One Grand Disc Golf Tour

12-29-08

I sure wish we had been able to put something into place to count the disc golf traffic at Turkey Lake during the holiday season this year.  Every year around this time, the park is swarmed with players from all over.

Friday I met 1986 & 87 PDGA World Champ Vanessa Chambers and her family for a round at T2.  Saturday saw the entire Frazer family along with many players that I hadn’t seen for a while or ever before…including one player who shares my mom’s maiden name and is no doubt related somehow, someway.

Having a solid count on the disc golf specific traffic would certainly give us some ammo going into the negotiations about the new wedding gazebo that threatens to change some of our course.  I’ve been told that the park has sold 88 discs in the first 6 weeks.  Not bad considering that most players bring their own.
I wonder how many rentals they’ve done?

I spoke with the park manager about the possibility of getting a part-time job at the park so that I can invest time into these projects without losing money on them.  And I can get them done much faster if I have dedicated time to invest.  I’m guessing that the likelihood is low, but it’d be a hip job to have.

I will probably go out later today and draw up a comprehensive list of what we need to do to “complete” the two courses.  Though both courses are looking as good as they ever have, there’s plenty to do.

It doesn’t look like the M2s on “The Original” will be replaced anytime soon.  So, I want to go ahead and put another set of inner chains on the baskets.  (At Saturdays’ handicap, I nailed a strong putt on 18 for a birdie 3 but it cut through and rolled away about 25’ downhill.  Because of the heavy wind, I missed the return.  I hit the next putt but it bounced off of the bottom of the shallow basket and fell out.  Instead of a solid birdie 3 I took a double bogey 6…primarily because the baskets are M2s.  I’m just glad it wasn’t a big tourney.  But I still walked away empty handed, which is rare.

I’ll elaborate on the scope of new projects at TL in another entry.  The big one for right now is 3 new experimental holes to eventually replace holes 4, 5 & 7 on “The Original”.  I’m just praying I won’t have to redesign the first couple of holes of T2 to make way for that wedding gazebo.  They should be putting that thing down by the water anyway.  Of course they would probably want to put it in ANOTHER place where we have fairways.  This sort thing isn’t isolated to TL.  I’ve seen it enough times to recognize it as a pattern with parks departments not giving us enough respect to let us continue using the land that we cleared for them in the first place.  Fair?  Nope!  Welcome to disc golf politics.

We had another stealth golf meet at the mystery park.  Enough people for 5 teams.  There’s an ACE fund now.

Tomorrow… Enjoying the complete lack of snow in Florida.

12-25-08

It’s 4:30 in the afternoon and I’ve only gone out of my bedroom to eat.

The rest of the time I’ve been going through videos trying to find suitable stuff to post.

I still haven’t tried to post at You-Tube.  I want to have a few things ready to go before I start getting into that.

A couple of months ago, I wanted to see if I could still hit one of my big freestyle combos.  So I set up the camera and hit it first try.  Wow.  Then I hit another pretty tough one on the 2nd try.

I went ahead and edited them together and it is now posted HERE

I hope your Christmas has been more exciting than mine, though it has been interesting figuring out how to do this stuff.  What I’m really looking for is the mini-disc stuff I shot a while back.  I have a bad habit of not indexing my videos.

I have a really cool clip that I want to show you but I have to extract it from a larger piece that I’m not supposed to post.  Not sure how to do that…yet.

I don’t know about your local video store but the one down the block from me has a whole section devoted not only to disc golf but just Juliana videos…cool, huh?
(O.K. I made that up)

Time to venture out of my bedroom for a while today.

Tomorrow:  maybe more videos, maybe some more work on Turkey Lake.

12-25-08
3:24 am

MERRY CHRISTMAS for those of you who subscribe to that particular version of the holidays.

Obviously, I’ve been a poor blah, blah, blah’ger as of late.

I’ve said it many times before and, as my mind continues to race toward Alzheimers, I’ll say it again, “I have lots of important things to avoid.” Apparently, blogging has become one of them.

