chainedwraith
Par Member
Spring break was awesome this year. I played 7 new courses (9 total) while on family vacation and on my 100th course played something cool happened.
We left Orlando the day before St. Patty's Day with our eventual goal to spend a week in a cabin up in Hiawassee, GA near the NC border. On our way up, we stopped in Savannah to check off one of my wife's bucket list items at the St. Patty's Day parade in downtown. It was awesome, we had a great time, but I didn't get to play a bit of golf... or should I say, I didn't bother to try to convince the wife to let me go play Triplett while in town. I've played it while passing through on previous trips and loved it, but I was saving my "golf credits" for our next stop in Augusta, GA.
We drove up to Augusta after spending most of the afternoon enjoying Savannah and the festivities. Mind you, when I mentioned "family vacation" earlier, I meant, I've got wife and 2 kids in tow. My wife doesn't exactly care for disc golf but tolerates it to a generous degree. My 10yr old daughter is mildly interested and can chuck a roc pretty good now. My 18 month old son is already obsessed with discs and is as happy as can be out on a disc golf course in his stroller as long as you don't try to pry a disc from his hands.
We got into Augusta and I basically told my wife, "look honey, I don't know that there's a whole lot for us to do outside of disc golf while we're here and frankly we don't have time for much else anyways. The IDGC is nearby and there are 3 championship caliber courses onsite and it is my hajj and I must test my skill against these 3 courses, so just bear with me this weekend and I'll take a few days off from playing once we get up to the cabin." She agreed with a somewhat reluctant look on her face, but being the awesome wife that she is, I didn't hear any grief. :thmbup:
Saturday morning we get up early and knowing that I'm going to be dragging the wife and both kids around the courses at IDGC over the next 2 mornings, I treat them to a nice hearty breakfast to get everyone in a good mood. We arrived at IDGC around 10/10:30 and wouldn't you know it.. the damn rain started coming down. It wasn't coming down hard enough to stop me from playing, but one look at my wife and I could tell she wasn't looking forward to it one bit. We get out and go inside the IDGC to look around and buy some time for the rain to pass. My son took one look into the pro shop and museum and we had to practically hand cuff him from making a mess. One of his favorite things to do at home is to empty shelves and boxes of discs and throw them all over the floor, so when he started his little toddler sprint into the museum I had to be quick to stop him from the ensuing pleasure he was about to partake in. While managing to keep my son from grabbing every disc in there, I was chatting with the guy running the pro shop and he mentioned that WR Jackson was in the "mad professor" layout and so I decided to make that course my 100th course played and the only course I would tackle that Saturday.
The rain finally slowed to a tolerable drizzle and I head out to tee off, wife and kids in tow. I played solid par golf through the first 4 holes of this tough layout but things started to unravel after taking some consecutive bad tree kicks on hole 5 leading to a 6 on the hole.
It didn't get much better the rest of the front 9, finishing +7 just on holes 5 - 9 alone. After the front 9 my wife is ready to take my son back to the Tahoe for a nap while she drives around the park looking for a playground or something else to do while I finish the back 9 solo.
I tee off on hole 10 running solo. I had a decent drive that made it down most of the straight section of fairway and finished just off-fairway right side near the bend in the dog-leg. When I get to my drive I notice 3 other guys walking down the fairway following in my direction. As they get closer, they politely pause and stop chatting while I setup my upshot, which ended up terrible, hitting an early tree and taking a nasty kick into more trouble. I gave the guys a friendly 'hello' and one of the gentlemen comes up and introduced himself and as soon as he said his name was "John" I immediately recognized him as the course designer, John Houck. Alongside him was another great designer, Harold Duvall and his son Andrew if I remember correctly.
Man, what an honorable treat it was to bump into these guys on what was already a special occassion in my book. WR Jackson was my first (and only) John Houck design played and bumping into him only made #100 more memorable. It was an equal honor meeting Harold as I had already played a few of his courses including Ashe County Park in Jefferson, NC which is one of my top 5 favorite courses played. It was really cool getting to chat with them for a few minutes as I finished out the hole. They were doing a walkthrough of the course I suppose to prepare for the tourney that was to occur the following weekend after I left. We went separate ways immediately after hole 10 but I'll never forget meeting those guys, it really made my day. I started playing better after that too. I made it through holes 11 - 14 bogey-free and then birdied holes 15 & 16 consecutively which served as my only 2 birdies on the course. This put me at even for the back 9, closing out my round with a 76 (+7). Next time if I can manage that front 9 a little better I should improve my score. Who knows how long before I return though.
