Bowling Green Ams 2008

[tacimala]

Dobberstein and I just got here a bit ago and about to crash. Probably playing Whites and Hobson Grove tomorrow. Keriakes and Phil Moore on Friday. Hope to at least walk Franklin beforehand and get the rest of the holes in before the tourney on Saturday morning.

[bigeric]

I know a few people heading down tomorrow morning, good luck guys!

[Tom McManus]

Good luck to all the Illinois players.

[dana]

Good luck everyone from IL!  Hobson is your kind of course, Taylor.  Make sure you fill us in good about Phil Moore.

Hopefully it is (a lot) warmer down there than up here today

[Bruce Brakel]

Weekend weather is looking pretty good.  We're pulling out in a few hours. 

[discpro99]

Thanks fellas! We hope to have another good showing from us illini. There is alot of talk about wether or not we will get to play Phil Moore becouse of all the rain they have been getting down there. i hope we get to play it though. new courses are always fun! Ill keep you guys posted on whats going on down there. ETA 8AM Friday morning.

[CEValkyrie]

Have a great trip guys! Good Luck!!

[Dan Michler]

looks like pretty good weather in the 60s without too much wind or rain in the forecast.  should be a fun weekend for everybody.

[Tom McManus]

How did the DISContinuum Club Members do this weekend? How did the weather end up? How did everything run this weekend? Any notes or points of view would be great to read.

[Bruce Brakel]

The Brakels all had fun and played above their ratings.  I might have finished 6th or 7th of the 200 intermediates.  Kelsey probably finished in the top 40% of the Intermediate men.  Kira was middle third somewhere in Rec. 

Four hours after we finished our round they still did not have a leaderboard put together for any of our divisions.  Innova had this thing where you could fill out a form and get your payout through them later, so we did that and left.  None of us know where we finished. 

Innova and Discraft were there giving out free stuff.  Innova gave out the best bubbles ever.  Kiralyn scored two shirts and two hats from Discraft.  I was not getting in on that because it was a rough game and I did not need to sprain an ankle before an eight hour drive. 

[tacimala]

I'll try and post up some info but man am I still tired from the long drive back last night. The weather was good overall and only because it didn't really rain. There wasn't really sun either except for on Thursday. For the most part it was upper 40's to low 50's feeling and about to rain any second from Friday-Sunday. Everyone always said how windy it was down there and I'll take that wind over Kenosha's anytime. It really wasn't a factor except for a few holes here and there.

As an overall tournament, I thought things went pretty smoothly with expected hiccups at a tourney that size. Obviously scores aren't up yet and the media coverage was very lacking for a tournament of that size. I was in the A pool all weekend and only saw DGTV filming the drives on hole 1 in the final 9. I saw 2 still cameras all weekend other than that and on the PDGA homepage their "photo gallery for the biggest event ever" has 12 pictures from the players meeting. Scoreboards were late every round and the timing got thrown off, which was fine on Saturday. Sunday though we got a really late start back and the last 4 holes of the final 9 were played in the dark. I don't think it would have made a difference though, the guy that won played well from start to finish and with the payouts and prizes it didn't really matter what place you got, as Bruce had pointed out before the tourney.

I don't think I really like the courses down there, at least not for a 2 day tournament and practice leading up to it, especially at Phil Moore. I started with doubles at Hobson Grove and enjoyed warming up there with friends. Shot 7 down with my buddy Tate and tied for second which got us a disc each. Hobson is a short, technical course where overstable midranges and firebirds are a premium. There were a few trash holes without fairways but I liked that course since there were different types of shots and skills required. Then we went to White to practice since there is a lot of OB there. I took 3 OB's on the first 2 holes and 4 or 5 overall. I also hit a lot of the deuces out there (there are 10 deuce opps and this counts some of the "shorter" holes at around 400). I think I finished 3 over in practice and there was only wind for the front nine. Felt good about that as a practice round and enjoyed that course since it was a lot of placement type shots with those OB's. It's a fairly flat course though overall (not Lombard flat but maybe Mokena flat) and there are only trees on a few holes so it's pretty much throwing in an open field with OB and wind. With only 5 or 6 holes over 450 this course was really short.... Thursday night we went to Wah Bah since it was the disc golfers party bar and they had a mini course set up out back. After getting there though we found out that it was $2.00 to play this mini course and it was under the lights and the outdoor bar wasn't set up. Food was good though and I was angry about work related stuff and so I hung out with my friend Jack. Friday morning was a bit foggy for 12 holes of practice.

