Redemption - My Last Sanctioned Tournament of 2020
Back in early October I had the worst finish of my disc golf career. I played a course blind and finished dead last for the first time in 5 years. I was dealing with a few injuries, my left knee specifically, and told myself I needed to take a break and rest up after such a poor performance. So I did just that, took a solid 4 weeks off to focus on yoga and body weight exercises to rehab my knee.
Towards the end of October our local tournament director Jeremy Hoeltke threw together a few last minute sanctioned events at my home course Ellicott Creek Park to be played in early November. I was feeling a bit better physically and decided to play in the “Grow the Sport Invitational.” Western New York had an explosion of new players that have showed up to the tournament scene and this format was just a plain 18 holes for the Intermediate and Recreational divisions to show support for our growing amateur field. This is also the first sanctioned tournament since the course has been updated with new basket placements and tee pads (18 hole format).
I typically play in Advanced, but I felt the need to prove to myself that I can still compete at a high level and to justify my stay in the Advanced field. My goal was simple… WIN! I shoot on average between -4 to -5 under par at this course with every hole being a par 3 during my casual rounds.
We ended up with 33 players in Intermediate and 34 players in Recreational which is awesome for a C tier event. I started on hole 15 with mostly new faces to me. I couldn’t have started out any better, parking the first hole and getting to write my name on the 50/50 cash CTP (closest to the pin). This was followed up with a solid 260 foot forehand park job to go birdie birdie to start. Then as some people like to say… “shit happens.” I walked up to hole 18 which is a pretty easy backhand midrange shot for an easy birdie, even with out of bounds roughly 15 feet away from the basket.
Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to lose a tournament in one hole? Well this might be one of those instances because I proceeded to slip on the tee pad and go almost immediately out of bounds left. This is where I had a mental lapse and chose the wrong disc for the shot that I needed. I went with a putter flick with a Dynamic Discs Judge, and while I do have decent touch with this disc it was not the right one for this situation. I need to throw over OB the entire flight and get back to the right towards the basket. OB is a paved road in this instance and any sort of overstable flying disc would surely skip off the road and get back inbounds. I messed up big time and my Judge hit the road and skipped straight, only allowing me to advance all of 5 feet up the fairway. I finished the hole taking a triple bogey 6 only 3 holes into the tournament.
This course is birdie or die in my opinion so I’m already feeling this could have a huge impact on how I finish. All I can do at this point is try to play clean and scrape up some bonus birdies to make up for this devastating hole.
Spoiler alert… I didn’t win. In general I played some great golf managing to birdie 14 out of 36 holes but that blowup hole as well as a double bogey 5 I took in round two erased 5 of those birdies just like that! A few rough bogies on top of that I managed to only shoot -4 under par for the tournament losing by a measly 3 strokes. Now here’s where that question of “can you lose a tournament in one hole?” comes in. Well I can sit here and say “if I just took a par instead of a 6 I’d be in the would be 4 way playoff for first!” Or the other side of it is looking at the many other opportunities I had missed throughout the remainder of the tournament that could easily add up to those 3 strokes.
To sum up this tournament I’m not too disappointed with how I played. It really did come down to just a few very minor mistakes that resulted in this loss, but looking back I realized I gave myself birdie looks on almost every one of the most challenging holes and did execute some great recovery shots when I did get into trouble. The increasing participation in tournaments in Western New York is really bringing out some incredible competition and it is driving me to work harder and get better. It’s been great to see how much disc golf is helping people find something they can enjoy during the pandemic and I look forward to what else it will bring to our community!
Make sure you check out my Instagram to keep up to date with what I’m working on and see some great pictures from the event taken by Melissa at Art of Flight Disc Golf. She took all of the pictures I’m using for this post and she’s always out there volunteering her time to capture the beauty of disc golf and it’s greatly appreciated! Check out her store for some cool disc golf apparel here as well as other custom disc golf items she makes!
