It’s taken 6 seasons of playing officially sanctioned tournaments as a PDGA member, but I’ve finally succeeded in finishing a tournament dead last. Well, dead last in my division any way; there was one male in M-4 who shot worse than I did and one male who started the tourney and did not finish.

I’d like to blame the wind, but 2 other guys in my division shot under par and another shot par. The truth is that I made some poor decisions, and my mid-range game totally abandoned me.

Interestingly, on the one hole that proved to be the most challenging (and to my mind basically pointless), I shot par on the first round and a bogey on the second. Better than some others. It’s small comfort.

I’ve played in a fair number of Ice Bowls, but today was the snowiest. It was also the first Ice Bowl for me in which I’ve gone absolutely bone dry in the way of prizes. Couldn’t even score a raffle win. The image below might sum up a day that was both frustrating AND fun. Of course, it’s better since it wasn’t my disc…

Stuck in the Ice

It’s taken a few days to recover, but on Saturday, July 19, Ken and I successfully completed the disc golf iron man competition known as The Great 8. We rose a 4:30 in the A.M. to arrive at Zebulon park for the 6:15 players meeting. After picking up our players packs (a nicely stamped disc, Innova Super Shammy, and a minidisc), hearing some announcements, taking the above photo, and milling about aimlessly for a bit, we took our position at hole #5 and awaited the starting horn.

I’ll let you imagine the finer points of playing 144 holes of disc golf in under 14 hours. Here are some random observations:

• Two themes emerged on the day:
  1. What do we play? Team Golf. Throughout the day, Ken and I complemented each other’s weaknesses nicely. When I’d throw a drive into a tree, Ken’d have a nice clean shot. When Ken yanked a putt, I might put one in. Neither one of us had to carry the other for long, and both of us needed carrying at points.
  2. Long putt for two makes a tip-in for three. We quickly established a pattern of having 15-20 foot putts for 2. As long as one of us kept it close the other could run at it. We didn’t always get the deuce, but we gave ourselves chances.
• I was surprised at how NOT tired I was late in the day. It wasn’t until the 7th course that I started feeling some fatigue. I chalk this up to constant intake of water, gatorade, and Clif energy gel. Also, the drives between courses provided enough time to rest without getting stiff.
• I’m very glad I started working out at the Y. We had to sprint the last four holes, and there’s no way I could have finished without the working out. Not that I’m in the finest shape, you understand, but the cardio work made the difference.
• Positive talk will save the day. At any number of times–say when the skies opened and rained on us for four holes–it would have been easy to get negative, which would have slowed us down further. But Ken kept talking positive things (even when I knew his thoughts were quite the opposite). It’s amazing what a difference that makes.
• God bless the creators of UnderArmour.
• God bless the creators of Gold Bond Medicated Foot Powder.
• SHOCKING development of the day: I won a putting contest! While waiting for scores to be tabulated, the organizers held a “Ring of Fire” putting competition. 30 guys put at a basket simultaneously until only one person makes the putt. I won a nice Innova Starter Bag and a disc. That’ll never happen again!
• GPS units are wonderful. Ken and I were able to split the driving, and he could relax even though I didn’t know the way to the courses thanks to the nifty Garmin.

Results

• Number of Discs Lost: 3 (Ken)
• Number of Consecutive bogeys: 0
• Number of Trees Todd Hit on Tee Drives: Too numerous to count
• Number of Holes set straight through tight trees with a slight anhyzer bend: Same as number of Trees I hit
• Number of Participants: 46
• Number of Doubles Teams: 21
• Number of Intermediate Doubles Teams: 12
• Ken and Todd’s score: 402 (-35)
• Ken and Todd’s place in Intermediate Doubles: 3rd
• Number of gallons of Gatorade G2 I drank: 1
• Number of 1 liter bottles of water I drank: 8 or 9
• Pairs of socks used: 4

So there it is, we didn’t die, we finished, we placed. I call it a successful event.

So, last year I played in the Vienna Open and had a good opening round and an awful second round. Actually the scores are only 2 strokes apart, but that doesn’t really display the misery of the round.

This year, tournaments and my schedule haven’t been lining up well, but I found that I could play Vienna again. So, off I went. And…well, the same story, only worse. I shot a +5 on the first round, which I was pretty pleased with. The course has been re-configured in the past year to make it more challenging (read: they’ve grown enamored with wild, sharp-turning blind holes surrounded by man-eating brush that only a frequently-playing local has any chance of hitting). +5 put me in the money for my division, and (it turns out) shooting a 841 rated round which is above my current rating. So, I started the second round feeling pretty good…until the wheels came off. I’ll spare you the gruesome details, but the final result was a +11 round that was every bit as nasty as that sounds.