One thing about the holidays that I enjoy is getting more work.  Diz gigs usually pick up because the regular entertainers want to be with their families.  My family is having a late Christmas, so working on Christmas Eve was actually kinda fun.

We had another stealth meet at the mystery park earlier in the week.  Enough for 2 four-somes.  It was a chilly day for Florida.  I can’t site a particular number on the thermometer, but the number that I can site for our score was one short of winning doubles.

My buddy Chad and I have been toiling away at creating the proper verbage for reviving the Have Course-Will Travel program.  “HCWT mk2″ will be more of a “Rent-a-Course” type of set-up where we rent them 9 holes for 6 months, after which time, we (hopefully) will sell them a permanent course.

I’m soooo very anxious to get into my next course design.  Parks are too slow!  I want to do another private venture.  Obviously, the Canyon project spoiled me.
I’m working on some privately owned land as well.  But there could be just as much red tape.  We’ll see.

Not much else to report.  I’m trying to post my first video on this blah, blah, blah’g.  Hopefully it will work.

I sure hope that everyone who still checks in has a slightly better Christmas than those unfaithful weasels who gave up on this blah blah blah’g.  (Though I can’t really blame them)

Happy Holidays!
G-Ho Ho Ho…

Tomorrow: Sleeping in and opening someone else’s presents?

12-16-08

When I last spoke to John Houck he was designing a course in Nantucket.  It is common knowledge that you can’t say “Nantucket” without beginning to speak in Limerick…

There once was a course in Nantucket
Whose designer inspired us to H(o)uck it.
With some nicely placed chains
We must all use our brains
For our birdies to drop in the bucket!

I pulled baskets 11 & 16 out of the ground on “The Original” because they are around 25 years old and won’t come out of the sleeve.  I put an alternate pin in with one of the modified Tri-State baskets on 11.  (Already had a longer, par 4 position on 16.)   Hopefully a few days worth of WD40 on the old basket will help us get them apart so we can move the baskets around to other sleeves.

Each year, my holiday tradition unwittingly includes being wrangled into helping my pack-rat room-mate clean up a year’s worth of collected stuff in the back yard, half of which we throw out, in preparation for a Christmas party that I will not be able to attend.  Within the first 3 minutes, I picked up a pallet on wheels with a handle to let the accumulated water drain out of it.  Once I THOUGHT the water had drained, I lifted it up and it proceeded to dump about a half gallon of gunk from the Paleolithic era on my shoes and socks, effectively making me smell like a sewer and irrevocably staining my shoes.

As I expected, tonight’s night dubs was a bit light.  I think there were only 7 players and two in the gallery.  I think I have a rib out of place.  It has been giving me grief for a few days now, but I was amazed at how wimpy my shots were tonight.  Our trusty ODGC treasurer drew “odd-man” again and this time took down the lot of us with some strong putting.

If you were reading the blah blah blah’g about a week and a half ago, you know that I had an exciting come-from-behind Masters win in Charleston, SC by way of playoff with Mel Shuman who was going for 10 wins in a row!  (Both Master and Open)  I was sorry to break up his streak (not that sorry) but at least we can say this about his previous 9 tourneys –>.

Tomorrow: more work on the Have Course-Will Rent proposal for parks.

12-15-08

After catching up on some stats I discovered that last week’s win in Charleston was my 95th tournament win… (no, not all PDGA sanctioned and there are both open and master wins along with 1 GM.  But I’m not counting league play or doubles either)

Also, you may recall from the 12-10 entry that I started on #6 at SW GA College in the rain only to lose my putter.  According to my records, that was my 15,000th different disc golf hole.

I’ll usually add them up after adding a new course.  When I transferred all of the info from a MS Word document to an MS Excel file, I figured that I would find some errors in the addition.  The only error was that one course listed on the MS doc had extra holes that I hadn’t played and I listed them separately.
When I eliminated them from the mix the number actually matched!  So why the *&^%$#@ is it that I haven’t managed to do that with my checkbook for nearly a year?

