One Grand Disc Golf Tour

03-24-09

Plenty going on these days. None of it what you’d call lucrative. There’s a shocker, huh?

After the Melbourne Florida Tour stop I hadn’t played for a week to let my body recuperate. I went to a doctor, got an X-ray and he prescribed a dose pack, which has already made an incredible improvement in 5 days. I plan to start running again today.

The flight and hotel are booked for Acrobatic Paganello, in Rimini, Italy; a beach Ultimate tournament that also has a big freestyle event. I’m very excited about going. I’ll be playing with another “Greg” from Amsterdam.

There’s only ONE disc golf course in Italy, which lies halfway between Rome and Pisa (mid-shin on the Italian “boot”) I hope to add that one to my list.

I’m involved in another disc golf design project on private land. Can’t go into details as of yet, but it has huge potential. Though that potential doesn’t really look to include my pockets.

I was out there for the 3rd time today trying to connect some interesting dots. I climbed a tree to get a look around. On the way down, at about 15 feet, a branch snapped under my feet. I fell backwards out of the tree, started to turn, a vine caught my back and shoulder which helped me rotate and I landed perfectly upright on both feet, walking right out of it as if stepping off a stair-step.
Where’s the You-Tube video camera when you need it?

The only casualty was my shirt, which was highly acceptable to the alternative, which would probably have meant “NO MORE BLAH, BLAH, BLAH’G” or much of ANYTHING else for that matter.

The land steward was with me and said it looked pretty cool. I tried to get him to go up and do it so that I could see what it looked like.  But, for whatever reason, he declined.

As cool as it turned out, it got me to thinking…the Florida disc golf community is losing members too quickly.
We lost Jim Widdick (Sarasota Sky Pilot #001) just before Melbourne.
There were two other charities at the M.O. for players with cancer.
And Jacksonville’s Clint Ehlers, of “Orbital Enhancements” passed suddenly a couple of days ago.
Clint and the Jax club were on the verge of signing a contract with the City of Jacksonville to install something like 10 new courses over the next 5 years.

PEOPLE!!! Take care of yourselves!!!
Eat well.
Exercise!
If the word “party” is a verb to you, make it a treat rather than a lifestyle.
Go get a check-up once in a while.
And don’t climb trees with rotted branches!!!

Tomorrow: More work on the World Champion Disc Golf Design website etc.

03-16-09

Hey Gang,
Lots going on. Most of it not worthing writing about.

I had a visit with Jason Szilli, a disc golfer from PA who comes to Orlando frequently on business. Although we’d been emailing since last year’s 1Kdgt, we hadn’t actually met until last week.

He brought along a first-time disc golfer, Jeremy who showed tremendous improvement over the course of one round. During that round, as I trimmed a branch or two (good to be the course pro) I managed identify an ineffective pruning technique. I pulled on the end of a dead branch in hopes of snapping it off way up on the branch. The branch broke about 6” above my grip and catapulted back up. On the rebound a large chunk broke off and was whipped right back into my face hitting me square in the nose, missing my eyes by about an inch.

Oh, yes, there was blood.

But we finished the round and only after Jason asked my score did I realize that I had shot a –14. This, of course was from the short tees, which were not intended for my skill level.

Until I find out what the parks director has planned for the proposed amphitheatre, I can’t put any real time into redesigning TLO #18 or T2 #1 & 2.

The 19th Melbourne Open was this last weekend. 5 of the extended positions were a bit too long for par 3s and too short for par 4s, especially when the wind is factored in. And 3 more were reachable but verry hard to do so. This, as I predicted, kept the field incredibly bunched up. The emphasis seemed to be more on “not-screwing-up” rather than making great shots.

At the end of the first round, the top 20 or so players were all within 5 strokes. I was in a 3-way tie for 1st after the first two rounds. The 2nd day was much windier but somehow produced some break-out scores.
I had thrown as hard as I could so many times the day before than I couldn’t rotate off my right leg and sawed most of my shots off. So, I had to break my cardinal rule and took some Ibuprofen before round two. My muscles always fire differently when I do that and it showed in my score big-time. The pain subsided about halfway through my round but so did any chances of contending as I was demonstrating very little in the way of control.

