This is perhaps one of the least creative titles I have come up with since I started being creative with titles. This one just went back to the name of the tournament sadly. But to a certain extent it seems to mirror the creativity I had in the tournament. After having such a solid stretch of tournament rounds prior to the 303 Open, it seems that my performance at The High Plains Challenge mirrored my bummer of a performance at the 303 Open. Only this time I was playing with the Ams again.
The High Plains Challenge is one of two A tier events we have had in Colorado for the past several seasons. Clearly this means that it is an opportunity to qualify for Am Nats, which of course is one of my goals for this season. My previous attempts this season to accomplish this goal took place at the Glass Blown Open and 303 Am Championships, but those would have qualified me for this year rather than next. The High Plains Challenge is of course my first opportunity to qualify for next year. Well simply put, I will be looking for another opportunity to qualify.
The first round took place at the Pessimist temporary course. This is the one course that I played well last year at the same event and the Colorado State Championships. So I came into this round thinking, I can make this happen. I can post a good round and then see what happens from there. The round started out alright though I was making more bogies than I should have been. Even after loosing a disc and taking a double I was still in it. Then came the two par 4 lake holes and bad bounce after bad bounce. To be fair, we had to wait for the two groups ahead of us to play the hole before we got the opportunity and the entire course is made of highly unpredictable natural tee pads. But taking a 7 and then a 5 on back to back holes, missing birdie putts on the next two holes before slightly missing my line and going OB only to then have the upshot catch an edge and roll OB again. Yeah, it was a bad end to the round. I should and could have been +2 and ended up +11. That is a big difference and in a big event will certainly put you out of serious contention.
As much as the natural tee pads have not affected my game in the past, they seemed to make a big difference for this tournament. My tee shots were coming out at lots of random angles and it felt like I had little to no control over my drives. Seriously off on some angles causing lots of good saves and very few birdie opportunities. Sure I made a couple of birdies on the round, but my angles were just off. Even though I was off on some forehand shots, it seemed like I was better off throwing forehand simply because the angle of error was much smaller than my backhand. I couldn't even predict the misses and attempt to be sure that I would error where I wanted to error. For as much as I have never complained about the fact that an A tier event was being played on natural tees prior to this tournament, I am now a firm believer that there should be some standard for top tier events when it comes to tee pads.
The second round got a little bit better but was still tough as I had a rough start to the round. And then of course the weather hit near the end of the round, where I simply could not predict the wind on every shot. Some shots yes, but not every shot.
It was in the final round where I felt like I was finally starting to figure some things out about the game and shot a good round. The best news of the weekend came as I finished in a large tie for the last cash position. Three spots were divided amongst six people. I always seem to find myself into epic ties but I think this one was the largest of those ties.
Here is what I learned. When in doubt with the wind, play the shot so the wind knocks down the disc. This is way more predictable than allowing the wind to catch the disc and take to to wherever it wants. When you get into a back up, keep the arm warm and stretched as much as possible. No matter what the conditions give you, play your game and you can still shoot well (I was the only person in my group to birdie a par 4 right after the wind picked up in that second round). Smaller steps on my run up will produce more predictable results. It is okay to sacrifice distance to be sure you know the angle that your disc is going to fly on. Now I just have to remember these things and well as remain mentally strong in the middle of the round. A bad mental game will produce bad bounces. I am not really sure how that happens but it is absolutely true.
The next stop is Am Worlds. I guess we will see what happens.
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