Sunday, February 8, 2009

Single Disc Record

Yo Peeps,

So I noticed there was no record yet for a round using only one disc, so I decided to establish one this afternoon.  As Erin knows from having played two speed rounds today, the conditions were totally benign.  I had a light mist and only a whisper of a breeze from the north.  I started out using a Destroyer.  I had thought this disc choice out.  I thought about my Monster, but I worried about putting with it.  I briefly considered something more putter-friendly like a Comet.  But the idea of getting that thing to the baskets on 1, 10, 14, and 16 without Erin's wingspan was daunting.  I would think a Wasp will do just fine for him, but for us mortals, the driver seemed like the way to go.  Started out and birdied 1, 3, 4, and 5, before figuring out, after bogeying 6 and 7, that putting with the thing was going to be a bear.  So I pressed the reset button, went back to the car, and got the beat-up (read: not-so-stable-anymore) Tee-Rex. Started again, and birdied 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 for a 7 under on the front. Turns out the thing putts pretty well!  

After another birdie on 11, I realized that I might have a keeper round going, and was going to have to do a mando layup on 18 without a spotter, so I put in a last-minute call to Erin and Linz, hoping one of them might be able to burn out and give me an official judgment on 18 by the time I got there.  Unfortunately, as I was later to learn when I ran into Linz at Harvest after the round, they were off exploring in the woods and didn't get the message.  Well OF COURSE making the call threw the karma off a bit, and I proceeded to miss the birdie putt on 12, then, after making an ace run and hitting the basket on the skip on 13 (!), it somehow rolled about twenty-five feet away, just out of range of the putting Tee-Rex.  Parred 14, managed a birdie on 15, a near birdie on 16, and a fab par on 17 where I had to choose between the layup or going for the par from just behind the treeline (no guts no glory, people!).  At that point I was 9 under and REALLY wanted to be able to try for double digits.  I waited a few extra minutes for the Erin/Linz cavalry, but none arrived, so I executed my first successful layup par on 18, to post the first official one-disc-only record as:  9 down.  And bogey-free!  

There is a lesson here, people.  Think about it:  my first round ever using just one disc, and I threw a bogey free round which was only 4 shots off my all-time best?  I HIGHLY recommend the one-disc round to everyone!  Not only is it fun, and not only is it incredibly liberating to leave that big clunky bag in the car and walk around a course with only one disc, but I found that using one disc really allowed me to focus solely on the job at hand: getting the disc to the basket.  I think, in relying so much on disc choice and disc engineering, that we forget the adaptive, intuitive ability to work a disc wherever and however we want it to go.  It was fun playing many different kinds of shots with just one disc, and I know it was good for my game.  I left thinking that I might take most of the discs out of my bag, and rely on my ability to play different shots with a few discs, instead of having one disc for each kind of shot.

It reminds me of a story about golfing great Ben Hogan.  He was playing a round with an amateur player, and the guy kept asking him which club he was using on every shot.  Finally Ben, who was not known to suffer fools gladly, had had enough.  The next time the guy asked him the question, as he stood about 150 yards off the green, he turned to the guy, pulled out ten different balls, dropped them on the fairway, and without a word, hit them all onto the green-- with ten different clubs!  The message: don't get caught up in picking the perfect club.  Pick any damn club, and play the shot that will get the job done! 

As with ball golf, so it is with frolf!  Amen!

1 comment:

  1. p.s. Erin made the comment that he considers solo rounds to be unofficial, and after thinking about it, I agree. Ah well, hope the story was interesting anyway! The one-disc record will have to wait for another day...

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