Lumberjack Open
September 7 & 8, 2002

As you can guess from the name of this tournament, the Lumberjack Open is held on a couple of tight courses. The first course we play is called Oshtimo. It has potential to be a very nice course, but it needs quite a bit of maintenance at the moment. The rough is extremely rough with thorns and very tall grass, weeds and trees. If you get off the fairway (which is pretty much inevitable) you will probably spend a lot of time looking for your disc and may end up bleeding. The second course we play is Cold Brook. This a a tiny course as far as distance, but it is a very technical course. The fairways are carved out of the trees and it is possible to take some very unfortunate redirections. This course is really fun to play. It is especially good if you like to take one disc and jog or run a round of golf. If you want to give this a try, however, you will have to do so very early in the morning or late at night as the course is packed with players nearly all the time.

Saturday we played two rounds at Oshtimo. The first we played from the long tees. Neither Shawn or I could find a fairway and both had frustrating rounds. There were only three pro women, but it was an extremely strong field with Des Reading, Lesli Herndon and myself. Des played very well first round and had a 6 stroke lead over both Lesli and myself. Shawn was middle of the pack. For the second round, we played from the short tees which makes a huge difference in the difficulty of the course. I played much better and gained 5 strokes back on Des and 6 on Lesli. Shawn played OK and moved up a few people.

Sunday we played one round of 24 at Cold Brook. Then there would be a final 9 for the women and the top 4 men. During the round I had great intensity and made some really good putts and shot a personal best on the course at 4 under. Lesli also shot a personal best with 2 under. Des had a little more trouble and shot 3 over. In the men's division, Shawn still couldn't find a fairway, but was making huge (silly) putts from all over the place. He said he felt like he was playing a putting game where you try to make up the strangest putt possible. He made 60 foot putts over limbs and around trees. With his great putting he was able to shoot 10 under which moved him up again this time into a 5 way tie for 8th place.

In the final 9, Lesli passed Des and took second place while I won by 9 over Lesli.