2012 Pro/Am Worlds, Charlotte

[Clonan]

How do the semis and finals work at worlds?

[Dan Michler]

How do the semis and finals work at worlds?

Semis is just an 18 hole round.  There is a cut, something like the top 50 who play the semis.  Finals is just a 9 hole final round among the top 4.

[Dan Michler]

Worlds is officially over for me.  It was a battle to get through the last round.  It was scheduled to start at 2pm.  The scoreboard showed up an hour late, and we started at 3:10pm.  Heavy rain was in the forecast, so players, including myself, were not happy about the debacle, especially considering it was the toughest course the ams have to play Angry Beaver (this was at least the 3rd instance I know of where there was difficulty getting the scoreboard to the course on-time). 

Sure enough we played 9 holes and then it started raining cats and dogs.  There was a lightning delay for about 45 min, then we resumed play in heavy rain.  Mercifully the round ended at 7:30pm, over 6 hours after players had arrived for a simple 18 hole round.  Somehow I shot my best round of the tournament, so I was happy to have something to feel good about after a rough week.

As far as rating Charlotte Worlds:  I give them an A+ course preparation.  They were in pristine condition, excellent OB marking, etc...

As far as logistics:  I give them a D-.  Tee-times posted at 11:30pm the night before Day 1 is unacceptable.  Constant issues with getting scoreboards transported on-time is ridiculous.  The courses were less than 30 min apart and they had 3 hours to get them there, they refused to allow players to help out.  Also, they made a last-second change to the top 2 Advanced Pools course assignments that was no published in the course schedule.  I'm not sure what the logic for this was, but I know it caused a delay and some anger with a number of players.

For me, I still rate Des Moines as the best Worlds I've ever played.  I've had a blast at Charlotte, but wish they would have ironed out the details a little better before the tourney.

As far as my personal opinion of the Charlotte courses.  The 5 we played in Advanced were definitely top notch.  I'd probably rate 4 of them as a 4 out of 5 on DGCR, and Winget a 3.5.  Honestly I was expecting just a bit more.  Alot of this is because they set them up to play quickly.  I get that, but I came here to get brutalized and it was disappointing to be playing short tees on many of the holes.  Also, I like to be able to rip a drive here and there.  Of the 108 holes we played, I probably threw a driver off the tee not more than 20 times this week.  Just my personaly preference, but I wish there were some holes we could bomb a driver.  There were long holes here, but almost all were heavily wooded and required hitting a landing zone, or avoiding some OB, and it made throwing a driver a poor decision.  It was extremely demanding golf.  This is just my personal preference that I had hoped there would be a little more of a mix between the 5 courses.

Overall it was a very positive experience.  I had a blast out here with my family and I wish all the IL players a strong finish in tomorrow's action.

 

[tacimala]

Yea logistics were definitely rough for the B pool in Open as well, but I had a great time. We ate really well this week which is always a high point for me in new cities - Halcyon, Enso's, Mimosa Grill and Mac's to name a few. The courses were a lot of fun and challenging. It seemed like Bradford was going to be really easy for everyone, but it proved to have a nice balance of shorter narrow holes and longer and technical holes with some OB. I threw a lot of comets and leopards on that course and Nevin. Renny was just sweet, but so hard to recover from when you have a few bad holes. I had 4 deuces and a throw in on Thursday and still shot a 72. It's a course a lot like Toboggan where I'll be able to remember every hole and go shot by shot through the round on what I would want to do. I was really happy to have shot two 1000 rated rounds, but my personal highlight for the week was to eagle hole 5 at Nevin in the rain after the lightning delay yesterday.

[pdga#7648]

looks like we may have back 2 back Advanced world champions??
Spencer trailed by 6 strokes going into the semis. He made a 9 stroke swing, and now leads by 3 strokes going into the Final 9! GO ILLINOIS!!

[Jon Brakel]

The Des Moines Worlds had a lot going for it. They really had a great local group running it and the PDGA group had a lot of combined experience going into that Worlds.

