For female professional disc golfers, the July 29–31 Discraft Great Lakes Open (DGLO) in Milford, Michigan represented a watershed—marking the first time in the young sport’s history that an Elite-series tournament offered women the same first-place prize money as men. “It should have been a great moment,” one of the female competitors told me once the crowds had gone home. “But then the thing ended, and the winners weren’t a male and a female. It was basically two males.”

By this, the woman was referring to male star Calvin Heimburg, who won what is formally called the “Open” division (but which, in practice, is 100 percent male); and the female-division winner, Natalie Ryan, a trans woman who’s been playing disc-golf tournaments for only three years. Despite this lack of experience, Ryan already is starting to make victory something of a habit, winning not only DGLO, but also a second Elite event in Leicester, Massachusetts this past weekend. As a result, Ryan is now ranked as one of the world’s top five female-classified disc golfers.

The first-place prizes at DGLO were US$6,000—hardly a bonanza by the standards of professional sports. But for disc golf’s touring women, many of whom have spent a decade or more on the road, trying to scratch out a living as full-time athletes, it’s a huge amount of money.