‘You never know what worse luck your bad luck just saved you from.’ Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men.
Saying Hello
They say ‘this too shall pass’, and so it did. After two years of mild inconvenience when compared to the rest of the world, the borders of WA were finally opened to a country emerging from lockdown, blinking in the bright light of freedom. After 2020 was cancelled and 2021 held minus the Victorians, Perth Open 2022 had a full complement of interstate and international competitors making up a quarter of the 100-strong field. They drove up Red Hill from the coastal plains, through Gidgegannup, before taking the turn down Dinsdale Road and entering the long and winding portal to the parallel disc golfing universe that is Pine Lines.
We’ve been making that drive for a decade which, too, has passed. Ten years since we took the offer to look at some bloke’s property as a potential site for the Perth Open, triggering an institution that has, in some ways, been the making of Disc Golf in Perth. Every little community has its bifurcations and ours, at that time, was certainly divided. But camping together as a group and organising those first few tournaments created a common purpose that comes from working side-by-side. It was a vibe that drove much of our scene in the years to come.
I hadn’t seen Jason Vidot from Brisbane in a while and afterwards we were swapping the usual ‘hey man it’s been good to catch up’ stuff which made me think that at Pine Lines, you don’t just have a catch up, you have a catch up by a campfire, sitting under a giant tree. See? There’s a difference.
We needed that big steel fire pit this weekend too. It was once a mixing bowl in the old Dog Swamp Bakery. Salvaged by George Vellios and his dad, it was rolled 100m home by hand, then transported up the hill before Glen White made some art out of it with an oxyacetylene torch. Richard Jones fed it all weekend so that its heat glowed through tournament central. With weather that made clothes perpetually damp, it was a relief to sidle-up to that fire and toast yourself on both sides every few hours.
Perth has some beautiful May-June weather. It’s a time the Noongars call ‘Makaru’ – the fertile season. Still sunny days and cool nights with some showers. Just not during the Perth Open it seems. On the Friday night it dumped down and flooded the camp, then just kept raining on and off all weekend, mercifully letting up on Sunday afternoon during the final rounds and the awards ceremony. On that first night I saw Keenan emerge out of rain that had been coming down so hard it formed a single sheet of water flooding through the whole staging area, making it look like the earth was moving. He looked remarkably calm for someone who’s tournament might wash away. We exchanged a nod and a shrug that said, ‘this is nothing’, thinking of 2014. I’m not sure it was all that bad in 2014 but it’s compulsory to exaggerate things over time and our memories of that year have left us feeling that we can handle anything.
It was that confidence borne of experience and the très Vellios love of putting on a good show that flowed through the whole weekend. When you drive into a venue and see Hootie in a high-viz vest, directing traffic with an LED wand, you know you are in good hands. Some might have assumed that Hootie and Boat were in high-viz vests for safety reasons, not realizing that this is the WA formal dress uniform. They were just adding some polish to the occasion.
But that was just one of many deft touches: from the marquee that provided an all-important dry staging area, registration desk and pro-shop, to the archway entrance on hole 4 and the infusion of Mason Vellios’s music as a soundtrack to the ceremonies – many people remarked that it was the most slickly organised tournament they’ve been to. One year after being TD for his first tournament Reece Vellios had absorbed all that experience and crafted a truly superb event.
Round 1
The interstate and international travellers didn’t include any MPO players again this year and it was the usual suspects of Jordan Wheeler, Paul Noesen, Alex Kynaston, Rob Lim and some kid who looked a bit like Blake Houston but was noticeably taller and wider across the shoulders than the 15-year-old who came third last year. It was Jordy who set the early pace, laying 4 birdies on top of a clean sheet in the first 9 holes, to be a couple of throws ahead of Blake, Jacob Davies and the other infante terrible, Alex Kynaston. After a rough start, throwing 4-over in the first nine that included two double bogies, Paul Noesen came home strong with nine birdies in the next 18 holes to finish day one in second place behind Blake Houston, who had finished with three birdies in his last 4 holes. Jordy undid his good work in the early part of the round with a double bogey-bogey finish to drop into fourth behind Jacob Davies.
The highlight of round one was Rob Lim’s ace on hole 26, the aptly named 80m ‘Black Ace’. You can’t see the basket from the tee on this hole and after Rob threw his turnover shot through the right-hand gap and out of sight, he first thought the crash of chains he heard was another card putting out.
“People were coming from all around the neighbouring holes” said the first person to ace Black Ace. “I didn’t celebrate until I could see it when I went halfway up the hole”
In FPO Cassie Sweetten had opened up a 12-throw lead on her travelling buddy and main rival Toosje Frequin – a gap that was going to be very difficult to close. Sue Summers had an unbeatable lead in FA1 while in FA2 there was a great battle going on between visiting Canberra player Sam Ockerby, the ‘Ninja’ Joanne McCamish, Leah Manning and Julie O’Donoghue; with only seven-throws separating the whole field and Sam in the lead by one. In FA4 Claudine Baker had already built an insurmountable 30+ throw lead over Katie Barr.
