This was one of the best pods @Soly has ever recorded, and it was one that I barely had an interest in listening to before I pressed play.
My perception of Keith Mitchell before this was always “store brand Koepka from Sea Island”. I could not have been more wrong. He’s insightful, incredibly articulate, and self-aware. I did not expect to make it halfway through the episode, but would sign up for another 2 hours now. Very interested in following his career moving forward.
Wanted to post in agreement. Really had no interest in listening, and only played it because I was playing my Refuge 2k21 rounds. Was glad to be very wrong.
Would have thought Keith Mitchell was this thoughtless guy who pounds drivers and gets hot 3-4 times a year with wedges and his putter for a career. Instead, he came off as introspective, intelligent, and self-deprecating. Big ups to him for his honesty and Soly for setting him up to shine. I felt the distance debate section was one of the best back and forths I’ve heard on the topic.
I always feel weird demanding that people listen, or overusing the “YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS” hype train, but that was one I walked out of and was like, damnit, a lot of people are gonna miss this one and that sucks because it was awesome.
Well you’ve just convinced this reader, who otherwise would not have listened, to give it a listen. Well done.
Podcast was really interesting, guy just grinding his way to the top in the world. It’s definitely a testament to the setup of the tours for players to play their way up. Reminds a lot of Morgan Hoffmann who went from an elite am/college level to having no status anywhere and Monday qualified into a KFT event. He played well enough to get into the next week, then the next, and the next, eventually to finally get full status.
I was definitely going to be one of the guys who skipped it.
Glad I didn’t. Certainly one of the more enjoyable/insightful episodes you’ve done.
Same. Figured it would be a lot of standard tour speal so haven’t bothered to check it out. Will give it a listen
It was very good. The Soly interview pods are top notch.
Just finished it up. I was not expecting him to be a breath of fresh air, but what a pleasant surprise. A lot of the player podcasts fall flat (no fault to NLU at all, just some bland personalities out there). Not the case here.
It also didn’t feel like close to 2 hours for me. Really interesting to hear both sides intelligently talk through their side of argument and find quite a bit of common ground.
This is a good example of why NLU guys are so critical of PGA tour exposure of players. You have a guy that’s been on tour for 3-4 years and none of us know anything about him. The redundancy of the same story lines over and over leads to most of the players being unknown unless they are in the final group of a major at some point.
100% great point regarding exposure and getting to know players on a more personal level than just looking at their performances and their statistics. It also exemplifies how much talent is truly out there (also reiterated by Keith) and some of these guys just need a break or some luck to make it to the big league.
Not to spiral the thread to another topic here, but it makes me also curious who could be similar to the Keith’s we see on surface level versus the true Keith’s… I’d like to hear from someone like Zalatoris and Russell Know.
Soly is a crazy good interviewer. If someone told me there was a random golf podcast interview I needed to check out, the list is Soly and maybe Bamberger that I’d push play on without needing to know anything else.
I’ve said it elsewhere but the odds of an accountant with a funny Twitter feed co-creating a company from Europe and being this good at this is wild.
I agree it was a good listen. I do generally like listening to PGA pros but this was very good.
Riding hard for Keith Mitchell after listening to this one. Well done, @Soly!
It was a good debate/discussion. I tend to agree it needs to be about course selection, set up, as well as managing equipment specs (probably bifurcation) to some degree.
A perfect example of why exposure matters. I went from knowing zero about Keith Mitchell to adding him to my favorites on the PGA Tour app. It boggles my mind that the tour refuses to allow access to these guys. A “Drive to Survive” type show following some of these lesser known guys grinding it out on tour would be so entertaining. So much of what makes professional golf interesting gets completely ignored while the same 5 guys get shoved down our throats repeatedly. It’ll never happen, but at least we have podcasts.
All in on this. But between the Ringer’s article on tiger tracker, the coverage of the US Women’s Open, and the CME Globe, it’s brutally obviously that no network the holds Golf rights has any idea on how to actually produce a Drive to Survive type show that wouldn’t be boring and contrived.
Keith Mitchell’s story is the exact reason I wanna see a “Hard Knocks” style show for Korn Ferry Tour or other lesser tours. Stories that could be told of players grinding would be truly rewarding to watch.
Gave it a listen. Great stuff! Keith was awesome- obviously a great conversationalist and likely good buds with @Soly. Reminded me a lot of the Charles Howell pod in how much I enjoyed the insight of a guy I was super meh on in advance
Not sure I agreed on his roll back takes but appreciated him pointing out that roll back is premised on what nerds want to see not 95% of fans. I felt like I took away from his point was that the top guys would still win but would get creative in the process which, yes please!
Know Keith well through Junior Golf and consider him a good friend. He is one of the most genuine guys I know and its really great to hear y’all are getting to see this side of him. He’s a quiet and low key guy on the course but is a great dude off the course