Tournament Time

In June, you say?

That's right.  This weekend I was fortunate enough to participate in the 8th Annual Tar Heel Tournament, which is a 2 day disc golf tournament, held in Chapel Hill, NC, which consists of four rounds of disc golf.  The 60 or so players entered into the tournament are split into divisions based on their skill level and the results of past tournaments in which they have played.  

As anyone who knows the UNC course will tell you, it's difficult and varied and at times can be relentlessly unforgiving.  The tournament set-up for the course consisted of 20 holes, four of which were over 600 ft. long.  Combine all that with the 100 degree temperatures on the first day and you have the makings of a ill-tempered course ready to capitalize on your slightest  mistakes.  They even brought back two incredibly scenic and challenging holes (now 19 & 20) that had been shelved by the Outdoor Education Center at UNC some years ago.  The course looked amazing and you could tell that the Tournament Director had put a lot of effort into course maintenance and overall tournament planning.

This was my first officially sanctioned PDGA tournament.  I played in the Recreational division and shot rounds of 74, 73, 67 & 78 on a par 64 course.  Those scores were good enough for 3rd in the Rec division and netted me 4 new discs (Star Leopard, Big Bead Aviar, Pro Destroyer, and Champion Coyote).  Very sweet, indeed.  The overall winner of the tourney was a "professional" disc golfer by the name of Brian Schweberger who beat the closest competitor by 10 strokes.  That's pretty nasty people.  The reason I take issue with these athletes being called professional is not because they disrespect the word or their sport, but rather because these disc golfers don't really make a living off their earnings from tournaments.  Some of them might be able to, once you add up all the sponsorship dollars, but the majority of them end up keeping a day job while they earn a small amount of money from disc golf on the weekends.  I'm not knocking them, simply pointing out that being a professional disc golfer doesn't exactly pay that much, it's more of a skill level designation.    That being said, I wish I could play the game half as well as they do.  While I was shooting in the 70's, Schwebby was shooting in the 50's.