Playing With The Big Boys

It was almost a week ago now that I played in the 303 Open. This was my second tournament of the year playing in the Open field since this was a Pro only event. I figured it was worth playing from the standpoint that I would be playing with better competition and might get a better feel for what it is going to take to get better at this game. I really came in with no expectations as to how I would fair, but after finishing just below the middle in my last event playing Open, I was hoping to fair well.

Most of my dreams were crushed in the first round with the second round not offering much more. In one day I am pretty sure I had my single worst day of tournament disc golf since last year. I could blame it on the wind, but clearly that was not the real reason. I could blame it on some bad bounces but that only had a minor contribution to the overall circumstances. In reality, it was not being prepared to play the course on that day. When Sunday came around and we played a course that I frequent, I played a much smarter game and ended up shooting a 960 rated round. Go figure.

The best part of the tournament was getting a chance to play with Pat Blazek. I believe he is currently the second highest rated player int eh state of Colorado and is someone I respect and have had plenty of opportunity to talk with in the past, but never play with. It was fun to watch him and see the little frustrations that he had on the course. It was fun to see how he kept his mental game strong despite the errors and how in the moment it was one shot at a time. It was fun to watch how he made decisions as to what shot to throw next. I know that I am rather far behind him in skill but I feel like playing with him was a really good learning experience as to simply how to play the game.

Moving forward, I feel that my pre tournamnet prep needs to be done better. While I can play a course and know what the hole looks like, weather conditions could significantly affect what shot I end up throwing during a tournament round. Wind is still something that tends to baffle me from the decision making process. Even when I knew something was going to happen during the second round in the wind, I still made the choice to throw the shot I intended to throw and sure enough the wind did what I expected and made the shot land out of bounds. Not good. Having multiple shots on every hole allows one to play the wind conditions better. Sometimes it is making the choice to throw a different disc, and sometimes it is being confident to throw a completely different shot. I need to learn this decision making process and how to be smart about which shot I throw and when.

Another step forward and another lesson learned. Now it is time to put it all together as the next two tournaments I play could be the biggest of my young disc golf career.