Texas 10 Charity Tournament — Waco

Saturday was the season opener for the 2005 Texas 10 Charity Disc Golf Tournament.

The tour has traditionally opened and closed in Lewisville, but this year, because of scheduling necessity, the opener was held at Cameron Park in Waco. Additionally, the season finale will not be in Lewisville this year, but instead will be played at the new Twin Parks Country Club in Dripping Springs, TX.

Here are some notes on the season opener in Waco:

• Membership tags — You might know them as bag tags. This year, Chris raised money for the tour (to include dontations to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and to EDGE) by selling membership tags. They are divided into three groups: Pro, Amateur, and Women. Each card is numbered sequentially. The goal is to challenge other players with numbers lower than yours (lower number eventually = better players), and try to win their lower number.

  I was fortunate enough to sign up early for the tags, and was handed Amateur tag #2. Due to the adverse conditions on the course on Saturday, there were few (if any) tag challenges. So, I get to hold on to my #2 tag for a little longer…well, at least until the Bowling Green Open, where my good friend Gary Collier has already challenged me for my tag (he’s carrying #5 right now).

• The Weather — the story of the season opener was undoubtably the weather. It was cold (46 degrees for the high) and wet (rained or drizzled continually the entire day).
• The courses — were already wet and muddy from a previous storm, so the continual rain and drizzle on Saturday, combined with 145 players tromping, slipping, and sliding through each tee box (all natural tee boxes on the longer, more difficult East “Beast” course), only further degraded the course.

  The West course has concrete tee boxes, which allowed better footing than on the Beast. But the concrete tee boxes are too short for most players to use their normal run-up…and there was too much water and slick mud on the back-side of most tee-boxes to use anything but the short concrete pads. Still, it was better than the natural tee boxes on the other side of the river.

  The Pro and Advanced divisions started play on the shorter, easier West Course, while the lower AM divisions started the morning on the Beast. This undoubtably worked in favor of the groups that got to play the natural tee boxes first. The first several tee boxes we played were bad, but playable. But as the morning progressed, and more and more players tore up the boxes, they got worse and worse. Often, I was more concerned with simply not falling on my ass than I was the accuracy and quality of my tee shot.

  I have little doubt that nearly all of the Beast’s tee boxes were a complete disaster by the time the Pro and Advanced cards played them in the afternoon.

• The Results — full results can be found here. In my division (MA2), I tied for the best round at the Beast during the morning round (+9) with Jim Bridges and Damian Power (both (non-PDGA members…not sure of their ratings). The next best scores from the morning round at the Beast were +13 (David Howell) and +14 (Steven Parker…non-PDGA member).

  I played fairly well on Cameron West, except for my double-circle 7 on hole #16. Other than that I only carded two other bogies (holes #5 and #10), with 3 birdies (holes #6, 8, and 12). My final score was a +3…oh, to have #16 back again.

  Damian easily won our card and division by shooting an easy -1 (53). Jim had me edged out with 4 holes to play, but fell apart taking OB strokes on each of the last two holes to finish two strokes behind me at +5.

  I took 2nd overall in our division when David Howell got in trouble early on our final hole (#11 long) then missed his 25′ bogie putt, finally carding a 5. I nailed a great drive, and then put my upshot to about 20′ wide of the basket. My putt was good for par. David made up three strokes on me during the round, but thankfully I had a four stroke advantage.
  
  MA1 — In the Men’s Advanced division, Mark Hazel lost 4 strokes on the final three holes to lose by one to Stephen Brower. Ben Vallejo shot the best MA1 round on the Beast (+5) to move up to third place.

  MPO — Vinnie Miller shot the best round of the day at Cameron West (-8) and the second best round of the day on the Beast (+4) to hold on for the win by two strokes over Michael Olse (who’s +2 tied Joel Kelly for the day’s best round on the Beast). Young Matt Hall, playing up with the big boys, tied for 7th and took last place cash in a strong open field.

  FPO — the competitive story of the day was in the Women’s Pro division, where Texas’ newest Lady Pro (Danielle Vargas) shot a smoking even-par morning round at Cameron West to take a 2-stroke lead over Melinda Ring and a 5-stroke lead over World Champion Des Reading.

  Des made up the 5-stroke difference on the Beast, shooting a smoking hot +9 (better than most of the Pro and Advanced men), while Danielle shot a great round of +14. On the first hole of the sudden-death playoff, Des parked her drive on the 306′ downhill #5. Danielle just barely missed her long putt, giving Des the victory…but a great performance by Danielle.

  Steve Dufrane hit the only ace of the day (#13 on the Beast) during the first round. He sat out the second round in the dry warmth of his van, hoping that nobody else would ace during the second round. His luck held out and he took home the entire ace pot.

The second event of the Texas 10 Charity tour is in Tyler, TX on March 19th. I’ll miss this one, as it’s the same weekend as the B-tier event at Moody’s place in Red Rock.

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