“The board is set; the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time.”
– Gandalf
by Kris Kohout
On the evening of Saturday the 7th of March, 45 intrepid souls faced the harrowing (correction: quite mild, warm and wind-free, what a surprise!) weather and the daunting Rob Hancock course layout for the eighth running of the Perth Disc Golf Clubs’ “Lord of the Disc” tournament.
The premise of the tournament is simple: choose the one disc that NEVER lets you down, NEVER flies out of bounds and NEVER vanishes on you, and use it and it alone for nine holes during the day, and eighteen at night under LED light with lit up baskets. How truly did our players choose their most reliable disc? Well, keep reading to find out….
This tournament has quickly become a warm weather favourite for the club, and luckily the weather gods turned it on and gave us a magical evening for the event. Very little wind and warm conditions made the evening almost ideal for disc golf, and the players took to the day round with relish.
Pretty quickly, the scorecards revealed some early leaders. Caitlin McCarthy carded a tidy 35 in her division to open up a healthy lead over Jo McCamish in Women’s Beginners, and Claire Batey threw a 34 to give her a two stroke advantage with Sue Summers in hot pursuit in the Women’s Advanced division. In the Mixed Open division, Jordy and Noisy kept their noses clean throwing 26 apiece, with Ken and Deano two strokes back. The Mixed Masters witnessed Lotus and Del post the best rounds with 29 each, and in Advanced Stuart Arnold posted the hot round of 27, with Briggsy hot on his tail throwing 20 through the first eight hole but drifting out to a 28 after losing his disc on the last hole of the round and copping a stupidly excessive penalty from the TD (what was I thinking, sorry once again Briggsy!). In the Intermediate division, Beardy carded a solid 30 to take a one stroke lead over Liam and Keith, and in the Mixed Beginners Kevin posted a respectable 35 to take the lead over Jordan and Ben (Ben literally just turned up at Greenwood to play a social round, realized something was happening when he saw us all gathering, came to ask if he could still throw his round before we commenced then came back ten minutes later to register. Great having you along for your first PDGC event, Ben!).
The players then tucked into some dinner whilst nearly every Turkey went out into the twilight gloom to help Briggsy look for his disc (it was located the next day luckily, in an entirely different grass tree on hole 9….. sometimes it seems those grass trees are home to interdimensional portals!).
After dark is when this tournament becomes even more special. The LED lights are taped to the players discs, and the baskets are all lit up. This year we had five of the baskets adopted by players and they all looked amazing, big thanks to Joker (Jonathan King) for Basket 1, Kiwi and Family for Basket 3, Noisy for Basket 4, Del and Family for Basket 5, and Rick Penlington for Basket 6. Having people spend time and money to invent some amazing creations each year always adds a special touch to the tournament, and this year the bar was lifted again by you all. Let’s hope we can get all nine decorated next year with some more weird and wonderful ideas.
The players were now grouped into division and score order for the eighteen night holes, where it was random order during the daytime round. The wind seemed to drop further after dark which made it even nicer conditions to play in, and the scores reflected that. The Mixed Beginners saw Jordan begin to reel in the division leader Kevin by reducing Kevin’s lead to 2 but Kevin held his nerve to finish two up. Beardy turned his one stroke lead into five by the end of the tournament to claim the Mixed Intermediate title over Kiwi in second, and in Men’s Advanced Jordan Clarke came from three strokes back to leapfrog into first place with a red hot 54 (second only to Jordy’s 53), winning by a solitary stroke over Ross and Barney (who are yet to play their tiebreaker for second place as far as I’m aware). Lotus managed to gain three strokes on runner up Del to claim the Men’s Masters title with a fast finishing Rick (who had the home ground advantage as a Friday Night Rider) coming home strong but had too much ground to make up after his 33 in the day round.
Men’s Open saw the Amish Sherpa (aka Jordy) slip away into the night, opening up a three stroke lead on Noisy in second place, Claire threw a 70 to Sue’s 71 to win by three in a very close tussle in Women’s Advanced and Caitlin threw an ultra-consistent 67 in the evening round to claim the victory in Women’s Beginners.
The Adopt A Basket competitors were vying for a $100 Sportspower voucher and while every adopted basket gained significant numbers of votes from the players, Joker’s Hole 1 with the TREE notification, sound activated music on the basket and eerie tee pad lights that randomly strobed and faded to black took out the prize. Rumour has it that Joker spent many hours programming the electronics for his adopted basket and was a deserving winner as his creation dazzled most players, but everyone did a fantastic job decorating their baskets and it was great to see them all in their glory.
I’d like to say a massive thank you to Al, Jacob, Glen and Rick for all their help before, during and after the tournament. The support that you guys provide and your willingness to just jump in and get the job done amazes me every tournament and your spirit is a massive part of our tournaments running so smoothly. To the basket adopters, thanks again for helping me out by volunteering your time and resources to bring your ideas to life, and I hope you will start planning for something even more spectacular next year. Lastly to all 45 players, old and new: thank you for continuing to respect each other and support our events, without you Ladies and Gents we wouldn’t have a club. Current world events are challenging to say the least, but let’s use our little tribe to include and encourage each other, not isolate, separate and discriminate.
See you all next year for Lord of the Disc Nine!
– Hootie
See FULL SCORECARD here
