Well, times are getting tough for the old Winnicrew. We made the big drive from Kingsport Tennessee to Melbourne Florida with a stop at Four Palms in Jacksonville. We pulled into Daytona Beach in a rain storm and spent a couple nights at Perry's Beach Resort thanks to a gift certificate that Avery won last month. Very nice, very relaxing. We spent a sunny day at the beach working on our tans, playing catch, and swimming, then spent the next four days camping at Melbourne with Cam Todd, Worm, and Leslie Herndon.

Friday doubles saw a huge turnout... 56 players. For some reason though, they only decided to pay out five places so we didn't make any money there. Dave doubled his $10 but Avery and I missed the cash. Ron Russell won the tournament with Eric Tracy one stroke back. Climo was 6th, Avery cashed in at 11th for $180. I missed the cash by a stroke. It was the first time I didn't cash all year... I was pretty bummed out. Dave's rounds went even worse than mine did and he will carry the Monkey for the Peoria Open. Ron Aldridge put on another great tournament with lots of CTPs and cash to be won. It filled well ahead of time, so be sure to sign up for the Melbourne Open well in advance if you want to play next year.

On Monday we held a singles event at SpaceCoast National. A few pros showed up to play after the rain stopped and we only lost a few bucks on the deal. We ended up playing some doubles and Avery and I set the new course record (for doubles) at 13 under par.

We left right after doubles and made the 1050 mile drive to St. Louis in just under 18 hours (new record!) and $300 in gas/oil. The boys dropped me off at Linda's house and headed on toward Peoria after showers and some sandwiches from Linda. Linda and I will be driving up to Peoria later today to meet up with them.

Other news:

• Team Michigan finished second behind the team from California this year at the Upper Midwest Team Challenge in Lac Du Flambeau, Wisconsin. I hear that the Cali-boys played some top notch golf in the constant rain to take away our four-peat. Watch out next year.
• Ken Climo left for Oslo, Norway for the European Championships. Good luck champ! He'll be missing out on Peoria and the Kansas City Wide Open. He says he should see us at the Champions Cup in a few weeks.
• The Winnie is running well. Still drinking about a quart of oil per 1000 miles, but I don't think that's too bad. Gas prices seem to be dropping a bit.
• Jehan Iqbal of Kansas City is now on tour in a truck and popup. He has a few events set up between tournaments to try and keep the finances up. We wish him luck... it's tough out here.
• So far this year as Competition Director I have had five requests by pros to be reclassified as amateurs and had to investigate five written complaints about misbehaving players at tournaments. Each issue requires me to call up folks for information and corroboration... our phone bill has been higher than expected and Sprint keeps shutting our phone off for being behind on the billing.
• Brian Sullivan wrote a three-page article for the Parks and Rec Trades magazine (which has a subscriber base of 20,000 university, military and park directors) that came out a couple weeks ago. It just might cause a boom in disc golf course installations in the near future.
• DiscTV is working on a deal that just might get the show financed. We're still hoping that this could work out.
• Reese Swinea (Fly-18) is finishing up on a deal with the AGA (American Golf Association) to get disc golf courses installed on about 100 ball golf courses across the U.S. This should help the sport. It's a different sort of golf on these courses. More drives, not quite so putting intensive, par 4's and par 5's. It's fun! Reese is talking about holding several tournaments on these courses in the future.

-Todd and Crew

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