He played well there last year, relative where he was in his transition. But I'll definitely, likewise, be curious.

I think his relative strengths are scramble game and course management, so I expect him to do about the same.

What do you mean by course management? To me that means keeping the grass mowed. Are you referring to a part of Brodie's game?

You're thinking of course maintenance. He's talking about course management. Both have strategies, neither are the same.

Managing a course is essentially translating your game and strengths to play well on a layout. Including but not limited to knowing when to: 'go for it' off the tee vs play positional golf, layup vs run a dangerous putt, pitch back onto the fairway after getting in trouble vs trying to push down the fairway from the rough, etc. How to make the fewest mistakes that cost strokes by making smart situational and skill based decisions.

1002 ...nice

Congratulations to Brodie

Does the PDGA make fancy little deals like that for every player who breaks 1000? Or is it just popular ones?

I'm going to mainly agree with these statements but slightly disagree so I can better understand your ideas.

I don't think of Brodie as being good at playing to his strengths on a particular course, but I do think of him as being good at playing to his strengths in general. The scoober is an example of this. He has a shot that was rarely used in DG but common in ultimate. He realized that it was an excellent DG shot for him because of its accuracy and the ability to stay near the basket when he misses. This shot allows him to play within his game but still throw really high-level shots. I'm not sure if he's learned this from hanging out with Paul so much or if it comes natural to him, but I see it translate to other parts of his game too.

So my question is how do you see him altering his game for specific layouts?

He seems to have a good mind for golf. I don't think we will get much of a chance to see how he attacks each course or adjusts the game plan on the fly. But, I do think that he does well with course management for being both very new to the sport, and not as familiar with these courses as a lot of touring pros are.

I don't necessarily think he alters his game for a specific layout. I'm not even sure if he has any relative strengths. I think he has a well rounded game with no exceptional skills.

I think he has a very good mind for the game. And I think he knows his limitations. He might never beat all of them on a given week, but he is going to routinely beat people with superior skills because they take more risks and those risks don't pay off.

Brodie seems interesting because he's both a Noob and very much not.

Brodie comes into DG as a scratch golfer, so he's already got a better golf knowledge than many of us started with, and as a world class ultimate player so there's already disc throwing mechanics even if they need to be changed for DG vs an ultimate Lid.

It's been fun to see his improvement over the last year because there's that "Oh if I could dedicate my full days to DG and had access to Paul Mcbeth I could be 1000 rated in a year too" But at the same time, Brodie has a lot of background that is presumably helping him get proficient as quickly as he did.

Brodie is interesting to me purely as a case study in what an elite ultimate player can do once he gets old and transitions to disc golf if he does it full time. Its pretty much gone as expected, though, so I can't really say I'm still very interested on more than an "Oh, that's neat he's still rolling" sort of way.

There's a local guy that went from the AUDL (played on the Radicals) over to disc golf a few years ago. After about a year he was already one of the best disc golfers in the state, to nearly zero fanfare. He was at 965 at initial rating, and has hit as high as 1015 I believe. Innova sponsored

I know a few as well. Brodie was interesting to me as one of the top guys. My friend Evan is doing similar played for Detroit and (I think) New England and is moving into pro full time this year in DG. Hopefully on his way to 1000 this year.

Just the popular ones!

Curious as to how many of those people have their own threads on this forum, or sell out discs with their logo on them within minutes. This is how professional sports works.

Taylor Brooks is semi-local here. He played for the New York Empire for a few years and is now an up and comer in Virginia disc golf rated 983 as of now.

Fish was also a pretty accomplished Ultimate player and now one of the best dg'ers in the world. He will still tell you he prefers Ultimate.

Ezra meets all of the above qualifications. He did not get the same recognition.

He practices with Paul McBeth. I am pretty sure he gotten a tip or two from him. He is not heading into these course blind and figure it out on his own.

Andrew Brown Im guessing. Hes a very smooth player but he doesnt have the power that Brodie does. Andrew is fantastic in and around the green and does well in the woods. Ive only played with him twice, he has skills for sure. Andrew is also very soft spoken unlike Brodie so maybe he might not want all the fanfare.

It looks like Ezra was mentioned on this forum literally once before he hit 1000, and that was just the listing of a chase card. No one discussed him.

Without fail, they do that for everybody who has over 2 million subscribers to their YouTube channel

That's the thing, he doesn't.

Remind me again of how many youtube views Ezra has?

Set your hate aside for a short time and look at this from a business standpoint, if it doesn't make sense to you then you aren't paying attn.

Ezra's 1st PDGA tournament was less than 2 years ago. lol.. Dude's gone from living/touring out of a small car to being on the same team as McBeth & Pierce. Recognition...is coming.

Ezra finished 22nd at the Memorial and Brodie finished tied for 23rd. Brodie's scores were a bit more consistent the last three rounds. Ezra started hot and faded a bit the last couple of rounds.

