CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jessica Gurthie birdied the 16th hole at Hornet’s Nest Park on Sunday to seize the lead, then made a clutch 18th-hole putt to claim the inaugural 2026 Queen City Classic disc golf title — her first major professional tour victory since 2015.
Gurthie, competing from the chase card rather than the lead card, finished at 11-under par overall to edge out a crowded leaderboard that featured three players tied for first heading into the tournament’s final holes. Holland Hanley and Kat stensch both entered hole 16 at 10-under, but Hanley’s bogey on the 267-foot island hole combined with Gurthie’s birdie gave the veteran a one-stroke advantage she would not relinquish.
Standing over her birdie putt on the 730-foot par-five 18th, Gurthie made the decisive stroke as Hanley and Mertsch both failed to convert birdies that would have forced a playoff.
“All of the wins that I’ve given away in my whole career, all of the tournaments that I gave away to everyone else,” Gurthie said in the winner’s interview. “I said, I’m done. It’s my turn and I’m taking it.”
A Week of Swings
The tournament, held at Hornet’s Nest Park and presented by Another Round Disc Golf, drew the full FPO field to a Charlotte course that had not hosted a standard professional round since the 2012 World Championships. Previous Disc Golf Pro Tour appearances had all come during the fall championship format, leaving the spring layout — cleared of dense undergrowth and playing notably more open — as something of an unknown quantity.
Round one unfolded in ideal conditions: warm temperatures, light wind, and blooming dogwoods lining the fairways. Finland’s Sylva Saarinen, playing her first U.S. event of the season, opened with a three-birdie turkey on holes one through three. Katrina Allen of Sioux Falls, S.D., posted a bogey-free 9-under round that included an eagle on hole 13, tied for the day’s hot round with Norwegian Anakin Steen, who reached 9-under despite two bogeys.
Allen, who won the Disc Golf Pro Tour Championships at Hornet’s Nest in 2019, entered round two atop the leaderboard alongside Steen.
Moving day delivered punishing conditions. Temperatures dropped 50 degrees overnight. Sustained north winds of 20 miles per hour, with gusts to 30, blew through a canopy sparse enough to offer little shelter. Scoring cratered. Most of the field finished even par or worse.
Ella Hansen of Seattle climbed from outside the top 10 to claim the solo lead at 10-under with a 5-under round — one of only a handful of players to break par on the day. Mertsch of Huntsville, Ala., drew commentary-booth praise for shooting 7-under despite the brutal conditions, a performance calculated at a rating exceeding 1,030. Cadence Burge, who had been tied at 9-under, left the course limping after tweaking her back on a hole-four approach shot.
Burge withdrew from the tournament approximately 15 minutes before the final round began. Tournament officials moved Steen onto the lead card in her place.
Sunday’s Collapse and Comeback
The championship round played cooler than round one but without the previous day’s punishing wind, a south breeze largely replacing the brutal north gusts.
Hansen began the day with a one-stroke lead. She did not make a birdie until hole 18 of the final round, a stretch during which she dropped eight strokes and watched her lead evaporate entirely. The lead card — Hansen, Mertsch, Steen, and Ohn Scoggins — collectively struggled through much of the front nine while the chase card, featuring Hanley, Gurthie, and Missy Gannon, played some of the day’s best golf.
Hanley, who had already recorded three consecutive birdies through five holes, moved to 12-under at one point before a bogey on hole 16 opened the door.
The 267-foot par-three over water proved the tournament’s decisive moment. Hanley’s tee shot dropped into the pond. Gurthie converted her birdie. A two-stroke swing with two holes to play.
“I knew from the very beginning today that this course — you can shred or it can shred you,” Gurthie said. “There was a stretch down the middle where I kind of just felt like it went the wrong way. I felt like I was getting unlucky, and I just really had to mentally buckle down and stay in it.”
Mertsch, who had shared the lead at various points throughout the day, hit the wrong side of a tree on her tee shot at 18 and could not convert the birdie needed to force a playoff. Hanley laid up for par, conceding the tournament. Gurthie’s birdie putt fell.
A Career-Long Wait
Gurthie, who competed on tour beginning at age 16 and began playing tournaments at nine, had not won at this level since the 2015 Beaver State Fling when she competed under her maiden name, Weiss.
In brief remarks to the crowd following her win, Gurthie disclosed that she and her husband Garrett had suffered a miscarriage during the offseason.
“It makes this win even bigger and more meaningful,” she said. “It means that I’m in the right place, no matter how hard the battle is inside my head. I’m where I need to be, on the disc golf course, fighting.”
Steen finished second. Hanley and Mertsch tied for third. Saarinen, who rebounded from a rough middle stretch to finish at 3-under for the tournament, landed in the top five.
The Queen City Classic was the third event on the 2026 Disc Golf Pro Tour schedule. The tour’s next stop is a major on a wooded course.
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