A collective shiver went through the MP40 field the night they found out that Dave Bandy had registered and on the morning before round one they were all nervously avoiding eye contact, trying not to poke the bear. It didn’t matter, by the end of round one, Australia’s former number one player had a 3-throw lead over Ken Summers, with a 4-under round that would have had him in second place overall. He added to the vast back-catalogue of Bandy stories by somehow finding a dead straight line on the short, right, meat hook hole 7, called Monkeys Tail. Yet another hole with a Bandy line.
In MA1 it was Brad Curran continuing the fine Turkey tradition in that division who shot an equal hot round 5-under to hold a 3-throw lead over young Tasmanian Atticus Ariston with Mandurah’s Cameron Leishman one throw further back. Swampy’s round included an Eagle on the par 4 Homestead.
After third place finishes in both The Sizzler and the nationals, Jason Vidot, in MA40, had backed up winning the Vic Open and the Yeronga Memorial before landing in Perth. He continued that good form in round one with a 4-under that opened a 9-throw lead on Del Batey. In MA50, Jason Browne won round-one against both the Pine Lines gorilla on his back and Padraig O’Donoghue, to be leading by 3-throws thanks to his 1-under par effort.
In the MA2’s it was newly landed expat from Texas, Spencer Hammond and the ACT’s Michael Whitby, sharing a 4-throw lead over the other Kynaston brother, Toby. In MA3 it was Jonathan Munnikhuis with a 3-throw lead over Travis Davies; and in MA4 Matt Wyne had carved a comfortable 10-throw lead over South Australia’s Callum Ford.
Fire on the Mountain
The on-and-off rain that never seemed to fully go away put a slight dampener on the evenings festivities but there were still plenty of folk hanging around the campfire either swapping happy stories or staring like combat veterans into the flames, depending on how the trees had treated them that day. The ‘Pyrabid’ ace-run competition proved a huge hit though, with a substantial crowd of revellers surrounding tee-1, roaring on the ace-runs and swapping a bit of banter. Claudine Baker had the crowd fired up after drilling a couple of aces and looked like taking out the event until one man stepped up to the AstroTurf – that’s right, if you want a frisbee thrown through an impossibly small gap? Call Dave Bandy; need something fixed that everyone says can’t be fixed? Call Glen White. Need a frisbee thrown into a basket from a long way away? Call Boat McQuade. Of course, the man with more aces than nearly anyone on the planet won the ace-run comp – of course he did.
Then there was the bonfire you can see from space, with the burning wooden basket atop that this year, seemed to randomly arrange itself in the form of a crucifix before collapsing into the flames. It was a strange omen that made the flickering light illuminating the surrounding green pine trees seem more surreal than usual. The slightly unsettling feeling wasn’t helped by the latest onesie/oodie campfire fashion that resembled druids robes. I thought I heard a Gregorian chant echoing through the trees at one pint there, but it might have been the wind.
Again too, the vital research into the aerodynamic behaviour of ulti-discs that are hoiked through the flames was continued, expanding on the thesis that ‘it goes up’ when crossing the hot updraft of the flames; the only exception to this being when the disc is thrown directly into the fire, fizzles into a grotesque blob of melting plastic and then vaporises. We’d like to be able to say that no ulti discs were harmed in the carrying out of this research. But we can’t.
Round 2
Sunday morning saw a slight easing of weather which was clearly toying with us. The sun would come out, clothes, discs and bags begin to dry and then another treacherous shower of rain would pass over the course, drenching everyone. I saw Ed Hesline sitting in a patch of bright sunshine with his umbrella up. You can’t fool a Tasmanian with fake sunshine, Ed knew what was coming.
Jordan Wheeler wasn’t fooled either. He knew he was going to have to get busy early in round-2 if he was going to catch Blake. He started with a bang, throwing 8 birdies to pull level after 13 holes. From there it was downhill, literally, as Blake threw a birdie down the Long and Winding Road to begin a run of seven that’d put an end to the contest. In Jordie’s mind the end came a couple of holes later, on hole 16. Hangman.
‘I’d thrown a good drive to be putting from circles edge, Blake’s drive had come up a fair bit shorter and he was putting from way further out – maybe 14 or 15 metres. I thought I was a chance to grab one back, but then he hit his putt, I missed mine and I just couldn’t reel him in after that.’
