1st Tournament in Forever

I was getting bored and hadn't been stupid enough to enter a disc golf tournament so I rode down to Ashland to the The Village Disc Golf Club and entered the River City Open.

The Village is not one of my favorite courses. There are very few birdie holes for a 840's rated player and this course can really throw your ass on the bogey train and take you directly suckville with no stops.

My goals were to actually finish both rounds and not DFL.

The morning round wasn't too bad. We started on 17 and started off with 2 pars. I almost had the birdie on the just about impossible #18 but I ended up with par which felt like a birdie. I did manage one Duce but a few missed par putts and a double bogey on 4 pretty much ruined that round. But it wasn't the worst score I've had here.

The afternoon round was going to be the tough one and it was. It felt like a disc golf death march. I was already tired from the morning round and the heat kicked up a notch during the afternoon. To the point I was sweating so much it looked like I was caught in the rain.

But I didn't fall apart like I usually do. I did have a couple of bad holes but I didn't DNF and I didn't DFL.

#830RatedforLife....

Today was the Falls Colors at Newport News. Last year I was signed up to play Advanced Grandmasters but my heart attack kinda got in the way.

Since then I have decided that from now on I'm only going to play Recreational because my PDGA rating has dropped down to the 830 range. Two Weeks ago at the IFO I finished 8th out of 12. The first round was fine and was in 3rd place but the second round I had my usual bad play late and ended up 8th out of 12.

The Fall Colors is one of my favorite tournaments. But it's in Newport News which is 120 miles away. Is it worth it to drive 240 miles to play Rec? There were 24 in Rec and most players were rated around 825-860 except for a few unrated players. It's the unrated players that usually end up winning. Sometimes it's just a new players first event but they are usually pretty good players that if they were PDGA members would be rated too high to play Rec.

The morning round I started on 18. Despite the cold it wasn't too bad. I started off slow and before you know it I was 8 over and was looking to drop out after the round.  Hole 5 was a custom set up that sucked. It was a severe right hand dogleg in to tight woods. Throw a great drive to set up the up shot and end up with a 5 after missing an easy putt. Hole 6 I was able to hit a 30' turbo putt through the trees and promptly double bogeyed 7. I started cruising after 7 and threw some great drives that parked 11, 13 & 16 for easy birdies. It kind of saved the round from total disaster.

I ended up on the 3rd cars in 12th place. The leader shot 60 so being 6 back I figured I was probably out of the prizes. I was going to drop out and drive up to New Quarter park and play 18 before driving home. But was talked out of it.

The afternoon round started on 12. I was looking forward to this start figuring I could hit a few birdies early. I was still throwing great drives but this round they were just off enough to keep me out of putting range. But I got in to a groove and with 8 hole left was only 1 over. The hole 5 again. Great tee shot good up shot but a tree kicked me away and I ended up missing another putt. Hole 6 was just a disaster. I was getting tired and hit the first tree about 10' off the tee and my "Give a Fuck" meter hit 11. I went from 1 over to 6 over in three holes. I figured I was out of it. Uncharacteristically I was able to pull my shit together and finished with 2 straight birdie shot, finishing at 4 over. 

Over all it wasn't too bad of a tournament for me. Just a few mental errors. I had consistent tee shots and putts. My up shots let me down this time. 

I ended up in 10th place out of 24. The prizes were paying out up to 12th. I ended up winning a Crystal Buzzz.

As I expected the Rec winner was unrated and shot both rounds 900+. Out of the top 5 3 were unrated. 

17th Annual Fall Colors Ams

Disc Girl

I believe that the future of disc golf is women playing the sport. When I first started in the 80's there were never any women players. That has gradually changed. Spotsy has about 10 women that play and Newport News has a women's club.

The more women that play the more universal the appeal of the game and where women are more guys tend to show up.

I started cutting vinyl stickers of the club logo and other stuff and decided to design one for the ladies in the club.

That became Disc Girl....

It has become very popular among the Ladies DG circles. The cool part is I can customize them easily to personalize them.

Dyeing For Some New Discs....

It had been a while but I dyed the trophy discs for the Hawk Hollow Ams event. It's not hard at all but it got me back in to wanting to do some new dyes.

This time I wanted to do some multicolor dyes. I decided it was time for some new putters. I order 2 white star Darts. The first design was a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon I updated to a disc golf theme.

This one wasn't too hard to do. I used the shaving cream dye to paint the different colors. I was debating adding some grass & sky but I decided against that and it came out really clean.

