Medina native Ricky Wysocki signs historic endorsement deal

Medina native Ricky Wysocki began playing disc golf at Roscoe Ewing Park as a teenager for fun. More than a decade later, that hobby has turned into a career in which Wysocki has won two world championships. This week, Wysocki signed a four-year, $4 million sponsorship deal with Dynamic Discs. "It was crazy," Wysocki said in a phone interview from California. "It really was a combination of the right time and place where my brand and my level of play came together. I just came off the best year of my career, so it all fell into place at the right time. "Getting this deal drives me to continue to try and validate this sport and prove it's not just a hippie sport, but that we're legitimate athletes." Wysocki won six Professional Disc Golf Association events and earned $79,429 in prize money last season. The deal matches Paul McBeth for the highest average sponsorship payout in the sport's history. Wysocki also received a $250,000 signing bonus paid in Bitcoin. However, the frugal Wysocki does not have any immediate plans to treat himself with any outlandish purchases. He is more concerned with setting up himself financially for the long term. He also is planning to develop the Sockibomb Foundation, which will help with youth outreach and getting kids started in playing the game by donating discs and equipment to schools across the country. "I really haven't thought about anything I want to buy just yet," Wysocki said. "I want to invest my money right and think about treating myself later. I need to put my future self ahead of my present self." Wysocki, who has won 120 of the 363 PDGA events he has entered to total $506,832 in career earnings, is excited about what deals like his mean for the rapidly growing sport. As a part of the deal, Dynamic Discs will be putting out a new line of discs called Sockibombs. The discs will include Raider and Harp discs, which are like the driver and wedge equivalents to traditional golf, as well as others. "The way it works in disc golf is that the top players get most of their money through sponsorships, and those sponsors come from mostly inside the sport," Wysocki said. "But as we get these bigger deals, it's starting to snowball into outside sponsors showing more interest and shows there's tons of value in the sport." Wysocki currently is enjoying the offseason before competition ramps up again in late February. He is weight training and stretching to keep his body in top shape while also practicing frequently. "This takes a lot of effort," Wysocki said. "You have to treat your body right to stay healthy and lengthen your career as much as possible." The journey to becoming one of the top disc golfers in the world began in Southeast Medina, where Wysocki said he and his friends could be found at Roscoe Ewing Park whenever they had a free moment. Wysocki credited the course's difficult layout for helping him develop skills he later turned into a career. "When I was 15 or 16 years old, I would be at that course all day, every day, which served me well because that's a difficult course," he said. "I have a lot of roots there, and my friends and people I played with there helped mold me as a player and continue to support me today." After all that time playing, Wysocki, who attended Medina and Brunswick high schools before graduating from the Medina County Career Center, knew his skill was growing, but the encouragement from others who played with him took his game to the next level. "I played every day with a passion for the game," he said. "I knew I was getting good, but it was the locals that I was playing with that encouraged me to start playing in tournaments and showed me I could turn this into a career." Shortly after beginning to play in tournaments, Wysocki won the 2010 under-16 junior world championship in Marion, Ohio, as an amateur, which catapulted him toward a professional career. "That was a huge milestone for my career and sparked my interest in playing even more," Wysocki said. "Winning that tournament and proving I was the best 16-year-old disc golf player in the world sprung me forward with confidence. That allowed me to dive into the pro ranks." One year later, Wysocki entered his first major event and won the PDGA Championship on his way to earning PDGA Rookie of the Year in 2011 at only 18 years old. Wysocki has since won two world championships and travels all over the country from February to October, as well as Europe when the COVID-19 pandemic does not get in the way. In late July, Wysocki plans to compete in the Great Lakes Open in Milford, Mich., which is just outside of Ann Arbor. That is the closest stop on the tour to Northeast Ohio. The current Scottsdale, Ariz., resident looks forward to the chance to add a third world championship to his name in the near future. "To win a world championship in any sport takes a lot of dedication and practice," Wysocki said. "You have to polish your skills over months and years to get to that point. The fact that I know what it takes to win a world championship gives me an advantage and makes me say, 'Let's do it again in the next couple years.'" Contact John Urchek at jurchek@medina-gazette.com.