Hi everyone, I’m back with the highly-anticipated Part 2, where I’ll be covering the craziest comeback a disc golf company has ever seen.

To summarize the off-season, Prodigy discs went from a promising company full of young talent to a universally-hated corporation. The reasoning behind all of the mockery and scandal involving prodigy came from a lawsuit Prodigy filed against one of their players, 16-year-old Gannon Buhr. Buhr is a fan favorite player, and when he was put into financial trouble by a company that was supposed to sponsor and support him, the public was infuriated. Prodigy’s discs were being resold on used sites for astoundingly low prices, amateur golfers were vowing never to throw Prodigy discs again, and it truly looked like the company would never recover from this blunder.

Prodigy settled the lawsuit with Gannon out of court and the information about that deal wasn’t released to the public, but Gannon announced that he would be continuing his sponsorship with Prodigy for the 2023 season. People were understandably still upset, but Gannon kept his side of the story professional and seemed relatively happy with the outcome of the case, so most people’s hate on Prodigy subsided a bit in the early season. The consensus was that Gannon was happy with what happened, he was financially stable after the case, and he could leave Prodigy as long as he played one more season with them.

 

Now, in Part One of this article I mentioned that Prodigy Disc’s strongest aspect of their company was their ability to scout young players that would go on to win tournaments and become big names later in their careers. For example, they scouted Gannon Buhr when he was still in middle school, and as of today Gannon is ranked third overall in the world. Now Gannon is one case, but Prodigy has SIX, and those six would go on to prove the entire disc golf community wrong about Prodigy. Let’s talk about Alden Harris, Isaac Robinson, Ezra Robinson, Kevin Jones, Gannon Buhr, and Parker Welck. This group of six went on to have possibly the greatest season a team has ever had in disc golf history.

Let’s start with the 2023 Pro Tour Standings. In a stroke of good scouting and a fair bit of luck, Prodigy is having a PHENOMENAL season. Prodigy boasts these statistics:

• 2 Prodigy Players are in the Top 3 (Issaac Robinson and Gannon Buhr)
• 4 Prodigy Players are in the top 15 (More than any other company)
• Kevin Jones sits in 17th, and has been working his way up towards the top 15 all year

This may not mean a lot to you so I’ll try to explain what the rankings mean in the world of disc golf. These rankings take the placements of players in tournaments, drop the worst performances, and assign point values to the different placements (i.e. 1st is 100 points). So when Prodigy has 4 of the top 15 players in the world, it means that they have the most elite team in disc golf history.

 

The team statistics are great and all, but Prodigy lucked into some of the best publicity they could have asked for in Parker Welck. Going back to the 2023 Dynamic Discs Open, Parker Welck sat in around 90th place entering the tournament. He was even put at a <1% chance to win. He went on to shoot 3 immaculate rounds, besting World #4 Ricky Wysocki in the final stretch to take home his first Pro Tour Win. Not only was he a human highlight reel, but he was a likable guy too, and Prodigy was able to market Welck to sell some Tour Series Discs in his honor.

See, this is what Prodigy did right. They put the Gannon debacle behind them and focused on amping up the success of their other talent. They emphasized Logos to sell their discs, because when the best players in the world are throwing a company’s discs, those discs are going to sell well. Prodigy has a great grasp on how their discs sell, and as a result of how good their team is, they have consistently sold out of discs on their website.

 

So, in one season, through a combination of extremely talented players and extremely intelligent marketing, Prodigy Discs has taken their brand from the mud and put it above all others.