This past Saturday I played in my second disc golf event of 2008, the Mount Kisco Ice Bowl. The Ice Bowl series is a tradition held every year in the disc golf community with the tag line “No Whimps, No Whiners” [sic] held during January/February as charity events meant to help raise proceeds towards local food banks. On top of that, it’s a great excuse for golfers to get together in the colder months for some competitive play. After a solid 6-8″ of fluffy stuff hit the ground from Thursday night through all of Friday, the weather held out for Saturday to provide a nice balmy high of 35 degrees with no precipitation to speak of.
I had never made it down to the course at Leonard Park in Mount Kisco, NY, but the two primary things I had heard about the course were certainly true: the baskets were ancient, and the tees were pretty bad. Honestly, I feel that I would have preferred uneven tees with roots and stumps in them to the slick hard-packed snow we were forced to deal with all day though, since most teeboxes offered certain death (or at least a broken broken bone) if you tried to get too aggressive since you would almost guarantee yourself a slip & fall. The baskets were indeed old, some dating back to the installation of the park in 1977, with shallow baskets and modified chain assemblies which had second sets of chains added in after the original single-chain models were installed. My biggest beef with the baskets came twice during the day when I had putts go clean to the bottom of the basket when suddenly the disc just hopped up and out over the rim. Putting is not the strongest part of my game in the first place but I would much rather beat myself up over dumb putts than curse a P.O.S. basket that simply throws the disc back out simply because it isn’t made/designed well as a catching apparatus.
My play for the day was sub-par by my own standards: I only would have taken 2nd in the Advanced division, and was 5th out of 6 in the Pro field by 7 strokes (10 from 3rd, 12 from 2nd, and 13 from tying for the win). During the first round I simply couldn’t put anything together, and played mediocre golf throughout. I finished 10 strokes over par, which for 19 holes essentially equaled “bogey, par, bogey, par, bogey, par…” for the entire round and honestly that was more or less what my scorecard looked like. Survived the entire first round without a single birdie, and was actually DFL by 2 strokes over the lunch break. Round 2 fared better, with two birdies on the card (missing my 20′ deuce putt which would have strung together the turkey) but my game bonked in the last 6 holes and I racked up a quick couple of bogeys to end up +4 on that round.
Going into the day I had brought a good deal of some FLX plastic that I had heard good things about for the snowy/cold conditions, and for the most part I was very pleased with the results. I threw a FLX Challenger almost all day as my putter/upshot disc and I found it to have a great feel in the cold and it flew very much like a Wizard so my learning curve was real low since that’s my usual putter of choice. The FLX Buzzz was a great addition to the bag, providing a little more feel of my disc for those mid-range shots where I didn’t want to pull out the Super Roc (although that did have some shining moments itself that day). The FLX Surge stayed in the bag since it was white – bad color for snow – and I really didn’t trust myself to throw an untested driver in tournament conditions. The FLX XL was put back in the car after a few throws (only 1 in competition, the rest during warm-ups) when I wasn’t liking how hyzer it was coming out of my hand. I’m hoping I can dial that one in at least by next weekend’s event.
Next weekend is Tournament 54… 54 holes in 1 day, 18 holes on each of three courses. If the snow can melt a little bit and I can get out of my own way, I know the payout goes to the top half so I’m looking to save some face and hopefully bring home a little green next weekend. We’ll see how it goes.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Sounds like dollahz would have been MINE! I hold a grudge against Kisco. I’ve had 4 10x KC Pro Tbirds in my life, and I lost three of them at Kisco – all in the snow – in two ice bowls. One was in the center of the fairway about 100′ from me, too.
Odd, nobody ever volunteered to give me back those AMAZING discs. *sigh*