BOth are still off to good starts to their season. Ezra is younger and has the higher potential of course.

Just listened to the Brodie episode of Nate Sexton's podcast today. I thought it was great. Honestly believe Brodie's in it for the right reasons and that he has something to offer to growing the sport. I thought the interview was pretty insightful.

Brodie strikes me as a guy who is a bit egotistical but legit has a good heart. And I gotta respect his hustle. He's improved so much in a year. I'm not gonna go out and buy all of his tour series discs, but I'm rooting for him.

What if Ezra and Brodie represent what happened to MMA once high-level amateur wrestlers started getting involved (e.g. Matt Hughes, Mark Coleman).

Yes the podcast was a great listen. When Brodie started milking Nate for putting knowledge, it made me appreciate he is all in on this. He said 2022 is his boom year.

I listened to that podcast episode too. It's a fantastic listen for anyone who loves disc golf.

I find myself having a very hate/like relationship with how I feel about Brodie. Half the time when he opens his mouth I just want to tell him to shut up you whiny b****. Or I see some of his videos that make me absolutely cringe (lets laugh at rollers thrown into a kids playground, near people, for instance).

But the other half of the time, I see a guy who genuinely loves the sport. A guy working hard to get what he wants. An athlete not afraid to speak their mind and challenge some of the "that's just the way it is" things. I respect the hell out of that. He was also fantastic on that podcast.

Idk how I feel. I liked him at the start, hated him in the middle. Now maybe I'm net-zero neutral? I'm probably never rooting for him, and still probably wouldn't care at all if he failed, but maybe I'm just no longer rooting against him?


Anyone else feel like this?

More than likely....everyone. And that's probably how he likes it. A roller coaster of reactions both negative and positive keep people talking about him. Look at this thread, we're nearing 300 pages, that's alot of free publicity he's hasn't had to pay a penny for.

I feel like you do, but in the opposite order. I hated him at first because I knew who he was in the ultimate scene, and I've come to respect him due to his work ethic. I'm talented enough to maybe be 1020 if I played every day, practiced consistently, etc., but I don't care to put in the work. He does. Props to him for that.

Even though I've grown to respect him, there are certainly things that irk me about him. Whining to the public about other people's actions has never been a good look for anyone, especially someone who's already known as brash.

On the other hand, most people on here probably think I'm a fanboy based on how I post about him. I'm very willing to point out that other people are critical of him without being critical of themselves.

Succeed or fail, he's brought more $$$ to disc golf. Idk how much, but I'm not complaining. Now hopefully it'll result in more/better courses.

One thing I thought was good on Brodie, in that podcast with Nate, he acknowledged that he wasn't very proud of who he was and his level of sportsmanship in his Ultimate days. I never thought I'd hear that out of a guy like Brodie.

That was nice to hear. I didn't expect that from him and it shows a lot of maturity to admit that.

I had mixed reactions to the podcast with Nate. I thought there was some insightful discussion but I got particularly irked during the Q&A section about tour series disc and the secondary disc market. The question was essentially, "What do you think about it?" and he went off on this long unrelated tangent about player payouts that felt pretty forced to me. Almost like that topic is his schtick and he needed to find a way to bring it up to create some kind of artificial controversy. I think Nate generally agreed with him, but it didn't seem like Brodie really listened when Nate would say something like "Well you gotta consider... yada-yada-yada".

On a different note, I was surprised to see him get a top-25 finish at LVC but I'm particularly interested to see how his game holds up at Waco. I'm watching him play a practice round with Jeff Korns on the Foundation YouTube channel and gotta say, I don't think he's gonna fare well this weekend. I think he's got enough distance to compete on bomber courses but doesn't seem to have the control (yet) to compete on tight wooded courses. That's my guess at least, we'll see how it goes this weekend. Interestingly, he didn't mention his control or woods game being a weakness in the Nate interview, which I would have expected. He just said he needs more distance and consistency.

Brodie Smith on Pardon My Take
 

I haven’t finished listening to his interview yet but so far it’s pretty neat. He definitely doesn’t know the history of the growth like those of us who have been in but overall he’s portraying the super really positively.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/691...SJKpAD24HAekBg

Nice. I will give this a listen sometime this weekend while doing some yard work.

As it turns out.. a lot of us aren't quite the people we hope to be... or become... in our 20s... man I was clueless at times, but I see the potential I had and the growth I've attained.

*deleted

1018 in the first round.

Shaved off 6 strokes compared to last year. Not bad.

As far as outscoring high rated players, this is by far his best round. Tied Hammes and Conrad. Got Eagle, KJ, Gurthie, Orum, AB, Uli, Feldberg, etc, etc, etc, etc. One stroke off Paul, Dickerson, Gibson, etc.