In the first years of Rocket League esports, when online weeklies were turning into studio shows and world championships, Dogukan “Dogu” Yilmaz was one of the young players who pushed Europe into that new landscape. A Dutch player of Turkish and Greek descent, he helped form The Flying Dutchmen, carried that trio through both European group stages of the inaugural Rocket League Championship Series, and finished fourth at the first RLCS World Championship in Los Angeles.
Over roughly two seasons of serious competition he moved from Rookieteers, to The Flying Dutchmen, to the short lived but memorable OhMyDog lineup, and finally onto the roster of Gale Force Esports as a registered substitute on the team that became RLCS Season 4 world champions. EsportsEarnings records him with a little over three thousand dollars in tournament prize money from eight events, a modest total when compared to later eras but a reminder of how early he arrived in the scene.
This Esports Legacy Profile traces Dogu’s path from a teenager who jumped into the game a week after release to a world champion listed as a substitute, and considers what his run says about Rocket League’s first competitive generation.
Origins And A Game That Arrived At The Right Time
Liquipedia and tournament records list Dogukan Yilmaz as born on August 8, 2000, in the Netherlands, and describe him as a Dutch player of Turkish and Greek descent. In later community discussion he has been pointed out as one of the earliest RLCS level players of Turkish heritage, at a time when the player base was still concentrated in Western Europe and North America.
According to his biography on the Rocket League Esports wiki, Yilmaz first noticed Rocket League when he saw a short animated clip of the game in its alpha stages. He bought the game roughly a week after release, moving over from League of Legends, where he is described as having reached a semi professional level. His in game name, “Dogu,” is reported to come directly from his given name, Dogukan, and from his fondness for dogs, a small piece of trivia that fit neatly with his later team name OhMyDog.
The combination of a very young age, a background in another competitive title, and a quick jump into Rocket League gave him the same profile as several early standouts in Europe. What set him apart was that he quickly gravitated toward a group of Dutch players who were already thinking about structured teams rather than casual ranked play.
Rookieteers And The First Step Into Competition
By November 2015, only a few months after release, Yilmaz had joined Rookieteers, a European team that entered regular online tournaments and weekly cups. EsportsCharts and team histories place him with Rookieteers from November 19, 2015, through March 27, 2016, a period that overlaps with Rocket League’s earliest organized three on three competitions.
Rookieteers never became a major title contender, but for Yilmaz those months were a laboratory. The team saw repeated action in community events and smaller invitationals that rewarded consistency and adaptation. It was during this time that he met and played against many of the European names who would later face him again in RLCS group stages and on LAN. That experience prepared him for a more ambitious project built around a fully Dutch lineup.
Forming The Flying Dutchmen
In the winter and spring of 2016, several Dutch players coalesced around the idea of a national trio that could challenge for top four in Europe. Liquipedia’s team history and the Rocket League Esports wiki place the team’s formation in March 2016, when Yilmaz joined and Jasper “Vogan” van Riet came in later that month, completing the core RLCS trio with Jessie.
The Flying Dutchmen quickly grew into a recognizable presence in European tournaments. Vogan’s player page later recorded their appearances in Rocket Royale weeklies, Gfinity Friday tournaments, and both European stages of RLCS Season 1. Their results in those events rarely produced headlines, but they were consistently good enough to keep the team inside the region’s top bracket.
Vogan would eventually publish an article titled “Rocket League Tactics: The Flying Dutchmen’s System,” a piece that treated their rotations and decision making as something deliberate rather than improvised. Even without breaking down every detail of that system, the existence of a public tactics essay from one of his teammates underlines the environment Yilmaz played in. The Flying Dutchmen were not an all star roster stacked with tournament titles, but they were a team that treated structure and teamwork as their route into RLCS.
RLCS Season 1: From Online Group Stages To A Fourth Place At Avalon
When Psyonix and Twitch launched the Rocket League Championship Series in 2016, The Flying Dutchmen were one of a small number of European teams ready to commit to the entire open qualifier and group stage process. RL Esports’ Season 1 pages and Vogan’s results list show Yilmaz, Jessie, and Vogan playing through both European group stages under The Flying Dutchmen banner and securing enough points to claim the fourth European seed for the first ever RLCS Finals.
Those finals took place at Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles on August 6 and 7, 2016, with eight teams from Europe and North America meeting offline for the first time under the RLCS name. In the opening round of the double elimination bracket, The Flying Dutchmen faced Kings of Urban, one of North America’s most hyped lineups, and won the series three games to one, immediately proving that their methodical style could stand up to the region that had dominated many early online events.
The win over Kings of Urban was the high point of their weekend. In the winners bracket they ran into iBUYPOWER Cosmic, the eventual champions, and were swept three games to none. Dropped into the lower bracket, they bounced back with a five game win over Genesis, but then ran into FlipSid3 Tactics and were swept three games to none, which ended their run in a shared fourth place.
Prize records on EsportsEarnings list The Flying Dutchmen’s fourth place finish at the Season 1 Finals as worth three thousand eight hundred fifty dollars for the team, and credit Yilmaz with one thousand two hundred eighty three dollars and thirty three cents as his share of that single event. Add in his earlier placements in community leagues and cups, and by the end of RLCS Season 1 he already had a career that many of the game’s ranked leaders could only imagine.