I also found that I have played a mere 194 new courses this year (seems like more) So, calling upon my stunning mathematical prowess… that leaves 6 more to reach 200 for the year.  It looks unlikely that I will be able to get back out of the state in time to break the 200-for-the-year barrier.  But, ya never know.  Maybe if someone offered an all expense trip to some disc golf mecca to do a show or clinic or just because you feel like throwing money away…it could happen.

Some day this week, I expect we’ll have another “stealth” mini event.  Some locals are meeting to play some casual dubs at a nearby park, which we try to do each week.  There will be NO official postings about when or where…but we hope you can join us if you can find us.

There weren’t many of us tonight.  They left at dark.  I went back out for a glow round just to try it out.  Of course I didn’t have the benefit of anything lighting up the targets, so there were times when I threw in the wrong angle off the tee, but it was fun nonetheless.

I put a couple more discs up on my eBay store.  (takes waaaay too long to list)
One of the discs I’ll be putting up shortly is another disc made as a result of my big summer.  Being a Team Champion member, Innova printed up some discs for my Grand Master win at this year’s PDGA Worlds. I just put up a CE Destroyer, which if I’m not mistaken…CE Destroyers are usually only available for Candy Fund Raiser programs. (I know people.)  I was actually allowed to split the batch into 3 different discs… CE Destroyers, DX San Marino Rocs, and Pro Wraiths.

The Pro Wraiths feel sort of ‘Star-ish’.  Someone who is in a position to know said that they are probably special blend plastic.  Even though I’ve had them for a couple of months, I only just put one in my bag.  Meee likey!

Tomorrow: more time consuming efforts that don’t really yield any money, but further my interests nonetheless.

12-14-08

I just finished my 4th day in a row working at Diz. I did Boardwalk Thursday and Sunday and Pleasure Island Friday and Saturday. I’ve never really cared much for doing street shows but it isn’t bad at Disney. People let their guards down when vacationing there, unlike some other venues street performers work. The real thing that I like about it is that I don’t have to pass the hat. I’d starve. Even though I own a really big hat.

I was the first person EVER allowed to pass the hat at Church Street Station here in Orlando. The 2nd night out, some moron stole my hat. It turned out to be the very drunk brother of the secretary for the guy who pretty much owned the entire complex. They replaced my hat before finding this out and then they got my old one back, so I had two to pass around. So, I also started working on hat tricks. That didn’t really last all that long. I had Frisbee tourneys to practice for.

Most of this week’s shows went pretty well, but Friday’s gig at Pleasure Island felt as if that Island was Iceland! It was easily into the 40s and I was only wearing an undershirt, a dress shirt and a thin vest. That’s right, no pants. No, no, no. The guests didn’t need THAT much comedy. It was cool enough that I didn’t even TRY to tip the jam disc when I demonstrated freestyle in the so-called ‘show’. Tipping stuff is usually the opening segment but I’m certain that it would have cracked the disc had I done it.

Saturday, it warmed up into the 50s and tonight may have crossed the 70 degree mark.

I had planned to go about an hour and a half NW to Ocala. A local is building a course and running into trouble with the park’s department because they feel he’s cutting too much underbrush. He called me for help. I don’t know what I could do but I could probably supply them with plenty more information on how these things usually go. People don’t want my help in building them but they call me when their project is in trouble.

I hadn’t heard from him all day and left a message to find out if I had a place to stay when I took off tonight after the gig. He hadn’t heard from the guy who was to put me up and said he’d handle the meeting with the parks people. Sounds like he could lose the course if things don’t go well.

I can’t wait to get into another dgc design and build project on private land. Public parks are just to persnickety. There are too many rules, regional value sets and it definitely requires too much time and patience to educate them on how to do it properly. I may yet drive up there for Monday’s 9 am meeting. The designer used a GPS system to map the layout and I want to look into that.