Friday we started with doubles at Keriakes. This was a pretty fun course and the easiest of the tourney courses that I played on Saturday/Sunday. Nothing too short, but nothing too long. The longest hole was about 450 up hill and really the only non-deucable hole.It wasn't easy though as the lines were very distinct most times and there are lots of pine trees to grab your disc. On my Saturday round there I played with a guy that was stuck in a tree 3 times, but luckily for him no 2 meters. In the doubles Tate and I started off slow but then we started hitting big putts and finished 9 down and in 3rd place for another disc apiece. I liked this course and it was my favorite of the tourney rounds since it wasn't just about throwing as far as you can over and over. Good shot selections and varied types of shots throughout the course, some good elevation usage and pin placements. We then went to Phil Moore after lunch and realized that this is where everyone helping with the tourney spent all their time leading up to the event. That's not a good thing though. Played half the holes out there and walked the course skipping the shots on the 700+ foot holes as we were already mentally able to visualize the 4's and 5's we would get on those holes.

Saturday we played Franklin longs to start. That course looked like it was designed from the shorts and then they wanted to add longer teepads so they just picked out some spots and said here we go. I started on 1 and deuced it. Only deuce I had that round! I was clearly holding on to my spot on the 1 tee with that deuce and then we got to the rest of the course. The front 9 is a lot easier than the back, but not that much easier. It's a lot of 440ish foot holes and a few 500-700 footers in between. I was playing really well for the front 9, making good drives, solid upshots and putts and only made one mistake to give me an OB stroke being 3" out of bounds. I finished the front 9 one over with a 4-5 stroke lead on everyone on my card. Then we had a walk from 9 to 10 and all of a sudden I had forgotten how to play it seemed like. I only took one 3 on the whole back 9 and three putted twice. There was a lot of OB possibility that I did avoid though, so that was a plus. I finished 10 over on the round and that put me on the 8th card for round 2 at Keriakes. Keriakes I felt like I was going to do well and had a good feeling about it as my score from Franklin was not that bad and I could have done really well based on the back 9. I started off with bogeys on two deuce holes at Keriakes and that was not the way I wanted to start. I hit a deuce on the 4th or 5th hole with a big buzzz shot on a 350 footer downhill. Then I 3 putted again 2 holes later. Then I yanked three drives in a row. Luckily I made about a 100 foot jump putt on the third one and started to get in a groove since I had the confidence back. I deuced some pretty tough holes after that and came back towards the end to give myself a respectable 3 down which would have brought me up to 5th card. Then the guy with the card left and I got 2 more strokes for someone else's mistake. Back to the 8th card for Sunday.

Sunday was White and then Phil Moore. Rounds 2 and 3 of throw far once off the tee and then probably do it again and hopefully have a putt. White wasn't very windy that day and once again for some reason I started off with bogeys on birdie holes. Couldn't get my jump putt working and my comebacks weren't too good either so I bogeyed 3 birdie holes. Only took one OB penalty though (which was very solid) and played pretty well other than those 3 holes with the 3 putts. Finished 4 up and surprisingly this dropped me to 11th card for Phil Moore. As I mentioned earlier, Phil Moore required a lot of work and you could see that it had a lot of time put into it for the wooded holes. It left a lot to be desired though and some of the courses could have used some of the work or at least some 33 foot circles. The open holes were huge and my arm hurts and the wooded holes weren't complete in my opinion as there were still lots of stuff to hit and not very well defined fairways. Two rounds there you could shoot a foot different one way or the other and score 8-9 strokes better probably and I'm not referring to bad putting. There were some cool holes, but it was too early to use this course and I don't understand the desire to throw out your arm halfway into the tourney. I shot 7 over that round and didn't score any birdies. My buddy Tate shot well and scored a 1 up and remained on the top card and played in the final 9. I guess if I still had the adrenaline of shooting well that I could have done better, but my drives were pulling up shorter and my putts were off because my body was very fatigued. I've never taken so much ibuprofen in my life!