The other putter I went with a more ambitious design. I found a stained glass Flying Spaghetti Monster and adapted it to fit a round design.

I started with heat dying the black lines then orange on the outer edge (I also dyed the underside orange too) and finished the heat dye with the yellow. Then I used shaving cream dye to do each different element. To try and keep it under control I would only peel off the mask of the color I was going to dye. Red for the meatballs & eyes. Then blue, followed by purple and finishing with green.

For the difficulty and challenge of the FSM dye it turned out a lot better than I could hope for. Only a few bleeds and the colors came out great.

Ace Race Fun....

Went up to Hot Shots for my friend Jerry's Discraft Ace Race. Basically you get 2 prototype discs and throw ace runs at shortened holes. Whoever gets the most aces wins and metal hits are used as tie breakers.

The discs this year were fairly over stable for my arm. It took me the first 8 holes just to get the range in. I had several really close misses.We were not scoring any hits and then on hole 16 I threw a huge hyzer-bomb and it looked good. I wasn't going to say anything but the guys in my group were yelling for it to go in. The disc dropped straight down and hit the chains and stuck. The bonus was it was a CTP hole too, unless someone else aces that hole I at least will win something.

That put us all in a good mood and the others in my group started hitting metal.

The second round I was in 2nd place Mike had an Ace and 1 metal hit and I had 1 Ace. By the 8 hole I had scored 3 metal hits to take the lead on my card. But Scott scores 2 Aces and with about 10 holes to go my back tightened up and my gas tank was running on empty. I had several close calls but just couldn't score that 2nd Ace. On the last hole I threw another big hyzer-bomb and the disc hit about 24" from the pin and was able to win 2 of the 4 CTP's

Even though I didn't like this disc that much I did pretty good with it. It's kinda between an Avenger and Avenger SS. I'm not that big of fan of Discraft. Their molds just don't seem to fit my throwing style. I was a little disappointed I didn't win but I was competitive and did good.

On a bright note I did win the #31 Spotsy tag off of Jerry and he ended up with my #44.

Shaving Cream Disc Dyes

I have been coming in to dying discs again. I have been inspired by some great work on DGCR that have been using shaving cream to do some beautiful tye-dye and other effects on their plastic.

I practiced on a few old discs and after I was fairly sure I could pull off the look I would be going for I gave it a try.

The basic concept here is you mix the dye in with standard shaving cream and then create patterns for certain effects. This process take a few hours to work instead of the few minutes with heat dyes.

The Big Lebowski was going to be the design. I started off with the black outline dye.

The next step would be to color the lenses of the sunglasses. I dropped small blue dots in a star pattern with a few yellow dots and then I filled it all in with red.

Then I created the outer pattern to go round the art. I was trying to create a flame pattern.

I then peeled off the outer edge mask. The dyes on the sunglasses was left on the disc. It was thich enough to stick and not move.

I left the disc to sit in the dye for about 4 hours....

... and this is what I ended up with.

The colors are a lot brighter than is the pic. To finish the disc I added a brown to color the hair highlights. It turned out really well for a beginner's attempt.

Red Oak Rumble

I went up to LaPlata, Md to play in the Red Oak Rumble. Jerry & Billy were hosting their first PDGA event at the new Turkey Hill disc golf course. Since they always come down for our tournaments I wanted to support their events.

The rub here is that the Open, Advanced & Intermediate divisions were going to play from the long blue tees. Ronnie and I drove up the previous Wednesday to get some practice in and there was no way I could play 2 rounds on that set up.

So I decided to drop down to the Rec division. I felt pretty much ashamed and a little dirty but I'm only an 850 rated player and probably never going to get much better no matter how much I practice.

I was feeling pretty good I had been practicing putts in the backyard for about an hour every day for the past 2 weeks...

Including me 5 Spotsy guys traveled up for the first PDGA sanctioned event at the new Turkey Hill Disc Golf Course. I really like this course if you ever get the chance play it. 

The Rec division was playing from the Red tees (Short Tees) both rounds the second round would play the long basket positions. The first round I did okay, not too many mistakes I couldn't recover from. My biggest problem this round was missing the drives on super short 11 & 12. I failed to hit the easy birdies on both holes. But I managed a 57 (+2) and was in third place behind two tied at even par.

