Raleigh Disc Golf

Entry 6 – July 29th. After a good nights sleep and a quick lunch, we played our final course before doubles start tomorrow, the gold course.

I played my practice round with Chris, JJ, Justin and Chris Boro from St. Louis. The front 9 on this course may be the toughest 9 I’ve every played. Hole 1 is listed as a par three, but there is no way it is. 3 is what you want on this hole and NO ONE will duece it. 2 is a duece. Then after that it gets fun. Tough par 5. Tough par 3. Par 4. Really tough par 5. Par 3. Par 6 and then a tough duece.

Wait. Did I really just say par 6? Did the king of typos just misspell a number? Nope, that is correct. At 1335 feet, hole 8 is the longest permanent hole in our sport. This hole is gorgeous and I could see someone carding a 4. I took a pretty simple 5 on it and would be mad with par or worse.

We did find 2 things wrong with this part of the course, however. The painted on 8 was upside on the teebox and there was some nice misspelled artwork right by the basket that provided us with some laughs.

This artwork is actually as I call it is actually 5 tree stumps that are used as benchs and each one has a word on it. The message says “Live life to the fulest.” I would hope Chuck Kennedy realized that living life to the FULLEST would be a great lesson for us all. I’m just thinking that after designing a 1335 foot hole his mind was blown up and he made these errors. Acutally, someone else probably did, but I just enjoy blaming Chuck for stuff.

The back nine calms down a bit and someone could possibly shoot sub 27 on it. Hole 16 is a replica of the famous 17th at USDGC, but not nearly as tough.

Overall, I really enjoyed this course. I didn’t really care for the par on hole 1, but it should be a simple three. I also thought hole 6, a tough par 5 with trees everywhere was just too wooded for a 950 foot hole. 17 was a simple three and due to length and OB, most people will card simple boring threes. Other than that, this is a great course.

For those keeping up with the count, I am now up 9 – 8. Chris Heeren awarded me one for making up the game we are playing. I agreed, and accepted.

Doubles starts tomorrow morning. Wish me and JJ luck!

Entry 6 – July 29th. It’s fitting that today is the 29th. There is not a more perfect day to talk about the magic in the air from last night than the 29th.

The host hotel for the worlds is located on the Bad River Indian Reservation. All Indian reservations have 3 things in common, it seems. Cool moose heads on the wall, cool quilts that look the inside of a kaledoscope and casinos. This reservation is right on point as I sit here in the lobby under a quilt with a dead moose staring at me 25 feet from the casino.

It’s pretty hard to come here and not gamble. Last night in the casino looked like a PDGA Hall of Fame ceremony. Climo. Voakes. Tannock. Rico. All in the casino hoping to hit bigger in the casino than they hope to hit at the courses later this week.

Justin Bunnell is a pretty big gambler I found. He made his way down to the roulette table and started going at it. I went down with him to root him on and have a few laughs. At the tables, we found another golfer, who as you will soon understand, I shall remain nameless.

This guy had a stack of chips in front of him that looked like he was 3 hands away from winning the World Series of Poker. He would almost always put a big stack on a number, usually 20 – 30 dollars worth, on 29 – his birthday. Every now and then, he changed it up to 4, or 00, or 7. Even so, I sat there and watched this guy win about what second place in the open division will win this week – just over 2,000 dollars. He hit his big stack not once, not twice, not 5 times, not even 10 times, but 12 times.

At one point, this guy hit his big stack on back to back rolls, raking a cool 1600 dollars in a mere 45 seconds – about what fourth place in open can expect this week. Almost all of the 12 times the stack was on, you guessed it – 29.

It wasn’t just him that was hitting big on the birthday idea. Justin asked me what my birthday number was. Justin bet my answer and then you guessed it, good ole 27 hit the very next roll.

This Climo like roulette player we watched for hours was on his game. He started telling other people at the table what he felt was coming and they would hit too. It was unreal to see a scenario played out that it seems every sitcom has played out at one point – the guy at the roulette table who can always pick the number.

The magic in the air in the casino last night has some of those disc golf legends hoping it will translate to the course later this week. After all, 29 isn’t a bad number even in disc golf. A 29 on the back and front at Highbrige Gold would be a steller round. 29 could be the magic number this week. It’s had a hell of a start.

