Valdese’s Deal Leads the Best Ball Player of the Year Rankings

As the Putt-Putt season is nearing an end with just 2 weeks remaining, Bryan Deal of Valdese, NC, sits atop the leaderboard standings in the Best Ball Player of the Year Rankings at the Putt-Putt location in Hickory, NC. Deal leads all tournament players with 18 Top 3 finishes, with 9 of those being wins.

These individual rankings for all players are calculated by wins, Top 3 finishes, and how many tournaments were played throughout the season, regardless of who they were teamed with. It evaluates which player has placed the most and pulled their teams to more tournament victories and Top 3 placements as teammates change. Deal, a newcomer who has only been playing for a year, also previously broke the all-time record for the lowest score ever for one round played in a Best Ball tournament in June at the location with a score of 20 with another teammate, Richard Miller of Hudson, NC, that currently still stands.

The four different putting tournament courses at the location where Best Ball tournaments have been held for years are randomly rotated so that all courses are played throughout the season. Best Ball is where any two people can team up together and compete against other teams, as the teams with the lowest scores compete for cash and prizes. Tournament rules and guidelines can vary by location. In these particular tournaments, there is a 5-stroke limit, with par being a total score of 36 for 18 holes on each course.

Deal didn’t start playing until August of 2022, when at that time he started out with a high handicap, maintaining numerous strokes over par, but within a few short months he helped break a record that stood for over 50 years and has climbed to the top of the leaderboard for Best Ball Player of the Year. On July 22, Deal specifically joined the APA so he could compete and play in the John Conner Memorial tournament on the Southern Putting Tour that was being held at the Hickory location for PPA (Professional Putters Association) and APA (Amateur Putters Association) players and finished 4th overall in his first tournament appearance in the APA division against players from across the nation. The Hickory, NC, location closes for the season around the end of October until mid-April, as those timeframes can change depending on weather conditions as to how long they can remain open.

Deal states that although he just plays the game for fun, his goal is to hopefully one day hit that perfect score of 18 in a tournament, whether it’s best ball or individual, and although he has done it in practice with a couple of different players, it hasn’t been in an official tournament.