The second card all four of us were within four strokes of each other. This round I completely fell apart on my putting. I missed four birdie putts, some as close as 10'. I missed several par saving putts from within 20'. It was a complete disaster within the circle. The only saving grace was that the other three on my card were not doing much better.

That round should have been 62. The lead card played so bad that the second guy on the chase card shot a 61 and ended up winning by one. But I was able to hang on for third.

Red Oak Rumble PDGA Scores

It wasn't a bad day after all. I finished 3rd in Red, Ronnie took 2nd in Intermediate & Cody won the Open division.

I'm pretty sure if I play any more tournaments I'm just going to play Rec. No matter how much I practice or play I will always be an 850 rated player. Maybe one day I'll win one...

Seneca Sun Seeker

I drove up to Gaithersburg, Maryland to photograph a friend that was hosting his inaugural Seneca Sun Seeker at Seneca Creek State Park.

I had never been there and it is a beautiful 27 hole course with everything you need for a great disc golf experience.

Luckily it was an overcast day. The downside was there were some pretty dark areas in the woods that pushed the limits of my gear. But if the sun had been out much it wold have beat me down completely. I didn't have any trouble getting to sleep when I got home.

Bobby put on a first rate tournament, I did a pretty good job on my end.

2014 Seneca Sun Seeker Slide Show

Building a Course...

A few weeks ago in a bored spell at work I wrote a random e-mail to the Wilderness Presidential Resort about the possibility of expanding their disc golf course. Wilderness is a private camping complex that happens to have a 9-hole course.

My intentions were to ask if they would be interested in expanding and improving their disc golf course and opening it up for a pay to play course. I had heard that the course was open only to members of the resort so I expected no response to my initial inquiry.

Surprisingly within a few days I received a reply that they were interested my idea and wanted me to come look at what they have and the potential for building a championship course. I put the word out and John Biscoe contacted me that he was very interested in meeting with the Wilderness person that contacted me. It was a very good meeting and they seemed very interested in the idea of building a championship course that would be open for non-members to pay to play.

Today John & I went out to Wilderness to see what they had and the potential for building a new course.

Their 9-hole course is situated on an open area of changing elevation on a beautiful lake. We played the course that was there it was simple & fun built for people who have never played before. But it wasn't a bad set up and there is a lot of possibilities to expand and improve the course. Including a small island about 50' off the shore of the lake that would make a really cool signature hole.


I've never built a course and John seemed very interested in taking on this project. I am just looking to assist John any way I can to learn as much as I can. It's in the very early stages and the next objective is to get a map of the land available and come up with a rough idea of the possible layout of 18 holes.

Updates will come...

2014 Chili Cook-Off

Today was the 2014 Spotsy Chili Cook-Off and Charity Tournament to benefit the Rappahanock Regional Food Bank. Everyone brought some non-perishable food and the enrty fee was donated too. Players also donate prizes to sponsor CTP contests. We had so many sponsors there were CTP's on almost every hole. I sponsored 3 holes.

An artic front moved in last night and today it was cloudy, windy and cold. Very Cold.

Did I mention how cold it was?

Eight of us brought our best Chili recipes for the half time Chili Cook-Off.

Your truly garnered the most votes for their favorite chili and I was crowned the 2014 Chili Cook-Off Champ! My first win.

But the Disc Golf was fun despite the cold...

For all the pics of the day click the link...

2014 Spotsy Chili Cook-Off Slide Show

Snow Round at Loriella

Tested out the new GoPro Hero3 with Austin...

Battle in the Blue Ridge

Walnut Creek Park just south of Charlottesville was the location for Battle in the Blue Ridge. It's a two day tourney and I didn't want to drive both days.

Luckily there is a KOA campground just around the corner from the park with nice log cabins. I took Friday off and headed down a day early to relax and practice a few shots at the course. I got the 1 room cabin for me & Austin. Billy & Sean reserved the large cabin right nest to us.

I brought my Discatcher to goof around with and Billy brought his after grillin' some steaks for dinner we set up next to the horseshoe pit and played some Disc "shoes".

Saturday morning and I was feeling good and the round went OK but could have been better. There were only 4 in the grand masters so we played all rounds together and started on #9 each round. This round was short tees to short baskets. There were plenty of birdie opportunities.

I missed an easy par and birdie putt that cost me 2 strokes. Hole #10 should have been an easy par. I practiced it on Friday and did fine. I kept the mistakes kinda low and was only a few strokes in last. 