July 28th – Entry 5. Well Justin Bunnell never made it to the hotel room last night. This led to many many jokes about his where abouts and less sleep. I actually got to sleep around 11ish and was woke up a little over an hour late when Chris got here. After the jokes about Bunnell (or as we call him BOOOOOOOOnell), the sleep was great.

The three of us headed out to play Blueberry Hill this morning, the shortest and easiest of the three courses. I threw lots of rocs on this course and think this course suits me the best. I have a really good chance of scoring good on this course simply due to the techincal aspects of the shots, which is what my strength in golf. We ended up running into Kyle Crabtree and Bard Soleng and played most of the round with them. I absolutly LOVED this course. Lot’s of different shots and lots of fair shots. When you finally get to see the final 9 DVD of the tournament, hole 2 on Blueberry will be the final hole of the worlds. Awesome scenic hole  and a great golf hole too. This course also offers an eagleable par 5.

We then drove to some small town for lunch and ran into Jay and Des Reading, two of the coolest people in disc golf. As I ate an awesome pizza, Jay read the local police reports. Fear not citizens of whatever this town was called, the lady who called the cops to find out where her purse was is ok and the purse has been found.

Me and JJ played Granite Ridge this afternoon by ourselves. This course is loooooong and open. However, lots of downhill shots on the course make holes reachable. JJ actually parked a hole close to 600. I actually lost my flippy orc during the round, but I’m pretty sure it will turn back up. This is a perfect time to say how important it is to have backups of every disc you throw at every tournament. I’m confident I will get this back, but until then, can’t have a hole in the bag.

This course WORE ME OUT! Lot’s of up and down holes. I threw my Orc and Wraith on this course quite a bit. Theres a couple of “short” holes where I throwing Firebirds and Eagles, but most of the time it was a crush. This course has lots of pretty simple birdies, but lots of 2 shot holes. I really need to get those dueces when they come b/c bogey strokes will happen with all those 2 shotters.

An update on the stupid moment count – JJ has regained the “lead” claiming today that “(he) need(ed) to throw something more stabler on this hole.” Ok, enough of this. I’m going to the pool. Hide the women and children.

by Kris Henseler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn3-jCyXogA

Entry 4 – July 27th. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. You know what it is. It’s that annoying sound that starts a day. Today, that sound was at 4:30 AM.

We jumped up and went to the airport in Raleigh. There wasn’t much traffic because the entire city of Raleigh was already at the airport. We got through security fine and barely made our flight to Atlanta. Once in Atlanta, our flight was delayed about 30 min. up to Minnepolis.

After landing and grabbing our luggage, we grabbed a rental car and headed to the Mall of America. This place is unreal! We rode a farris wheel, some roller coasters and other rides all inside the mall. We also did a NASCAR simulator simply because we didn’t feel like North Carolinians unless we did.

We left there around 3ish (central time – in fact, from this point on, all references will be in central time) and drove the 4 hours up to Ashland, WI, where the host hotel is. This drive was cell phone service free until Duluth, MN. If you ever have a chance to make this drive up 35 North, do it. You come around this corner and then BAM – a full city sitting on Lake Superiour – gorgeous!

After a few stops at the local Wal-Mart, we ate some dinner in the hotel restuarant. The food isn’t great, but it will have to do for the week as there is not many options here. In case I wanted to call and have some food brought to the hotel instead of eating at our rip off version of Shoney’s in the hotel, I better do it from either one of 3 spots in Ashland, my hotel room, or on a pay phone. Cell service here is as non-existant as sweet tea.

So here I sit 19 hours after I woke up, in the hotel and about to pass out. Justin Bunnell and Chris Heeren are expected here in an hour and half, so sleep should be fun. Luckily, we have no plans to play until mid afternoon tomorrow.

On a side note, I will also be updating you on the JJ MTL stupid moment count. Currently, the score is tied 4 to 4. Some of the highlights of JJ’s moments of lack of intelligance have been “Man I can’t believe we are in Wisconsin” after landing in Minnesota, watching his luggage bag go by twice. My moments have been asking when we are we getting to Wisconsin after being in it for 10 minutes and saying “I didn’t want Toyko Express because I didn’t want Chinese food.” This is why I love worlds.

Be sure to check back here for this blog as I will continue to update my 2007 Pro Worlds Experience. Any comments, please email me at robertleonard01@yahoo.com