Most of the next week looks wide open. While I was out on the road last week in SC, our night doubles group got busted (again) for openly drinking beer in our non-alcohol park. How short our memories are. I had to remind them (again) that we were not allowed to run ANY organized event at the park for EIGHT YEARS because the former park manager caught beer drinking disc golfers at the park. Maybe the park staff should reprimand offenders as in the Philippines and just cane (cain?) the offending drinkers. The alcohol may provide some pain relief.

The irony is that individuals are NOT allowed to consume alcohol at TL, but with a permit a group can have a keg. The beer must stay in the pavilion where it is being served and (I LOVE this) must be consumed within 3 hours. It is almost as if they are saying “If you must drink, please guzzle irresponsibly”.

Tomorrow: Ocala…maybe
The rest of the week… Letters to parks about dg, more photo scans, some alt baskets and placements on T2.

12-10-08

It rained most of the night and continued into the morning.  I had hoped to go north to play East Roswell park but Speedy told me that it might be tough to traverse in muddy conditions.  I’ve got gigs tomorrow night, I don’t need to play iron-man in the rain.  I’d rust.

Instead I headed south but ended up passing two more courses just south of Atlanta because the rain was still coming down hard.

It wasn’t until I got around Macon that it let up into a sprinkle, so I pulled off of I-475 and shot west to Claystone Park (#1010).   The Claystone dgc is a nice entry level track.  Pretty much the entire front 9 is Roc-able.  I was –8 after hole 10 in the rain!  What tends to dilute the normally impressive nature of that claim is that I started on hole #11.

The back 9, which I played first, opens up a bit more, allowing you to step up to a driver for a few holes.  I had found a “no-name” DX Leopard on one of the courses I had played a while back and figured a rainy day would be a good time to break it out.

There is some nice terrain and only one hole that I thought was a bit “pachinko”.  The course finishes right along Lake Tobesofkee, with a nice view and I’m sure some wind on a normal day.  It’s just a short jaunt off of the Interstate.  Currently no map of the course but it is easily navigable.  Hole 16 is listed as 234’ but I think it’s 334’.  Tee one looks to have been recently moved due to large piles of bramble caused by a tornado.

I took a chance, in hopes that the rain would subside, and veered west to Americus, GA to play the Southwest GA College course (#1011) No such luck.  I started on hole #6 figuring that #9 would lead me to #1. Wrong!
To start things off, I made the mistake of holding my umbrella when I threw.  This resulted in a very poor throw, which sent my Aviar putter into some very fast moving flash-flood waters, never to be seen again.  Not by me anyway.  The rest of the round didn’t much matter after that.  I didn’t keep score.  I just trudged through it in the heavy downpour in as much as 6’ of water.
#9 ended at least 1/4 mile away from #1.  So much for flow.  There aren’t any what you’d call ‘stupid’ fairways (just a stupid guy throwing them in a flash flood) but I didn’t see anything that looked inspired either.  As campus courses go…it’ll do.

I continued south to Albany, GA to revisit The Lakes at Chehaw.  I needed to do some follow-up from my previous visit and possibly attempt to play the course.  I’ve never played night golf in the rain.  There’s a new one for the “to do” list.

The conditions were lousy and there wasn’t enough light anyway.  Looks like I’ll have to return for yet another visit one day.

Hit the road from Albany, GA and made the drive straight back to Orlando.

Tomorrow: blah blah blah’g catch-up and Diz gig

12-09-08

It was nearly 1pm by the time I arrived in Swainsboro, GA for my first course of the day.  East Georgia College (#1107) has a nice little recreational track that looks as if the designer took his/her time on the first 9 but rushed things a bit on 10-14.  10 is a wide open shot, but a few feet to the left could have taken advantage of some trees and topography.  Hole 13’s tee sat right in hole 12’s hyzer line.  14 could have been moved down hill taking it away from basket 13.

The wind was ripping!  I deuced my first 3 holes, missed one, hit one, then went OB and then missed about 6 putts in a row including a bounce out.  For a pro, this should be a double digits course.