OhMyDog And A Second RLCS Run
The RLCS format between Seasons 1 and 2 rewarded continuity, but it also gave players a chance to shift into new projects. After The Flying Dutchmen disbanded in August 2016, Yilmaz joined forces with Swedish players Pierre “Turbopolsa” Silfver and Linus “al0t” Möllergren to form a new trio. Liquipedia and the RL Esports wiki both note that on August 24, 2016, the roster of Turbopolsa, al0t, and Dogu came together and, a few days later, took the name OhMyDog.
With Turbopolsa’s aggressive play and al0t’s creative offense, OhMyDog aimed to carry some of the surprise factor that The Flying Dutchmen had enjoyed while adding more mechanical flair. The new team quickly qualified for RLCS Season 2’s European league play. RL Esports and tournament records show them reaching the Season 2 EU group stage and finishing seventh with a two win, five loss series record, a place that kept them clear of the very bottom but left them short of the playoff bracket.
Along the way, OhMyDog featured in several notable broadcasts. The official RLCS Season 2 coverage on Rocket-League.com highlighted their matches against Mock It and other European contenders, while EsportsEarnings lists their appearance in the Season 2 EU Midseason Mayhem show event, where they tied for third and fourth and added another four hundred sixteen dollars and sixty seven cents to Yilmaz’s prize total.
Statistically, Season 2 did not match the drama of their Season 1 run. OhMyDog never found the consistency needed to contest Europe’s top two or three spots, and by November 7, 2016, transfer records show all three players leaving the organization as it disbanded. For Yilmaz, that breakup marked the end of his time as a full time starter at the top of Rocket League.
Retirement, Gale Force, And A Different Kind Of World Title
After OhMyDog collapsed, Dogu’s name slipped out of weekly tournament brackets. Liquipedia now lists him as a retired player, and commentary on Rocket League’s early years often groups him with other Season 1 and Season 2 standouts whose careers were short, either because the meta shifted rapidly or because life beyond the game demanded attention.
Even so, his story contains an unusual epilogue. In August 2017, Gale Force Esports added him to their roster as a substitute ahead of RLCS Season 4. The Gale Force page on the Rocket League Esports wiki notes that on August 8 he joined as a backup behind the starting trio of ViolentPanda, Kaydop, and Turbopolsa, and contemporary coverage of Season 4 teams lists Gale Force as “ViolentPanda / Kaydop / Turbopolsa / (Dogu)” going into league play and the world championship.
Gale Force went on to dominate that season. After a strong European campaign they swept through the Season 4 World Championship in Washington, D.C., culminating in a four game sweep of Method in the grand final, a result that the official Rocket League news site celebrated in a feature titled “Gale Force Esports Crowned RLCS Season 4 World Champions.”
Start.gg’s entrant data for the RLCS Season 4 World Championship and Liquipedia’s summary of Dogu’s career both list him as part of the Gale Force roster for that event, a substitute who did not see game time but was registered on the world champion team. As a result, his player infobox includes the line “RLCS Season 4 World Champion (Sub),” a small but striking contrast to his earlier role as a teenage starter fighting for every series.
After Season 4, there is no record of him returning to regular top tier competition. Between Liquipedia’s retired tag and the absence of later results on EsportsEarnings, it is reasonable to see the Gale Force episode as the last chapter of his professional playing career.
Legacy And Place In Rocket League History
In purely statistical terms, Dogukan “Dogu” Yilmaz’s career looks brief. Eight recorded tournaments, a little over three thousand dollars in prize money, one deep run at the first RLCS World Championship, a second league play season that ended in the middle of the table, and then a world title earned as a substitute on a superteam.
Yet numbers cannot fully capture what it meant for a fifteen and then sixteen year old Dutch player of Turkish and Greek heritage to stand on the Avalon Hollywood stage in 2016, representing an entirely Dutch roster in front of a live audience and the first large RLCS broadcast. The Flying Dutchmen’s victory over Kings of Urban in that opening match helped prove that Europe’s depth extended beyond a few headline organizations, and it gave younger players watching from home a sense that cross regional upsets were possible.
His move to OhMyDog placed him alongside Turbopolsa in a lineup that did not achieve its loftiest goals but served as one of the steps in Turbopolsa’s journey to becoming a four time RLCS champion. For Yilmaz himself, that season showed both the promise and the volatility of Rocket League’s first era. Rosters that narrowly missed playoffs often disappeared within months, and players had to decide whether to chase a moving meta or step away.
Finally, his tenure as Gale Force’s substitute anchored him in a different kind of history. While he rarely appears in highlight reels from the Season 4 World Championship, archival records ensure that his name sits on the same line as one of the strongest rosters the game has produced.
In the broader tapestry of Rocket League esports, Dogu represents a particular type of figure. He was an early adopter who reached the highest stage quickly, helped define what a European trio could achieve before the era of franchised organizations and long term contracts, then stepped into a quieter role once the scene accelerated past its first generation. For an Esports Legacy Profile, that combination of rapid rise, modest earnings, and lasting footprint in the record books makes his story a concise portrait of Rocket League’s first competitive wave.