It was all smiles for Joel Freeman, who leads the Glass Blown Open after an 11-under par showing Wednesday. Photo: Alyssa Van Lanen
EMPORIA, Kansas -- The 2019 season hasn’t exactly started the way Joel Freeman hoped it would.
The Colorado product brought high expectations into his second full year on the road, and he hasn’t quite lived up to them yet. Sure, he has three top-five showings at A-Tiers, but he hasn’t cracked anything better than 25th at PDGA National Tour and Disc Golf Pro Tour events, and that left him searching for answers as he came into the Glass Blown Open.
Little did he know that he’d find those answers by simply doing less searching.
The first day of a PDGA National Tour disc golf event is always interesting. Today was no different, as the first of three rounds of the “Steady” Ed Memorial Masters Cup took place on the DeLaveaga Disc Golf Course here in beautiful Santa Cruz, CA. Playing DeLaveaga is a seemingly endless battle on the mind and body. The easy holes aren’t easy and the difficult holes can be devastating. A tournament played on this course means there is no favorite. It can and will make or break competitors in any and every division.
As someone who’s walked with, tweeted about, and wrote articles about the lead cards at dozens of PDGA National Tour and Major events all over the country, it’s never been easy for me to answer a fairly simple question. It’s one that I’m asked at least once a week during the disc golf season. “Which players are the most fun to follow?”