I fell from 8th to 13th and right out of the money.

Sigh.

Highlight of the day: A thumber tee-shot through the woods that hit the bottom of the basket pole and skittered about 7 feet away for an easy deuce.

Lowlight of the day: Hitting a tree three feet off the tee. 2nd shot, foot slips on rain soaked grass, drive goes to the right down a stand of trees about 20 ft perpendicular to intended flight path. 3rd shot goes deep into brush. Finish hole with a 5.

Non-golf-highlight of the day: An amateur radio club was having an event in the park. One gentleman had constructed an antenna that spanned several trees. I overheard him having a conversation with someone in Italy; the sound was as clear as any landline phone call I’ve ever heard. Comment from someone in our group: These are the guys you want to know when the world ends in an atomic war.

Saturday was the 2nd Rock Creek Shootout here in Tiffin, OH. Once again, Clare and his team put together a top-notch event that ran smoothly. As much as I mistrust Subway, they came through with good quality sandwhiches donated for lunch, and Ballreich’s donated potato chips that reportedly arrived still warm from thier Tiffin plant. Can’t get much fresher than that.

There were about ten fewer participants than last year, but I think we can chalk that up to the horrendous weather: temps around 38, 15-20mph wind, occasional rain/snow. Just the ticket for a miserable day. Despite that, we still had participants from Oklahoma, North Carolina, Michigan, West Virginia, and, of course, Ohio. I thought I saw a Kentucky car, but I’m not sure.
I started off the day shooting a personal best +3 in the first round. I didn’t do anything flashy, but I also didn’t have any horrific breakdowns either. The worst was hole 14 where I yanked my DX Eagle into the swollen Rock Creek. On the upside, I had a beauty of an uphill, into the wind birdie put on 14 that was entirely a result of my windblown putting session earlier in the week. At any rate, I was quite happy with my first round, and sat around during the lunch break antsy to get started.

For perhaps the first time, I found myself starting the second round on the lead card of my division. The leader was 4 strokes ahead while the other three of us were all within one. I quickly created separation between myself and the others…in the wrong direction. In the first nine holes, I shot two fives and a six. One of the fives and the six I might be able to blame on the wind and wet, but there was one five that was all on me. So, I ended up +14 on the day, dropping me from 2 to a sixth-place tie. That was enough to cash: DX Destroyer, folding stool, and a keychain. And I’m thankful.

I was also thankful to get out of that bonechilling weather and home to a hot shower! Overall it was a solid start to a new year of disc golf. Can’t wait for some better weather to toss some plastic.

Yesterday was quite the day for competition in the Truffin household. In addition to the Bucyrus Bratfest, Sherry and I each were participating in competitive sporting events. [NOTE: I didn't actually see any of the Bratwurst Festival events this year. Sherry and Wade report that it was up to its usual fun. I DID get to have some of the Methodist women's bratwurst casserole, and it was as good as ever!]

Huzzah! for Sherry
After a very long hiatus, Sherry returned to the running races. She ran in the Findlay “Up, Up, and Away 5K,” evidently held in conjunction with a hot air balloon festival. Before I tell you how she did, I feel compelled to point out that Sherry was competing with two major handicaps: on Tuesday she tweaked her back, and it’s been very sore all week, and, as if the back pain wasn’t enough, her mysterious stomach pains seemed to be making a come-back.

However, despite these physical obstacles, Sherry perservered and ran the race set before her. She ran the 5K in 29:13, which works out to 9:25/mile. Not bad. She also placed 11th out of 21 in the 35-39 Female age group and 239th out of 372 finishers.

So, HUZZAH! Sherry for a race well run!

Bratfest Open

While Sherry was out running, Todd drove over to Bucyrus for the inaugural tournament held at Aumiller Park. The course is quite nice, with a Jekyll and Hyde character. The front 9 holes are tight, wooded holes that are all basically short. The back 9 is rather open, still with trees, and mostly loooong. I finished the first round +8, and I was feeling pretty OK about it since I didn’t have any holes that just blew up on: 8 pars and 8 bogeys. Given my usual tournament performance, I felt I was off to a good start.