Rolling Hills dgc (#1008) in Milledgeville, GA is on school property but not exactly on campus.
The 11 hole track uses the topography very well which makes up for it being light on trees.
The shorter red tees are beginner friendly but the black tees will make a pro hunker down to score well.

I was chasing the sunlight for the entire 2 hour drive from M-ville to Bishop to try to get Herman C. Michael park (#1009) in before dark.  Once there I had to squat thrust my legs for a minute or two since my body responds less favorably to these road trips than it did 10 years ago.

Resigning myself to just running slow and consistent, I grabbed 5 discs and a big horkin mag-lite in case I had to search or simply ran out of daylight. I hit the stop-watch and hurled then hobbled down the first fairway.  Some little kids had just walked out of a class and sat there and watched me putt out and tee off on the next hole.

This is a pretty good rec level course.  The reds are very beginner friendly.  And the blues will still allow a pretty good player to pad his ego.  I expect that a 1000 rated player would expect to shoot double digits if his game has any consistency.
A good mix of wooded and open holes with some mild but flavorful topographical changes. I didn’t feel as if I had to stretch my game too much to score on this course.  (But sometimes speed golf helps you sift through the “figuring out” process since you just have to run up and throw the shot.  “I’ve done this shot before.  Just throw it.”  And you’re off.)

There may have been one hole that I thought was luckier than skillful but what did I know?  I was running a course for the first time in near-darkness!  Don’t get me wrong.  There was just enough light left to shoot a -13/41 in 18 minutes and 41 seconds.

I had already driven 360 miles and only played 3 courses.  It doesn’t look as if I’ll make my 200th  for the year on this trip.  Oh well, I’ll knock down what I can while I’m up here.    We need more Florida courses, dang it!!

Tomorrow: Atlanta area courses and south GA on the way back home.

12-08-08

Awake fairly early since the Chambers/Thompson family practices their musical instruments at around 6 am.
I played “catch-up” on the blah blah blah’g for a couple of hours and got to Park Circle dgc (#1002) at around 10:30am. Park Circle is a community so named for the circular park at its center. Surrounding the park is a road and another few swaths of land inside of another perimeter road with houses on them. The disc golf course runs around the swaths. There are 8 of them so each chunk of land holds one hole with the exception of holes 5 & 6 which share an island.

This means that after nearly every hole players must cross a road as they traverse the course in a counter-clockwise circle around the park. There are no “next” or tee signs but the flow is fairly easy to follow since you KNOW the next hole will be on the next island.

There wasn’t enough room on the islands to make par 4 holes but here was enough room to make some “tweeners”. A few of the holes had pin placements directly behind a hedge. If you got over it you were way past. If you didn’t the hedge made the putt very tough. Nice cement tees surrounded by cypress chips.

Jonas, this weekend’s TD met me at Park Circle and escorted me to the Naval Weapons station dgc (#1003). There was no check point or security station to go through and nobody had anything to say about us being there.
It was a nice pitch and putt track that could have used a once-over with a lawn mower but all in all it was a fun little track to go around. Most holes were 160’ to 260’ but the final hole was around 400’.

Just a bit to the west was the Buccaneer Bay dgc (#1004) at Charleston Southern University. It was a mostly open short course. The wind was up making it tough to place simple roc shots. Some ditches and lakes came into play. Hole 7 opened up to 401’ which I parked using a 1st run Boss and a 360 delivery.
The course shares space with a golf course. Some golfers saw me park the 401’ hole so they got an eyeful on that one and told me so. It’s kinda cool to hear a golfer who is older than ME say, “That was awesome, dude!”

Down south a ways sits West Ashley park’s Tidal Creek dgc (#1005). It’s a mostly pitch & putt course where the fairways run along a birm in a swamp. I’d hate to play this course in the summer or rainy season. Very pretty but very muddy in places. You finally get a chance to open up a drive on #15 with a fairly open trail at 340’. But #16 is pretty much under water. It’s fairly new and since most courses end up evolving, I’d say this one isn’t quite finished yet.

