It’s no secret that almost every disc golf fan has their favorites.
Maybe you’re partial to the consistent success and multiple world titles of players like Paul McBeth, Ricky Wysocki, and Paige Pierce. Or perhaps it’s young 2018 standouts like Eagle McMahon, Paige Bjerkaas, and Kevin Jones who really float your boat. You could’ve been watching lots of JomezPro, and now you’re invested in how the Big Sexy team of Jeremy “Big Jerm” Koling and Nate Sexton do during each tournament.
Later this week, the first big event of the 2019 season gets under way in Las Vegas, and no matter who your favorites are or why, you’ll be able to follow their rounds shot-by-shot on UDisc Live.
One thing you might not have known, though, is that there’s no need for you to scroll through names or do a page search to find your favorite players’ results. UDisc Live has a “favorite” feature that pins players to the top of the feed—no searching required (just take a look at the picture and caption below to see how).
This feature isn’t new, and when we looked through 2018 numbers on who fans favorited, we found a few things we couldn’t resist sharing. Some of them you might be able to guess, but others even have us scratching our heads.
The Top 10
When you look at the graphic below of 2018's top 10 most favorited players, the top three will likely come as no surprise: McBeth, Wysocki, and McMahon. These players are currently the three highest rated players in the world, and consistent greatness tends to attract attention. Case in point, Paige Pierce—a four-time World Champion and the highest rated female player ever—was 2018's most favorited Open Women's player and #7 overall.
It also seems that all that brand-building on JomezPro is paying dividends in fans for Nate Sexton and Jeremy Koling. While Sexton's 2018 season was solid, Koling's—as he himself admits—could have been better. That difference is likely one reason why Sexton more than doubled his commentary partner's total, but it's a good assumption that without Big Sexy commentary, the big man wouldn't have found himself in the top 10 at all.
Taking home a World Championship appears to make you stand out, as well. Both the 2018 Open and Open Women's champs, Gregg Barsby and Paige Bjerkaas, made it into the top 10.
As for the other two players we haven't mentioned, Lizotte and Conrad, their presence on the list is likely due to various factors.
Both had big wins on tournaments covered by UDisc Live last year, with Lizotte taking down the Memorial and Conrad winning the MVP Open. Lizotte has also grown a considerable fan base around a willingness to have fun on the course (sometimes at the expense of his score) and a monster arm that can accomplish shots only a handful of people in the world could replicate. As for Conrad, he has a cannon himself and was also often in contention at major events last year. And, obviously, that hair.
Homeland Heroes Occasionally Beat McBeth
Much like he often does on the course, Paul McBeth dominated the most favorited stat. He was number one in 28 states and many countries worldwide.
However, Paul McBeth's star power isn't always quite enough to beat out people's interest in seeing how their local players are doing in international competition. For example, Seppo Paju had more favorites than McBeth in his homeland of Finland, Lizotte got Germany, KJ Nybo won Denmark, and Silver Lätt took Estonia.
Stateside, there were also a few places that really rallied behind locals. For example, Michael Johansen took first place among disc golf fans in South Carolina (the neighbor of his North Carolina home) and McMahon is #1 in his home state of Colorado. But by far the biggest surprise in the numbers (in the US or otherwise) is that the 1008-rated Pennsylvania pro Devin Frederick came out on top in his native Keystone State.
Fun Facts (Or, Austria Loves Danny Lindahl?)
Though disc golf and its fan base are growing rapidly, there are still plenty of areas in the world where just a few stalwart disc golf fans are keeping up with the big tournaments. In some areas with these small populations of fans, the players who got favorited the most were pretty surprising. Here's a rundown of a few of the most interesting stats in that vein:
- In Austria, Wysocki and Lizotte are tied for first with YouTube disc golf tips extraordinaire Danny Lindahl.
- In Brazil, young Charlotte, NC native Austin Turner and commentary regular Robert McCall are tied with Wysocki and Josh Anton for #1.
- Though this is a throwback to the last section, New Zealand is remarkable in its dedication to following its own. Its top four are all Kiwis: Jackson Sullivan, Simon Feasey, Mario Cerniar, and Hayley Flyntoft, respectively.
