Surprise winners, surprise struggles.

June 29, 2022 by Christopher Wiklund in Analysis, Opinion with comments

All of a sudden, it is fully summer and we are IN IT. No more are we in the early summer and “getting into the swing of the things” on tour. Nope, we’ve got some full-on storylines, some valid trends and patterns, and, I dare say, even some things to raise our eyebrows at.

Personally, my favorite part of this season has been the chaos. MPO has seen seven unique winners this season after Bradley Williams’ win at The Preserve; in FPO, there have been four unique winners over nine Elite Series events. No one player has separated themselves from the pack and put their stamp on the season in either division. This has made for one of the most compelling and confounding seasons in recent memory.

A crucial chaos agent this season has been Aaron Gossage. He entered this season with one top 10 and two top 20 finishes at ES events. This year, Gossage has three top 10 finishes, two of which are third place finishes. He is still dropping the occasional finish outside the top 15, but those have become more the exception than the rule. At this point, we put the GLI (Goosage Loosage Index) at a 7/10. Be advised, the Goose is still very much on the loose.

Honorable mentions for the esteemed Agents of Chaos award are Ohn Scoggins, Kat Mertsch, Luke Humphries, and Isaac Robinson.

Chaos thrives when the natural order of things has been upset, and with Paul McBeth’s perplexing play, Ricky Wysocki’s ongoing fight with Lyme, Chris Dickerson’s aversion to flight, and Eagle McMahon’s injury preventing him from participating in the fun this season, the natural order has…