I found a substantial short cut to Trophy Lakes (#1006) using disc golf course review.com.
There’s no question that TL (I like the initials) is the jewel of the Charleston disc golf courses.
This is the only perm course in Chas-town where you have two shot holes. Tidal Creek had a couple of 300’ elbow holes but nothing that required two strong throws.
Trophy Lakes seems to have been built to accomplish two things; challenging your game and selling more discs. There are several holes where water comes into play in such as way as to demand a black or white decision as to how you intend to play the hole. From the blue tees, aggressive shots that are short or off line will likely find their way to the murky deep. You’ll be needing your lake luck.

But they do send divers down. The police scuba team trains out there as well. Trophy Lakes is primarily a water-ski facility but disc golf blends in nicely.

I finished the round and saw a cool photo-op with Aviar the dog and a squirrel having a stare-contest. I looked for my camera and realized that it wasn’t in my golf bag. I had to run the course backward looking from side to side…”is that it… Nope! It’s pine cone. THERE! Nope another pine cone.” OK, I guess I have to look for a pine cone with a shoulder strap.

I did find it…on the far side of the lake on tee 14. It must have dropped out of my bag after taking a photo of the sunken basket on #13.

Had I done my homework properly rather than socializing with the Thompson family, I might have driven up to Myrtle Beach to play the lit dgc at Tupelo Bay. But we had some catch up to do and they were ever so accommodating. Huge thanks go out to Vanessa, Coleman and Conner for their Hos-pitality.

Tomorrow: North? Or South?

Took a photo of Gotham City on the cab of a truck and within 30 seconds, I saw a “Knight” (as in “dark”) Rider billboard and a “Joker Joe’s fireworks place. Kinda eerie!

12-07-08

So, first priorities… The Anti-Chrysler started right up. Woo hoo. I’m at that stage where, if it starts that’s counted as a small victory (maybe an “X” teir) in my book…and now in my blah blah blah’g.

Once lower on the priority list, sleep is now higher on the priority list after sleeping on memory foam. I’m usually a bed-shredder but last night I did NOT sleep like a baby (I neither cried nor wet the bed..bonus!) I slept like an adult should, which is comfortably. It would have been easy to drop in another movie and spend the morning watching some comedy or action movie rather than going out to play Frisbee in cold windy conditions…oh the drudgery!

Actually, I was pretty focused since Mel had built up a nice 6-stroke lead yesterday. Especially since I had gift wrapped a few of his lead strokes. Let us not forget that I was in 3rd behind Hal who had finished day one at 3 back and 3 ahead of myself. Beav wasn’t getting the love as the weekend wore on but he made plenty of smooth lefty shots that couldn’t be tree-nied.

My first 9 of Sunday went pretty much like the first 9 holes of Saturday’s two rounds, despite the cold temps and added wind. Previously on hole 17 I had gotten a 4 and a 5 on Saturday using a Roc to hit the 275” island green. With the extra wind I opted for a fairway driver (CE Tbird) to a spike and broke the streak by parking it. The rest of the round seemed freed up to have my will upon the course. OK, that rarely happens, but I did break Saturday’s pattern of stinking up the 2nd half of my round.

I shot a –8/46. The open’s best score for that round was 48. I can’t wait to see the round rating. Because I still have nary a clue as to how a round rating is calculated. I hope the 3rd round is as at least as far ABOVE 1,000 as my second round was BELOW 1,000. I’d like to finish a tournament at 1,000 below. That would be below “PAR” rather than say, below zero degrees, or below the sea, or below the belt, or below me down…

Round 3 shaved 4 strokes off of Mel’s lead while allowing me to pass Hal and into 2nd place, two off the lead. (He was actually SEVEN strokes ahead after the first hole of the 3rd. round.) I was starting to feel a bit of confidence straddle putting with a 150 gram Star Aviar. I put it in the bag to replace the wham-o. (nothing ever could) but I learned to straddle putt with the light Aviar and I like how it feels right now. But outside the circle I am in putting limbo. I have 4 different putters in my bag right now and I can make all 4 of them do my bidding INSIDE the circle. But…o-u-t-s-i-d-e 10 meters? I haven’t tuned in to how they finish on a longer putt.

