Upstate Classic Details Announced
I love this tournament. It’s very well run and I always meet cool people there.
I’ve played terribly for the past couple of years but, who knows, maybe this is my year.
Registration forms are available here.
THIS EVENT WILL BE FULL AND THERE ARE NO REGISTRATIONS ON THE DAY OF THE TOURNAMENT!
Good luck. We’ll see you there!
Keep in mind this is LAST YEAR’S FORM so the dates are, obviously, wrong. Still, it will work as a registration.
The REAL dates are Sat and Sun November 6th and 7th!
On Championship Courses
Not long ago, friend-of-the-blog Scott Rief sent me a question on Facebook. He asked, “What is the hardest course in your area?”.
I struggled with my response.
After all, the Greer course, “Century Park” is pretty tough on the back 9 but a cupcake on the front. Timmons is great, my favorite in the area, but it is awfully short.
I told Scott that Boiling Springs or Easley would be the biggest challenge.
That wasn’t long before I saw the following two comments posted here :
Greenville county is in DIRE need of a championship course. To draw more A and B tiers that pros will come to we need a course that challenges them. All the courses in Greenville county are cookie cutter with no challenge on distance or hitting a line, besides without a putter. No disrespect but pros won’t travel to Greenville from far distances to play a course that’s a two for them every hole.
Here’s the response :
Discer, I hear the argument for how X place needs a championship course all the time. A course like Greer comes along, and the people responsible for it catch grief for mandatory doglegs that exist in reasonable, to be expected places. I have seen top players in the upstate come out to Greer in particular and talk about removing the mandatory on 12, and cutting some trees back. If some of the top players want a course tailored for them, then a championship course isn’t needed. A skill level improvement on their part is, however.
Additionally, hole 12 used to have a mandatory alot closer to the tee box which forced players to take the tunnel. It is still tricky to take the outside low route, but it can still be done. All in all the only justification players have been able to come up with for removal of the mandatory has been so they can bomb one out and take a 2. That is not a good enough reason, to say the least.
My point in this rant is that a championship course depends on the design, and not distances. I at times struggle at Gower to shoot par being a lefty, if that says anything.
So, what does this humble blogger think?
First, I’ll agree that the MANDOs on the Century Park course have made it harder. Plus, as I alluded to earlier, I do think the back 9 is a real challenge for most players. 16 and 17 are pretty easy holes, but 11 and 12 are a bear. 14 requires a really decent tee shot. 18….
I hate 18.
But it IS a challenging hole to try and birdie.
But I will admit I was pretty cautious about telling a top player that ANY Greenville County course is particularly “Hard”.
Plus, as you may have seen linked below, I was lucky enough to go to Rock Hill on Friday and see the course at Winthrop during the US Disc Golf Championships. Now THAT is a challenging course (Made more so by the stroke and distance rule that requires a player who throws a disc out-of-bounds to take the penalty and re-throw from the original spot).
So what’s the solution?
I’m of two minds on this.
ONE THE ONE HAND much of Timmons and Century Park are darn near ideal for our sport at this still-developing stage. Both are welcoming to new players while still providing a challenge to more experienced locals. I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered either course. Greer is especially tough because it so obviously favors a right-handed player.
ON ONE HAND THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER HAND THAT WAS JUST DISCUSSED, neither course is enough of a challenge for a real top-tier player. In the Upstate Classic, you’ll see the best open players for 14…15…and 16 under par in each round! One year a player shot -17 and missed a putt by inches to avoid a birdie on every single hole. If players are playing that well, the course is too easy.
Even a poor hack like myself expects to shoot under par on 100% of my rounds at Timmons.
Greer is more difficult, again especially for a lefty, but the front 9 has 8 birdie holes and there are several more on the back.
I’ll put it like this, I love both of these courses. I will always defend them against almost any critics. In fact, Otis and I will be playing Timmons later today.
So what is the hardest course in my area? I think we have good ones. I think we have beautiful, fun, and unique ones. But none of them are especially hard.
Here’s the US Championship story
This Friday WYFF-TV in Greenville will be sending a full crew to Rock Hill. They’ll do complete coverage of that day’s action and profile some of the best players.
Once it airs on WYFF, we’ll put the full video here.
Meantime, good luck to all the players, especially to our blog-friends Scott Rief and Avery Jenkins.
Also, early next week, we have some thoughts about the “Championship Level” course discussion that’s popped up in our comments lately.
Gateway Super Soft Wizard review
“So, it’s the moped joke,” eltreedr said.
This story does not begin well.
We were standing on the 16th tee at Timmons Park and I was trying to explain how I felt about the Gateway Super Soft Wizard.
“See, it’s like that girl in college that looks exceptionally plain, but…well, you know…” I ventured. He was right. It’s the moped joke.
I like having mail delivered to my house addressed only to “Otis,” and when the plain white package arrived at Mt. Otis, I knew immediately it was a disc from Disc Golf Station. For lack of something better to do, we recently accepted an offer from the sales web site to give us a free disc a month on the condition that we review and link to it here. We’re allowed to say whatever we want about the disc and give an unbiased review. The company gives us a free disc and gets a link. (There’s your full disclosure).
Disc Golf Station sent us all the Super Soft Wizard, a putt and approach disc that purports itself to be the second-softest of all Gateway Discs. Again, this doesn’t begin well.