Rich Darter was throwing some strong, pure lines and backing them up with solid putting to win the Masters.

Being the “Sunday” kind-of-guy that he is, Climo caught up to Sarasota’s Brian Moore, as did John E. McCray for a 3-way play-off for first place.

Everone 3’d the par 3.5 #1. The wind pushed everyone to the right on #2, giving Brian an O.B. lie from where he missed his par attempt. John’s birdie attempt went by to the right. Putting last, Climo’s into-the-wind putt hit the nubs and failed to climb-Over the edge.

Down to two, both 3′d the very tough #3.

Ken’s drive on #4 hit a branch and dropped 50 short. John E parked the hole within 3 feet and claimed his very first Melbourne Open title and his 82nd open win.

I would have posted photos of the tourney, but someone stole my camera, as well as my 05 USDGC back pack, out of my van at the Sarasota Tour Del Sol stop. This coming after donating $100 to a charity for Jim Widdick who needed more than one organ transplant. (no good deed goes unpunished) Jim has since passed on, leaving his wife and daughter in dire need. Contact Sun King if you wish to help.

Bart Z was down from Chicago-land and borrowed my camera to video the final round and playoff. Afterward, he and I hung around Melbourne long enough to watch the shuttle launch and then get stuck in the subsequent traffic debacle that ensued.

Tomorrow: Recuperating seems to be taking up more of my valuable time these days. Tomorrow will be no different. More work on finances, taxes, the World Champion Disc Golf Design site and projects, my trip to Italy and maybe even my personal life…yeah, right!

03-07-09

My buddy, Chad, has been working hard on the switch-over from “floridadiscgolfdesigngroup.com” to “WorldChampionDiscGolfDesign.com”.
He came up with a nice new logo, which I’m also trying to get onto a big batch of small Flipees from Hero Disc.
Some of you may recall, way back in 2007, I went to Japan specifically to demonstrate the Flipee at the Dodgebee National Championships.

A decade ago, Rick McCafferty and I started an unintentionally “not-for-profit” program called “Disc Hovering Central Florida”.  The name raised the eyebrows of a high profile disc retailer whose name had a similar ring to it.  Hey, I’m not in this biz to torque people off (it just comes naturally), so we changed the name to “Have Course-Will Travel”.   We did 13 events where we gained permission to run an event at a nearby park, designed a temp course, set it up the day of the event and ran a two round mini tourney in hopes that the parks people would see what it’s about and buy a course.

It never happened quite that way.  The only course we got in the ground due to our efforts was the Gran Canyon (my crowning design achievement) but it was on private land and has since sold.

Our plans are to resurrect HCWT, but with a twist.  We plan to offer a 9-hole rental for 6 months for a low enough price that they feel compelled to try it.    With the course in the ground for 6 months, that should be enough time for people to DISCover the course and start playing it.

At the end of the rental period, if they still aren’t interested, we’ll pull the course and walk away.  If they are, we replace our baskets with the new ones that they purchased through us.  Course changes might be necessary for a better permanent layout.

I’ve booked my flight to Italy for Acrobatic Paganello in Rimini, leaving a month from today.  In that time, I hope to get my low back and hips to the point where I can freestyle for a couple of hours and not have to lie down for two days afterward.

The last few times I’ve jammed I’ve noticed a change in my game.  I’m not trying my normal contrived “Big Uggo” combinations as much and just going after the disc and finding newer answers to odd angles etc.  My head seems to know what to do.   My body doesn’t always move the way my head tells it to.  But still, the game has taken yet another fun twist.

The Melbourne Fab Florida tour stop is next weekend.  I need to prepare my driving and putting skills for the traditionally windy conditions and longer holes.

Bart (Channel Z) Zandstra is flying in today to surprise a buddy on his birthday (today) I’m going to pick him up from the airport, play a round at Turkey Lake and drive him to the surprise party.

