March 14 2001, Huntington Beach, CA
You'll find tons of photos from this event in the Gallery.
Ninety-five Open players at the Bob West in Phoenix, AZ meant that a lot of our
disc golfing pals were in attendance who we hadn't seen in awhile. Open men
and women played on Friday morning and the Masters and Ams played in the
afternoon. I started off terribly and was +2 after the first six holes. I
settled in after that and managed a -8 for the 27 hole setup. The leaders
were shooting in the low teens. Dave and Avery shot a -4 and a -6.
The tournament went well even without the use of the 'fountain' course that
was under construction this year. After the round everyone walked over to
Duke's pub and sat on the patio, a vantage point that allowed us to watch the
Masters and Ams play on a
couple holes. It was a great setup. The tournament hotel was right off the course
too, so everyone hung out in the same general area for four days or more. It
was a great social event. Sam Ferrans gave us the news that Dave Feldberg
was added to the Innova sponsored team as of a few days earlier. Yeah! Now
the whole Winnicrew is sponsored by Innova.
Friday was also my 33rd birthday. I was a little bummed out over some disc
golf politics, phone bills, blown up cars, missing Linda and some other
things so everyone took me out for dinner and drinks. Things got a little
crazy... some Canadians were buying me drinks called 'prairie fires' made of
tequila and hot sauce. Yikes! Shots were coming at me from all directions.
The next morning I was feeling a bit rough but shot a -11 anyway, and moved up
into the second group for the final round on Sunday. Dave and Avery each
improved by two strokes and moved into the 4th and 5th cards.
On Sunday I shot another -11, Avery shot a -10, and Dave had a tough round
with a 3 down. I moved into a tie for 5th, Avery into a tie for 10th and Dave
finished 20th.
Al Schack was tied with Avery, Russell won, Climo 2nd, Cam Todd 3rd, Ken
Jarvis 4th, Mike Young tied me for 5th along with Shawn Sinclair. Juliana
won the Open Women. Glenn Whitlock ran away with the Masters division. My
pal and fellow PDGA board member Mark Ellis took 2nd in Masters and turned
down the cash as always. I think that Mark holds the record for turning down
PDGA cash... I'd be interested in knowing what his career total is.
After the tournament we stuck around for three more days for the PDGA summit
meeting. The meeting went pretty well. We discussed a bunch of important
issues and got our minds straight on several topics. The PDGA has a lot of
work to do just to maintain the status quo for disc golf. There are tons of
good ideas on how to grow the sport, but we just don't have the manpower or
funds to see new ideas through. I volunteered for a couple projects.
Hopefully I'll find the time to complete them.
The Bob West was a great tournament. The weather held out for us, the single
course and one round per day were great for socializing and giving the
players time to visit the tournament sponsors. If I had my way all
SuperTours would be played on a single course and be one round per day... of
course that wouldn't really work out because it would move tournaments to a
minimum three day format, and most of our players can't start taking that extra
day off all the time.
After the summit we said farewell to Arizona and drove over to Bob Dodge's
house in Huntington Beach, CA after a quick stop at Innova West to pick up
some plastic and team apparel. We all have more clothing than storage space
at the moment.
Next up is the El Dorado Open (B-tier) in Southern California. Innova is
running the tournament and it should be a good time.
-Todd, and Crew
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