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. All I’m asking for is a little restraint from the production team. I get that it’s an exciting shot and shows the best of our sport but the more it’s played more it loses its value. Maybe I’m just the old man yelling at the clouds but those are my thoughts.

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