One thing that I've thought since Worlds is that they should have a TD for each pool AND a TD for each course. At Des Moines, Becky and I were the TDs for the older Jrs. Each night I would go down to where they were doing leader boards and prep the board for the next day. Make sure there were no mistakes in grouping and make the score cards for the first round. In the morning I'd make sure that the score boards got onto the bus or in my car.

I think our pool ran the smoothest because we had a dedicated pool TD. Of course, they wanted it that way because no one wants to have something happen to the junior pool. It makes sense to have more supervision for that division.

If you look at the logistics though, if you had enough staff you could really smooth out the process. While the course TDs would know the courses backwards and forwards and could explain the course and make rulings, the pool TDs would know their pool players, could keep the score boards on track, report scores promptly and the players would have one point of contact for their pool when they had questions about times, courses, directions, details etc. You'd know your score board is going to be at the course on time because you have your own TD taking the boards from course to course.

That's my 2 cents on Worlds logistics.

Congratulations to all Illinois, Discontinuuum, IOS, and friends and family who played at Worlds this year!!!

[CEValkyrie]

Finally back and unpacked. I'm beat. We played Charlie Vettiner Park in Louisville, KY on the way back. We had a blast all week. The Player Caddy Book was by far the best I've ever seen. Charlotte has by far the best collection of courses I've played. The house we rented for the week was awesome. The 9 of us had a blast.

The finals at Hornet's Nest was awesome. Great setup with tents and vendors. I have not seen that many people at a finals anywhere I've been. The parking lots were packed and people had to park at nearby parking lots down the street. The action was pretty exciting. I got to see the FPO finish and the putt Hokom hit was unreal. What a huge putt to win. Thank you Paul McBeth for winning me some $$$

[tjdub26936]

We got home last night after a great week-and-a-half-long vacation to North Carolina.  We saw some friends in Salem, stayed at a Great Wolf Lodge north of Charlotte, & hit the outer banks after the semis on Saturday.

World's was organized very well, plenty of water for every round, the courses looked great, particularly Winget which has only been in the ground for about nine months.  Hornet's Nest was a monster and a lot of fun to play.  I played Angry Beaver blind and paid the price, but looking back I'd like to play that course again.

Reedy Creek was a fun course I got to play twice.  My second round there (Thursday afternoon) was pretty rough, but I redeemed myself by making the best put of my life for a deuce on the island green on #7.  I've attached a picture I took after the round, at least 40' out, framed by trees and a bridge, if I had hit ANYTHING, it would have dropped out of bounds.  That's my son Daniel standing next to the basket.

Overall, the courses were JU-U-U-UST a little too wooded.  I threw my Destroyer on only 5-6 different holes all week, compared to 12-15 holes that called for a Stratus.  The holes in the woods were varied & challenging, but they became tiresome as the week went on.  I think the official ratings may show that I shot close to my rating, but if I hadn't blown up at Winget or my first ten holes at Hornet's, I would have been more than satisfied with my play.

I heard a story about a guy (possibly in Advanced) who dropped an F-bomb after a bad shot.  He was warned by someone on his card for a courtesy violation then proceeded to rattle off a lot more unkind words, which the warner counted.  He was penalized 17 throws.  Caused him to miss the semis.

The host hotel (The Blake) was less than satisfactory.  Run down, bad renovations, wierd smell, elevators that broke down.  I understand that the PDGA got a deal on the ballroom rental, but I made a mistake trusting them to pick a quality place to stay.  It was cheap, but I now know to read on-line reviews before committing to stay somewhere that long.

I played with some very friendly Adv Masters, including two rounds with a gentleman from Perth, Australia.  It was great to play with some older fellas like myself.  Overall, unless you are challenging for the top spots, Worlds is just great, week-long tournament on some sweet courses, & if you're lucky you get to meet some interesting people.  Charlotte has many destination courses for disc golfers, I hope to go back soon to check out Renny, Nevin, RL Smith, & Bradford.

[Tom McManus]

Nice putt! Thanks for the review.