Well, this post has been delayed throughout the week because I am sick. Of course after playing in the 37th annual Grateful Disc tournament last weekend, there was a chance that I would be giving up on this game all together. But you know there is always hope for the next tournament. So before I write it off all together, let me write about Grateful Disc.
Bill Wright, owner of The Wright Life in Fort Collins, CO has been a major part of the disc community for a long time. The fact that this tournament has been running for 37 years has to say something about that. At the same time this tournament is notorious for bad weather. I do not use the word notorious lightly in this case. It seems that there is almost always snow in some way shape or form. Bill even moved the tournament from April to May to avoid this problem a couple years back and ever since then, he has yet to avoid the snow. This year was no different.
Saturday meant two rounds of disc golf at the glorious Sundance Trail DGC. The dude ranch near Red Feather Lakes is one of the best hosts of disc golf tournaments I have seen. Perhaps they are forced to feed us since they are in the middle of no where, but the reality is they feed us well and they take care of the course. They will often times even use a real shotgun for the shotgun start. Trust me, that makes everything better. Well, most of the time. Something happened to me after I heard the start call after the shotgun blast. It was like I reverted back to my first tournament ever. I couldn't figure out how to get the disc to go where I wanted it to go. One round of this is a maybe, but when the second round isn't any better, you begin to wonder why in the world you are playing this event. At the time I was quick to blame it on only getting one prectice round in during the week, but as I sit and write this, I am about to play another tournament with no practice what-so-ever, not even putting, and I don't want to mentally think that this was the problem. It was really the compiled problems of lots of little itty bitty mistakes and the attempts to cover them up. You'd throw a great shot and catch that one little branch that wouldn't just cause a minor change of direction, but knock your disc down all together. I literally could not stop hitting those little branches all day. At the end of the day I was in last place. I was frustrated. And know what the weather was going to be like on Sunday there was a moment I questioned even playing. But that is not like me. I am strong. I will push through adversity and make the best out of it. I will use it as a learning experience and come out better on the other side.
Sunday brought the snow. Go figure right? And one round at Aggie Greens. Aggie Greens ia a course that will be something in the years down the road, but for right now is simply a bunch of baskets places in a drainage area with tee pads to have you throw your disc from. There are some planted tress that might grow up but are measly at this point. They have added some polls and mandatories, and that helps a lot. At the end of the day it is still a drainage area and it was snowing. At the players meeting we were told not to play hole 14 because it was literally a lake already. The round can only be described as a battle. There were times when just finishing the hole felt good. There were other times when simply being able to feel the disc in your hand felt good. It was cold wet and miserable. People were dropping out of the tournament left and right. One of thsoe people, a nice young lady, decided to make her way to 17's tee pad and tell a few people that the basket was surrounded by a lake and that we were not supposed to play it. Well, my card did not and we all got penalized for it because she lied to us. Other than that one hole of penalty, I was able to card nothing worse than a 4 on any hole and actually played well enough to pass one person on my card whose hand was so cold he could barely hold on to his disc. It was a solid round considering the conditions. +10 on 18 holes of a course that one should go under par on does not sound all that good, but with the snow, it was good. Add to that the fact that four people dropped out of the Open division where I was playing and I end up getting a descent amount of points for a horrible weekend of disc golf.
Lessons learned this time really focus on not listening to attractive young women who tell you not to play certain holes. I may never know who she is, but literally I would relate the feeling back to the Bible and what Adam must have felt in the garden after he fell victim to the schemes of the enemy. Proverbs refers to the temptress and how her words sound so sweet and boy did they on a day of bad weather, but in the end makes one sick. I am sure this nice young lady was not intending to cause the situation that she did, and honestly the penalty I incured is not her fault, only mine. But I still wish she had just stayed in her car after stopping her round so that none of this would have happened. Additionally I learned that you are going to have bad days. That little things are going to get in your way and that is just the way it is going to be. You can't let it get to you like I seemed to do. I am sure there was a lot of mental mistakes and certainly there were times when I tried to hit the smaller gap when a bigger one was right there. Smart is good and stupid only gets lucky from time to time.
That being said, today is the first round of the 303 Open and I am recovering from being sick. I think I am feeling well enough to give it a go, but I fear it might be the end of me. Good thing my parents decided to come and caddy for me, it might help me survive. I am pretty sure they are the reason I played as well as I did in the snow at Grateful. Happy Mother's Day Mom!
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