The second round, however, was once again my giant killer. Interestingly enough, I only finished up 2 strokes worse than the morning, but it felt much, much worse since I had both a double and triple bogey. Fortunately for my finishing place, it seemed that alot of the other players had rough second rounds as well. I ended up taking 5th place out of 17 with a +18. My prize was a disc shaped bottle opener and an Innova Valkyrie disc.

So, over all, I think the Truffins did pretty good.

Subtitle: What did I do to cheese off the Disc Golf Gods?

I last played at Vienna Park in Temperance, MI when the Morefields visited us shortly after we moved to Tiffin. Returning, I appreciate it as a nice, little course, but I also understand why I haven’t made the effort to go back: way too many right-curving shots.

I arrived early, got checked in, and–Glory Be–found a KC Pro Gazelle for sale at the merchandise table. The Gazelle has been one of my “go-to” discs for some time, but they’re now only made in DX plastic. Finding one in the more durable Pro plastic was wonderful. The price-list on the table said that Pro plastic was $10 (I couldn’t believe I’d get away so cheap!) but when I went to pay, the guy said that the Gazelle was more since it was out of production and rare. He wanted $14. I didn’t even blink as I pulled out the extra tender. The only problem with the disc is that it’s on the light side at 147g. But I’ll live with it.

I spent the next hour or so warming up and stretching, trying not to be nervous. As we got closer to tee time, I learned that they’d added three holes to the course, so instead of two 18 hole rounds, there would be two 21 hole rounds. While waiting at our first hole for the round, I expressed to my group my grumpiness about adding holes. Someone mentioned that they had been expecting more players; more holes = more space for players. I get it. I still don’t like it.

The first round wasn’t superb for me by any stretch, but it wasn’t awful either. I had a 5 and some bogeys, but I also had two or three birdies. Given that I was essentially playing the course for the first time (The layout had been changed since the Morefield’s visit.), I felt pretty good. In the end, I walked off the first round shooting +4. After the scores were posted, I saw that of the 11 AM3 (recreational) players, one guy was way out front, two were way behind, and the rest of us were all within 2 strokes. In fact, the four guys on my card all shot the same score during the first round. This was all good. I was being competitive.

Then came the second round. (more…)

I spent yesterday walking long arduous distances between holes at a C-tier tourney held on a temporary course held on the west side of the Hoover Resovoir in columbus. The east side of the Hoover Resovoir houses the National Tour stop known around here simply as “The Hambrick.” We had a beautfiul day for golfing: high around 80, little wind, and sunshine. I got grouped with a good bunch of guys that helped make the day enjoyable even when things weren’t going well.

Suckitude

Before discussing the Hoover-Discraft Westside Challenge in general, I quickly dispense with my performance. The scorecard says I shot 68 both rounds for a final score of 136. Further, that score indicates that I was playing in the proper division. Ken, being the good friend that he his, would point out that in each round I shot above my rating. And at the end of the day I split a $15 prize for a second place tie (out of three). That’s all the stuff that should be making me feel good about my day. However, (more…)

I guess it was way back in Ought One, when we were living in Toccoa, GA, that I was introduced to disc golf by Ken Morefield. A gent named John Nisewonder had convinced the local recreation department to install a course at the Rose Lane park in Toccoa. About a month after playing my first round, I was somewhat hooked. Shortly before we moved away from Toccoa, I played in the first ever Stephens County Pro Am.

So, during Spring Break, we were visiting with the Morefields, and I got it into my head that I wanted to play Rose Lane again. I haven’t been back there since we left Toccoa in ‘02, and I have fond memories of the course (if not the town). At first, the idea was that we’d swing through Toccoa on our way up to Raliegh while returning from a conference in New Orleans sometime in May. Then, a couple of weeks later, I got hold of a calendar and noticed that the Sixth Stephens County Pro Am was going to be held the weekend before finals. Since I didn’t have any exams to write, I thought it might be cool to figure out a way to play in the tourney. I called up Ken, and we decided on the close-to-irresponsible plan of playing in the tourney.

The plan called for me to leave Tiffin immediately after my morning class, drive to Toccoa in one day. Saturday would be the tournament. And then I’d drive back to Ohio on Sunday. Ken would follow a similar path, but his drive from Raliegh would be a bit less taxing. The plan set, Ken made hotel reservations, and Todd rented a car.

