DGPT marks fifth anniversary of James Conrad’s Holy Shot

The Disc Golf Pro Tour marked the fifth anniversary of James Conrad’s Holy Shot with a video that treated the throw as more than a memory. Conrad’s shot at the 2021 PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships in Ogden, Utah, delivered him the world title and still stands as the sport’s cleanest shorthand for championship pressure.

The PDGA has described the throw as “widely recognized as the greatest disc golf shot ever thrown,” and the numbers around that week explain why the moment landed so hard. The 2021 Worlds stretched across five days, brought together 209 of the best disc golfers on the planet, and carried the weight of two years of waiting with history on the line. Conrad’s finish did not just decide a tournament, it gave disc golf a highlight that could cross over without explanation.

That is why the Holy Shot has lasted well beyond the final card in Ogden. The PDGA later built a full documentary around it, The Holy Shot: Story of the 2021 PDGA Disc Golf World Championships, framing the throw in the history and context that made it stand alone. The sport did not treat it like a one-off clip to be replayed and forgotten; it turned into a reference point for how disc golf tells its biggest stories.

The Disc Golf Pro Tour has leaned into that same idea when it talks about live World Championships coverage. It has pointed to Conrad’s Holy Shot and Paul McBeth’s clutch putt on Hole 17 during the 2022 World Championships, the shot that helped McBeth win his sixth world title, as the kind of moments fans remember because they happened in real time. McBeth remains one of the sport’s defining figures, with six world championships, 152 career wins and $871,517.09 in career earnings, and his late-stage drama has become part of the same championship era Conrad helped define.

Five years later, the Holy Shot still functions as disc golf’s mainstream highlight because it changed the expectations around what live coverage can produce. It was not just a perfect throw. It became the standard everyone still measures the biggest moments against.