Final 9 was cool  especially because Tate was in it. Blair Bose was in it too and I played with him the first round. I think he's 15 and man can he bomb it. It needed to start earlier though because we didn't leave until after 8 and Chicago didn't come until after 3 AM. Oh I finished tied for 69th. If I had those two strokes back I would have gotten an Am Nats berth I do believe.

OK that's a book so thanks for reading and I'll be answering Q&A now.

[Mukey]

Thanks for the info Taylor, kinda confirms what I've heard about the courses down there. Too bad the scores weren't done before leaving time, but that's a lot of scores

[Abelardo Arenas]

OK that's a book so thanks for reading and I'll be answering Q&A now.

Nice post. Good detail.

[CEValkyrie]

The FACTOR

For those of you who have not had the pleasure to meet or play with Ron Huspen you are missing an experience of your life.

This is classic. Got this from IOWADG Forum by D Fee.


A story about huspen, after the 2nd round at keriakes, a bunch of us were drinking beers and throwing discs on hole 1's short pad. Huspen decides he's going to throw 2 teebirds at the same time and says "one of these is going to ace it". He throws, and sure enough one of his teebirds blasts dead center chains, but falls out. Huspen proceeds to go insane and yell at everybody "I told you I was gonna ace one of em!" It was pretty funny and crazy to see.

[tacimala]

Yea I saw that too. I've hit aces in tourneys and never been that excited, let alone one that didn't even stick. Kid is crazy. I might have enjoyed it a bit more but I was busy trying to track down this guy that didn't turn my card in so that I didn't get stroked.

[danavicich]

"The FACTOR" really got to me last year at Bowling Green at Keriakas.  I guess it was a good learning experience to get FACTORED....Anyways, I heard him and Michler are buddies.

[Tom McManus]

"The FACTOR" really got to me last year at Bowling Green at Keriakas.  I guess it was a good learning experience to get FACTORED....Anyways, I heard him and Michler are buddies.

Deleted.

[Mukey]

"The FACTOR" really got to me last year at Bowling Green at Keriakas.  I guess it was a good learning experience to get FACTORED....Anyways, I heard him and Michler are buddies.

Actually twins separated at birth.

2 Michlers? That sounds like the plot from the Van Damme flick "Double Impact" 

[Bruce Brakel]

The intermediates and recs played medium to easy courses.  I heard 19 down for four rounds won intermediate.  I was 7 down and maybe in 5th or 6th place.  I felt like I could have played 15 down easy if my putting had been sharper.  Hobson and Lovers were the "hard" courses.  Last round, last day, the hot round in our pool was a 49.  Kelsey had a 50.  The course was mostly about throwing 200 feet with accuracy in the woods. 

[Dan Michler]

The Factor.  Me and Husp have had a few run-ins over the years.  Alot of people claim he is not that bad of a guy, but thats only because they haven't been around him quite enough.  He can be semi-normal for 3 hours, then just snap into total insanity at the drop of a hat.  And Ron's insanity is more insane than anything I've ever seen.

We were in Highbridge in 2005 before the facility was even close to complete.  The toilet was in the middle of the room with no stall, so usually someone would stand guard outside if you were dropping a deuce.  Steve Slater walks in there one morning and Huspen is completely buck ass naked on the throne with a huge smile on his face.  Then he tries to start a conversation with Steve.

Then a couple years ago at the Des Moines Challenge I'm on a card with Huspen and he shows up on the tee late with a hard construction hat on and just says 'I've got work to do'.  The hard hat falls off after every single shot.  Then we get to this tough blind shot where we spot for each other because of the density of the rough.  I am spotting for Ron and we end up having to search for his disc.  After a few minutes he starts going off on me saying I am not helping him find it and I wasn't paying attention when I was spotting because I'm not close to where he knows it went.  I completely lost it and things were about to get physical when a TD came to break things up.  We end up finding the disc exactly where I said it was.

If you ever have to play with this guy, the only thing you can hope for is that he shoots good.  If he doesn't, there is no such thing as just ignoring him.  He will be in your face and accusing you of constant rules infractions and talking while he is throwing.  This guy is a jerk.