The disc is ugly. There is no getting around that sad fact. It has an old-milk color to it and the wizard printed on the front looks like it was doodled during a long economics lecture. It could be the ugliest disc I’ve ever owned. And if this is the second-softest disc the company makes, I can only assume the more rigid discs are called The Viagra. This disc is not soft and has very little bend to it.
We are a Champion Aviar putter blog. For the past two years, we’ve thrown the Champion Aviar exclusively. We’ve both adopted different putting styles in that time, but we both had no desire to switch away from the Aviars. However with a new disc to review, we set out on Timmons and left the Aviars in our cars.
I’d take you through the whole round, but let’s just cut to the chase: I didn’t miss a putt through the entire round. It was as if the 173g piece of ugly was on tracks from my hand to the chains. When the disc hit the chains, it didn’t bounce, carom, or skate off the side. The Wizard hit the chains and dropped into the basket like a rock.
I am not a good disc golf player. I am better than a beginner and I’ve been playing for a while, but I’m not really very good. So, it may be that the unfamiliarity with the disc made me concentrate extra hard, a college kid with a new girl for the first time, or something like that. Nonetheless, if I threw the disc at the chains, it went straight in and fell. Eltreedr had never seen anything like it. If I putted like that every round, I might actually be competitive.
Meanwhile, eltreedr was slower on the uptake. Apart from a spectacular 40-ft uphill putt for birdie on #8, eltreedr wasn’t putting with his regular accuracy. More often than not, the Wizard was dropping short. It took 18 holes but together we agreed the following:
After that, our agreement ended. I’m keeping the Wizard in my bag for now. If I keep putting like I did with it this week, I’m going to shave two or three strokes off each round. Eltreedr, meanwhile, isn’t sold.
“I’ve already put my Aviar back in the bag and taken the Wizard out,” he said today. “I don’t think it glides in a way that works for my putting style.”
He’s right about that. Over time, I’ve adopted a fairly aggressive approach to putting.
“The Wizard is actually better suited for your style,” eltreedr said. “You really fire at the basket, while I have a finesse approach, and I don’t think the Wizard has the glide I need.”
Conclusion: For $9.99, the Super Soft Wizard might be a putter you want to check out. Players with aggressive putting styles might be more suited for the disc, if they don’t mind their friends seeing them play with it or ride home on a moped.
Reliable Flight
It doesn’t matter if a disc does what it’s SUPPOSED to do. It matters that it does the same predictable thing each time you throw it.
I remember saying that to Otis over at Century Park more than a year ago, and I was just reminded of that fact on the same course yesterday afternoon.
Like many regular players I own discs I rarely use. Again, like most, I have some disc in my bag I sometime throw just once a round. Sometimes not at all. But those discs do have a specific purpose and when the need arises it’s great to have them around.
Here’s an example :
I carry a 175g Champion Boss. I don’t normally have the arm strength or speed to make it fly in a useful way around here. It does come in handy at times on a longer and more open course like say, Trophy Lakes. (Note : My previous 175g boss is actually at the bottom of said lake)
Still, I have one in my bag for a specific shot that I needed on the 10th hole yesterday.
If I use that boss with a stiff, flat forehand I can count on it to hyzer HARD after about 100 feet and come to a stop about 45 feet to the left of my aim. (I’m a lefty)
So am I throwing the boss the right way? Probably not.
Will I keep throwing it the way I do? Definitely.
I wish I had a dollar for each time someone’s told me I’m doing it wrong.
I would have, you know, several dollars and such.
Anyway, the point is not that the disc is designed to fly a certain way but that I know what way it will fly.
I’ll be writing more about various kinds of discs and thought I’d get that off my chest.
My My My My Katana
I’m a pretty fickle dood.
For quite some time I was a pretty devoted lover of the Valkyrie for my long range drives. That’s when I was almost exclusively throwing a mediocre 200 foot forehand with a reliable slow speed fade.
That was back when I re-learned this game in about 2001.
Not long after, I actually developed a bit of a backhand and switched, based on the ever-present innova charts, a Roadrunner.
I've gone through several of these. I still always have one in the bag.
My game improved by great leaps when I brought that disc on board because I still lacked the serious arm speed necessary to handle more stable discs.
I could, by 2008, reliably throw a roadrunner 285-300 feet…and keep it straight.
In fact, the thing that made this disc less reliable, was an improvement in my technique.
Now, I keep the RR in the bag for solid anhyzer potential. I have trouble making it do anything else. But as an INTENTIONAL anhyzer, it’s a good disc to have.
That lead me, last year, to go out in search of the next reliable driver. I went through several.
The DISCRAFT SPECTRA is good. My friend and doubles partner, TeamScottSmith, swears by it. I bought one on his recommendation and it’s still in my bag.
Last time I used mine for anything, really, was in the doubles tournament I played with TeamScottSmith. It was his idea.
I also had a brief flirtation with the Innova SIDEWINDER and the Disc Mania Power Driver (which Otis and I refer to by it’s hot stamp…the FREAK)
Still love the FREAK. I own 2.
But I’m sold on something new these days. I’ve added a good, consistent, 40 feet to my drives with the KATANA.
Love This Disc.
I love my PRO Katana so much, I’ve already bought a STAR Katana as a backup. I’m preaching about it.
I think I’m in love.
You know, for now.
On the bright side, I’m not a total disc whore. I still won’t hit any course without a DART.
eltreedr
Otis
Dr. Pauly