The afternoon round was from the long tees to the short baskets. It started great. I threw a good drive on #9 to start it off and hit a sweet 75' shot with my ROC 3 straight at the chains for a birdie. But just a few minutes later is where it all fell apart on hole 10. It should be just an easy straight shot down. Nothing fancy just easy and safe. What do I do? End up in the thickest, darkest rough and ende up with a double bogey. A sweet 6 on 16 and that pretty much killed me for the rest of the weekend.

Billy on #17 tee,

The final round was going to be the real test. Long tees to long baskets. I was 7 stokes back so unless I played super great and someone else blew up bad I wasn't getting out of 4th place. All of us had our bad holes and par was like hitting a birdie. The gusting wind didn't help much either.

Just like in the other rounds #10 was my nemesis and it cost me 7 strokes all weekend. I was able to keep up with the guys and it wasn't a badd round because I was expecting a lot worse. I ended on #8 and launched a sweet drive that landed me close enough for a long birdie shot but ended up with a par.

Billy, Kevin, Barry & me...  to keep it less confusing Kevins were  K1(me) &  K2. on the last tee.

I could have done a lot worse. I kept it close except for the blow up on the middle round. I'm keeping up with my goal for the year. Even though I finished 4th out of 4 in MG1. I would have not finished last in Intermediated or Advanced. I also played better than my rating all three rounds. 

Bob won his Master trophy on the last hole and Austin threw two 1000 rated rounds to take the lead and a 965 rated round to take the Advanced trophy.

For all the scores...

Battle in the Blue Ridge

Saturday in Staunton

The first PDGA event at Kiwanis DGC in Staunton and the crew from Spotsy showed up. James came by the second round so I let him use my camera and was able to get some pics of me playing.

The local paper stopped by and did a little video and story on the days event...

Disc golfers compete

Professional event is a first for Staunton

(I happen to be in it....)

 

Me, Justin & Ryan before the first round.

The first round I started off tight and couldn't get it going and made some dumb mistakes. The round should have ended at par. But I wasn't in last and that has been my goal this year.

The afternoon round started on #16 and my drive wasn't the best and wrenched my back on the upshot and actually threw the disc over my head backwards almost hit a guy in my group and landed about 50' back towards the tee. I feel lucky I was able to end up with a 6. I followed that with 2 bogeys but I didn't get upset and started to put some good scores down on my card and hit a string of pars.

If not for that first hole I could have easily shot a 58. I was able to overcome some bad play keep it together and shoot a lower score than the first round. Even though I should have played much better, I was able to play above my rating both rounds. I gained a spot and finished 6th.

Spotsy did damn good too. Austin won Advanced, Ron tied for 2nd, Cody took 8th. Stephen shot -9 to take 2nd on Open and Justin took 5th. Ryan finished 7th in Intermediate.

Check out all the days scores...

Saturday in Staunton

2013 Virginia Team Invitational

This weekend was the VTI at Hawk Hollow. Two divisions, 12 teams and two days packed full of disc golf.

The teams in the Beef Division...

Seneca, Spotsy, Greenville, Lakefront, UniTTy and Triad

The teams in the Dairy Division...

PA, Cowbell, HHome, SHREDS, NOVA and RADL

The weather started off great on Saturday with cool temps and ending with clear skies. The First days matches set up the semi-final matches of Seneca vs. Cowbell and Spotsy made it in to play against PA.

 Hawk Hollow host John Biscoe put together another great event.

The first days weather was cool but ended sunny and a little warmer.

Day two semifinal matches started earlier than scheduled. Cold & rain was expected in the afternoon hours. It was a cold morning and as the first matches ended the temps begin to drop. But the disc golfers bundled up and kept on playing.

Seneca defeated Cowbell 5-4 (in extra holes)

Spotsy defeated PA- 5-3

In the elimination match Triad defeated RADL 5-4

That set up the final round of best of 9 hole matches Spotsy vs. Seneca. Just as the crowd was gathering at the tees for 1 & 10 a few flakes of snow would drop every now and then. As the players began their matches the snow started coming down.

Austin driving off #1 tee pad.

By the end of the best of 9 hole match play the temps dropped again as snow was coming down hard. 

As the final matches finished they gathered at the top of the hill and was tied 4-4 with Bob's match still going on. Bob took the match after extra holes and Spotsy defeated Seneca 5-4.

Team Spotsy

2013 Virginia Team Invitational 

Champs!

Click the link too see all the pics 

2013 VTI Images