That said, I found a nice rhythm on the round. I wasn’t tearing it up but I took a few chances and they paid off. The 360 “turn-around” drive was working nicely. (I should probably do an article on how to use a 360 degree spin off the tee and maintain your accuracy.) The straddle putt pulled me back into the game.

With about 2.5 holes to go I asked “Any idea what the score looks like at this point?
Mel said, “I think I have you by one.”
I was next on the pad and threw a mediocre drive with a very nice finish.
Mel threw a beautiful line that skipped a bit longer than desired beyond the hole.
Mel missed his putt and I hit mine. I was two better on the round but we were tied overall. We both skipped off the grass under the low oak tree to get within birdie range on our next to last hole.

We finished anti-climactically by leaving our final drives short settling for 3s. It looks like a PLAY-OFF!
But it’s a temp course and the TD told everyone to bring in the basket they finish on. We figured we’d go back out on #1 but they had us go to #17 and 18 and play in a loop until it was decided.

Though tempted to go back to using the Roc, I stuck with the CE Tbird and it spiked down right across the chains (visually speaking. It didn’t actually hit anything but grass, but it gave us a momentary thrill) As was consistently true all weekend, Mel was safe on the green and closer than me. We both hit the headwind putt from roughly 25 and 20 feet.

On to #18. You must clear about 250’ of water, anhyzering around a treed island to the right. There is about 150 feet of fairway beyond the lake leading to the pin.

Up first, I tried to get “mad” through the release of my drive. I got one off that rolled nicely and parked itself within 20 feet. Mel punched a smooth Wraith up the gut to within 15. We both dropped our putts in from there. Still tied, by way of deucing two holes that I played in 4 the first round and 5 in the second.

Back to hole #1, the island hole. Again I used the CE Tbird, but the wind was a bit stronger so I threw it a bit lower and parked it within 6 feet. Mel’s Rock drive was higher than mine but not as high as his previous successful bids. His disc skipped off of the cement sidewalk surrounding the island green and skittered to a stop on the green but about 28 away from the pin.

Mel’s into-the-wind putt was low and I had a worry-free final putt of 6 feet to win the playoff for the Master’s division.

Mel told me later that this play-off was to win his 10th tournament in a row including open events.
Sorry to mess up his streak, but not THAT sorry. (This one takes a bit of the sting out of the finish at the Moccasin Lake Open where Brad and I were tied and he put his drive through some trees and parked the final hole. My shot avoided the trees but caught a bad skip and went in the water to lose by two.)

It was particularly exhilarating to win this play off by deucing two holes that had plagued me in earlier rounds.

At least now, I think I’ll be able to stay out here long enough to play my goal of 17 for the trip. Which is nothing compared the earlier goal, I grant you, but I am within reach of 200 courses for the year, so I’d like to do that now since that opportunity will likely never come again.

I’m staying with the Chambers/ Thompson family again. Their son, Conner just went online to check the rounds, which are already posted a mere 3.5 hours later…maybe MORE impressive than my round rating.

Conner told me that this morning’s round was rated 1051! Kaboom! And this afternoon’s round was 1035. (1043 avg on the day) And now the bad news… yesterday’s rounds were as abysmal as I had expected…991 and 968!
Averaging me out at 1011 for the tourney. Hopefully, that will give my rating a little bump up.

Next week is a tourney up in Myrtle Beach at Tupelo Bay Golf Course. I can’t stick around to make that tourney even though I did well enough here to stay out for a few days. I have Diz gigs on Wednesday and Sunday. So I’ll try to at least get up there to play the course if not the tourney. Come to think of it, since the gig is on Thursday, (a recent addition to the calendar) I probably won’t even have time to complete the 17 courses. Oh well.

Tomorrow: The courses of Charleston.