Despite a 3-throw turnaround on hole 21 with a double bogey from Blake and a birdie from Jordy, it was a commanding performance from the young champ who is now in the conversation about Australia’s best players. He birdied 15 of the 27 holes on his way to a 1005 rated round and what looks like the first of many Perth Open wins. Jordy held on for second while another young tyro in Connor Donnelly came blasting off the second card to steal 3rd place from Paul Noesen and Jacob Davies.
“I’m not going to change my game plan to play more conservative” said Blake when I asked him about the run home. “Five holes to go I had five strokes and that’s definitely gettable on a course like this. But I wasn’t going to change my game plan. If I had a bad shot, get up and down, save par and make sure of it. It feels awesome to win an ADG major in my home state.”
In the FPO Cassie and Toosje had a tighter battle with only one throw separating them on the day. But even if Toosje has been able to peg her back, Cassie had 12 throws in the bank from the day before and cruised to an easy win. Sue Summers took out FA1 while in FA2 the battle between Sam Ockerby and Joanne McCamish came down to a single throw with Sam taking the Perth Open title back with her to Canberra. Claudine Baker stretched her round-1 lead to take an easy win in FA4 over Katie Barr, who’s beginners’ arm must have been feeling the 54 holes by the end.
“Pine Lines is such a hard course,” said Cassie. “Yesterday I played solid, today was a bit touch-and-go, but, to come home with the win, I’ll take it. But it’s such a breath of fresh air to be back on tour and be around crew that I haven’t seen since 2017. It’s just good to back around good people and playing the sport we love.”
Dave Bandy’s annihilation of the MP40 field was quite humane in the end. He shot a 2-under to cruise to a comfortable 8-throw win over Rob Cinquini, who had overtaken Ken Summers for 2nd place and crucial bragging rights in the ongoing battle between he, Ken, Mick Canci and Carl Bellesini for 78’s supremacy.
Jason Vidot and Grant Lotus Kingston shared matching 3-over par 97’s to turn the MA40’s into a 10-throw-gap tacking-duel leading to Jason’s third big win of the year. Someone had to take the karmic fall for the previous night’s sinister basket/cross-burning and it seems that person was Del Batey, who shot 13 over in the second round to take himself right out of contention and let Kaspar Carr-Howard into third place. Some say that Brad Curran in MA1 may have also worn some of that strange kismet with his 16-throw differential from round one suggesting he might have been in need of an exorcism or at least a long hot bath.
In the MA50 Jason Browne played solidly in round two, only shooting 4 worse than the previous day when almost the whole field fatigued over the weekend. It wasn’t solid enough though, and Padraig O’Donoghue threw 1-over to take JB by one. Some uncertainty over an OB ruling from the pile of brush on 3-phase needed to be resolved before Padraig could be crowned the winner.
The story of MA1 was that of another young man on the rise. Tasmania’s Atticus Ariston stormed home with a 958 rated, 5-under, 89 to take the win from Damon Williams and Dave Briggs who had been in 9th and 8th place respectively the day before. The rest of the top two cards shot down the rankings like someone had pulled a rip cord. A lot of those same MA1 guys who turned in a round-2 shocker were also around the bonfire on Saturday night. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
In MA2, Spencer Hammond found two throws to save in his lock-step battle with Michael Whitby for his first win on Aussie soil. In MA3 Jonathan Munnikhuis threw 5 worse than his round one score but did enough to hold off Beau Wright who had come charging off the 2nd card to steal 2nd place. Matt Wynne in MA4 threw 14 more times than his first round yet still managed to hang on against a fast-finishing Mathew Lowe by one throw.
Saying Goodbye
We’ve had talented juniors before. I can think of a handful of promising teenagers that I’ve seen come into the sport and have us all thinking ‘this kid is special. This kid could be anything’. Only to see that kid drift away as teenage hormones kicked in and more alluring things that throwing frisbees with your Mum and Dad and their friends start to take over. This latest crop is different though – Disc Golf’s ubiquitous presence on YouTube has meant that many of these kids have found it themselves and haven’t been dragged along by their folks. The sport has more to hold them now too, like other teenagers for starters; and pro role models to follow, plus the promise of a viable sporting career that includes national representation and maybe even some bona-fide pro athlete money to be made. The top cards around the country are fast becoming no country for old men.
This is the last we’ll see of the Perth Open at Pine lines for a little while too. The WA major will be in Mundaring next year and the following year WA hosts the nationals again, beyond that – who knows? Pine Lines is going nowhere though and I’m pretty sure it was less than 48 hours after the last visitor had left Keenan was out there building new holes. The legends of Pine Lines will grow in their retelling, but there is still plenty of legends to be told. It’s not the last time we’ll walk the soft pine needle path from the carpark and see campfire smoke wind its way through the upper branches of the giant home tree and catch our first neon-green glimpse of the hole one fairway through the pine trunks that ring the camp. It’s not the last time we’ll see the fire on the mountain.
