Juliana's Disc Golf Stuff: Peoria Open Results

This event has long been a favorite of mine. It is the first out of state tournament that I attended back in the mid 90's. It is also home of one of my favorite courses, McNaughton Park. In the past years we have played three courses: McNaughton, Washington, and Bradley. Last year with a redesign, Bradley went from a short rather nondescript, ho-hum course to an incredibly fun beautiful course. I am still amazed by the complete transformation that course has gone through in the last few years. This year the change was not a redesign, but a complete change from Washington park to Northwoods in Morton, IL. Washington was not a great course and the greatest difficulty always seemed to be the wind. Northwoods, however, is in a much better park with some wooded holes as well as some open ones. It is a really good course from the shorter tees and an OK course from the longer harder blue tees. Overall this is a much better venue for the tournament.

On Saturday we played Bradley. I couldn't get it going. I wasn't playing too badly, but I wasn't converting on hardly any of the many birdie opportunities. I also had two bad holes which hurt my score and left me with a disappointing 55. This was enough to tie current world champ, Des Reading, and put me four strokes back of Angela Tshchiggfrie. (For those of you who don't know Angela, she is another very good female pro disc golfer from Iowa.) In the first round Shawn shot -6 which was OK. He missed a few birdie holes with some bad drives, but wasn't unhappy with the round.

Our second round was played at Morton. I started playing with more confidence which definitely helped my score. I finished the round by birdying 3 of my last 4 holes and that jumped me up to a tie with Angela for the lead and Des fell 5 strokes back. Shawn shot really well and carded a -5 with two bogies. That moved him up into forth place tied with two others.

Sunday we played McNaughton. It was fairly windy at times, but thankfully at least a few of the holes are protected by trees and undergrowth so the wind didn't dominate every throw. Again, I played fairly well and with confidence. Des and I tied that round while Angela struggled and ended up 2 strokes back of Des overall. Shawn had a good round minus one hole. Number 9 is one of the easier holes on the course. It plays over water, but it is short enough that it shouldn't come into play. Shawn's drive went across the water, hit safely on the other side about 40 feet from the water and rolled all the way back in. The worst of it is that were it rolled back in there are all kinds of weeds and bushes so it is very hard to get a shot out of there. Thus a birdie hole quickly turns into a 5. I mention this hole because my drive on this hole did the exact same thing! We almost didn't find it because we never thought to look in the water as it had landed so far in bounds. Anyway, Shawn ended with a +4 that round which was a tie for 8th.

The top four players in each division played a really fun safari final 9. I gained one more stroke to win by 7 over Des.

Pro Men ( total 27)
		Rnd 1	Rnd 2	Rnd 3	Final 9	Total
1.	Barry Schultz	45	47	55	30	177
2.	Scott Martin	47	48	51	31	177
3.	Ron Russell	42	51	58	32	183
4.	Brian McRee	52	46	53	35	186
5.	Steve Rico	49	49	54		152
6.	Brian Schweberger	47	50	56		153
7.	Josh Anthon	50	50	54		154
8.	Shawn Sinclair	48	49	58		155
8.	Chris Sprague	47	50	58		155
8.	Al Schack	47	53	55		155
8	Brad Schick	51	51	53		155

Pro Women ( total 7)
		Rnd 1	Rnd 2	Rnd 3	Final 9	Total
1.	Juliana Korver	55	53	61	34	203
2.	Des Reading	55	58	61	35	209
3.	Angela Tshchiggfrie	51	57	67	38	213
4.	Barrett White	58	58	70	36	222
5.	Michelle Bovin	57	66	71		194
6.	Lisa Warner	59	68	77		204
7.	Suzie Johnston	66	66	75		207