While there, I plan to snag the two baskets that BZ borrowed so that I can clean them up and get them ready for the new HCWT program.

Tomorrow: recuping from whatever happens today.

03-01-09

I drove down to Sarasota mid-day Friday for the 2nd stop on Sun King’s “Tour Del Sol”, a series of non-PDGA events intended to introduce new players to the game and raise some charity.
In this case, the Sarasota Sky Pilots founding member, Jim Widdick (SSP #1) is very sick and needs more than one organ transplant and his family does not have insurance. His wife is working to the tune of 70 hours per week to support the family, plus taking care of the house and their daughter. Contact Sun King if you wish to donate.

OK, I didn’t bring a new player but I did donate $100, as did a couple others. Several folks donated their winnings etc. All told, we raised over $600 for the Widdick family and a smaller charitable cause which escapes me at the moment.

Backtracking for a moment…Friday’s practice round I played with local pro Brian Moore and Dan Smith who were playing a loose “flex-start” dubs round. They shot –11 from the long tees as a team as did I by myself. The North Water Tower course was looking as good as I had ever seen it. The grass was freshly mowed and most of the underbrush had been cleaned up.

Saturday’s tourney was quite a bit windier, so it didn’t take a clairvoyant to predict that I’d be less under par for the next two rounds than I was for the previous one . Brian started off –6 for the first 7 holes but ended up –7 on the round. I finished two back at –5 tied with a veteran of only 2 years and former tennis competitor Jonathan Williams. Local pro Fabrizio Abdala came up from the mixed (open & Masters) group with a –3 to round out the top group for round two.

My game felt pretty sloppy for much of the round but I felt as if I still had a chance after birdeying 12, 13 & 14. I figured one more birdie might put me in the hunt. 15 is a straight 280’ shot which I sawed off. 16 is a 216’ pachinko hole which I over drove. 17 is a tough slow-turn “anny” shot. The drive was close enough but the putt wasn’t. I blew way past and hit a solid straddle for par. Hole 18 is a 360’ shot out of a tunnel, which I had put within 15 the previous two rounds. This time I played “Whack-an-oak” and left myself about 300’ short of the pin in the woods to the left. Even with pretty bad footing I managed to pop a TeeBird out far enough to skip within 30 feet and bagged the par putt after finding out that I still had a chance to tie Brian if he missed his par putt. Brian had been putting well over the last two days and his final putt was no different.

Brian had two on me going into the final round and I had two on Fab. Fab shot one better than me in the final round and I shot one better than Brian, which tightened it up to a one stroke separation but didn’t change our finishing order. Jonathan, however, fell off the pace a bit to finish 4th.

Brian helped Sun King run a few Ring-of-Fire rounds. Even though I put in about 5 putts that got knocked out and one that wouldn’t have gone in that got knocked in, I ended up winning one of the rounds. I gave my ticket to Jonathan’s adorable girlfriend who had a chance to win one but everyone missed and the whole group was back in. If I remember correctly, I won the subsequent round so I gave the prize ticket to her just for grins.

I went to my car to call my mom to find out what sort of dinner plans they had made and that’s when I discovered that someone had gotten into my van and stolen my 2005 USDGC backpack with my Canon S5IS camera! My glove box was open and a few things were scattered but my wallet, checkbook and phone were untouched. Fortunately, I left my laptop (my ONLY computer) at my mom’s place otherwise you would not be reading this and I would be applying for a handgun.

I had hoped to help out a local Master player with his footwork (even though he ended up winning his division… and I didn’t) but I was late for dinner and in no mood to play the role of teacher after getting ripped off. (Obviously there are no photos from the tourney) I have a camera phone but I have not a clue as to how to download the photos. And the photos are pretty much crap.

I met the family at a restaurant and scowled my way through dinner. We grabbed a couple of pies to go and went to my brother’s place. After the rest of the family left, we went through a bit more of my dad’s belongings.

Tomorrow: I had planned to meet with bro to do what we did tonight, so I may just go to the beach since I haven’t been to a beach in Sarasota for a few years.