I don’t have much to say about driving a little over 1200 miles in 3 days except to say that the 2007 Ford Taurus I was in was basically awful. First, who, in 2007, is asking for cars with a tape deck? All the audiobooks I had from the library were on CD. Grr. Second, the car had a nasty hum coming from the left rear whenever I kept the car at 60mph. 60mph is of course a very popular speed to go for those of us who only allow ourselves a 5mph cushion over the posted limits. Third, I noticed at my first gas stop, about 300 miles down the road, that the front right tire was almost flat. Wow. That’s a great rental car.

The weather for the tourney was fantastic. We did get some wind in the afternoon, but by then my game was shot, so what did I care? The course looked great. In the last five years, they’ve installed cement tee pads and nice signage. Very nice. All of my old nemisises (nemisi?) were there. I seem to have conquered my fear of the tree line on #5, but hole #8 still kicks my butt. They’ve also added six holes to the original 18. Two of the six seem kinda pointless to me: #19 is basically just a pinball shot into some woods that is more luck than skill and #23 is just a long open hole that does nothing to reward a good shot or punish a bad one. #24 is the famed Rose Lane Island Shot, which is a fun toss from an elevated tee to a “green space” island in the middle of the parking lot. #22 is a fairly mundane, straight shot with some shrubs about, nothing to special. #20 & #21 however are rather nice holes that provide some interesting angles and that do have some rewards.

Each round was 24 holes. I started the day going gangbusters (for me). After 9, I was 1 under par. At the halfway mark of the first round I was 1 over. Then I ran into a buzzsaw. Holes 8, 9, and 10 just killed me. I was able to recover my seat on the par train, but by then the damage was one. I ended up the morning at +12 (84). After lunch, I found myself in the middle of the last card for my division. I immediately had some bad holes. While I did card some nice birdies, it wasn’t enough to overcome the wind and some poor putting. The second round found me at +14. So, I ended up with a +26, 170 on the day. I know I didn’t come in last, but I didn’t really figure out my final standings since it was way out of the money.

The best part of the day was that my cardmates during both rounds were a good group of guys that were friendly and courteous and seemed to have a good attitude about the day.

One thing that was a bit disconcerting about the course was that there seemed to be a disproportionate number of “memorials” on the course. Almost everywhere you looked, there was some hole or other course feature that was sponsored “in memory of” some person. Some of the signs even had birth and death dates. Perhaps the oddest one was a cemetery style flat headstone in the middle of a fairway. I asked one of the locals what the story was on the granite, and he said that that person had dropped dead of a heart attack right on that spot two years ago. On the one hand, one can think nice thoughts of dying whilst doing something you enjoy. On the other hand, I did find the placement of a gravestone-like memorial in the middle of the fairway just a tad unsettling.

Saturday night we were both bushed. We had supper at Los Amigos, which was nice since I was able to have chili rellenos the way I like them. The Days Inn gave us one free game of pool, so we “played.” I put “play” in quotes because I was never in the game. My best shot was the break. Mainly, we were tired from playing 48 holes of golf in one day, so it was early to bed, so that I could drive the 600 miles home on Sunday.

If the organizers of Tiffin’s first PDGA sanctioned disc golf tournament accomplished nothing else on Saturday, they have increased the number of people who now know that the water flowing through Hedges-Boyer Park is called Rock Creek. After the 14th comment, I stopped counting the times I heard someone say, “So, that’s what that river/water/crick/thing is called. I never knew.” I myself didn’t know either.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the only thing Ken Rollins and Clare Wertz accomplished. The tourney was smoothly run and conflict-free as far as I could tell, and they fed everyone FREE pizza. No small feat considering that 72 people showed up for this D-tier inaugural event. For those that played them, the longer blue tees made their first appearance at the course, and folks seemed to like the layout. For us mortals, the course was in fine shape considering the wet weather we’ve been having. Kudos to the Parks Dept.

In the end, I shot 68 for both rounds, a whopping +22, to finish somewhere like 5th from the bottom. I could regale you with tales of putts clanking off metal all day or chatty group-mates who were irritating or even a windy cold day that messed with my game, but that would just be redundant. The truth is that one of these days I’m going to learn that it’s ok for me to play my rating. If the PDGA is going to use a rating system and base the tournament groupings on ratings, then it’s ok for me to say “Look, here’s my rating, I’m playing Rec.” and not be ashamed. Yup, one of these days.

Ah, well, it was a fun day standing out in the cold. Not bad for the first tourney of the year. This year looks like there’s going to be many more within easy driving distance, so I’ll work on improving that paltry rating of mine.

For now, I’ve got to work on my putting so I’m ready for the Stephens County Pro/Am in Georgia at the end of the month. Can we say “ROAD TRIP”!