When we left IDGC, I took the family into historic downtown Augusta where we ate lunch and walked the river walk area and around town a bit. We really couldn't find too much to do for the whole family so my wife wanted to go to a regular city park to let the kids play some more and so I suggested the nearby Pendleton King Park in hopes that I could also unexpectedly check that course off my list. :thmbup:
PK was a nice little course. Not much wow factor, but very similar to how I feel when I play our local Barnett Park here in Orlando. A good park course, particularly for beginners and a quick play. I played the entire course in just less than an hour knowing that my wife wasn't going to have the patience for me to play a long round plus we knew the park would be closing soon. It was a complete bonus getting to play that course and the park was very nice so the wife wasn't texting me "when are we leaving!? are you done yet? what hole are you on?" I didn't get a single text while playing, so all was good and I got to check an extra course off the list.
We left Orlando the day before St. Patty's Day with our eventual goal to spend a week in a cabin up in Hiawassee, GA near the NC border. On our way up, we stopped in Savannah to check off one of my wife's bucket list items at the St. Patty's Day parade in downtown. It was awesome, we had a great time, but I didn't get to play a bit of golf... or should I say, I didn't bother to try to convince the wife to let me go play Triplett while in town. I've played it while passing through on previous trips and loved it, but I was saving my "golf credits" for our next stop in Augusta, GA.
We drove up to Augusta after spending most of the afternoon enjoying Savannah and the festivities. Mind you, when I mentioned "family vacation" earlier, I meant, I've got wife and 2 kids in tow. My wife doesn't exactly care for disc golf but tolerates it to a generous degree. My 10yr old daughter is mildly interested and can chuck a roc pretty good now. My 18 month old son is already obsessed with discs and is as happy as can be out on a disc golf course in his stroller as long as you don't try to pry a disc from his hands.
We got into Augusta and I basically told my wife, "look honey, I don't know that there's a whole lot for us to do outside of disc golf while we're here and frankly we don't have time for much else anyways. The IDGC is nearby and there are 3 championship caliber courses onsite and it is my hajj and I must test my skill against these 3 courses, so just bear with me this weekend and I'll take a few days off from playing once we get up to the cabin." She agreed with a somewhat reluctant look on her face, but being the awesome wife that she is, I didn't hear any grief. :thmbup:
Saturday morning we get up early and knowing that I'm going to be dragging the wife and both kids around the courses at IDGC over the next 2 mornings, I treat them to a nice hearty breakfast to get everyone in a good mood. We arrived at IDGC around 10/10:30 and wouldn't you know it.. the damn rain started coming down. It wasn't coming down hard enough to stop me from playing, but one look at my wife and I could tell she wasn't looking forward to it one bit. We get out and go inside the IDGC to look around and buy some time for the rain to pass. My son took one look into the pro shop and museum and we had to practically hand cuff him from making a mess. One of his favorite things to do at home is to empty shelves and boxes of discs and throw them all over the floor, so when he started his little toddler sprint into the museum I had to be quick to stop him from the ensuing pleasure he was about to partake in. While managing to keep my son from grabbing every disc in there, I was chatting with the guy running the pro shop and he mentioned that WR Jackson was in the "mad professor" layout and so I decided to make that course my 100th course played and the only course I would tackle that Saturday.
The rain finally slowed to a tolerable drizzle and I head out to tee off, wife and kids in tow. I played solid par golf through the first 4 holes of this tough layout but things started to unravel after taking some consecutive bad tree kicks on hole 5 leading to a 6 on the hole.
It didn't get much better the rest of the front 9, finishing +7 just on holes 5 - 9 alone. After the front 9 my wife is ready to take my son back to the Tahoe for a nap while she drives around the park looking for a playground or something else to do while I finish the back 9 solo.
I tee off on hole 10 running solo. I had a decent drive that made it down most of the straight section of fairway and finished just off-fairway right side near the bend in the dog-leg. When I get to my drive I notice 3 other guys walking down the fairway following in my direction. As they get closer, they politely pause and stop chatting while I setup my upshot, which ended up terrible, hitting an early tree and taking a nasty kick into more trouble. I gave the guys a friendly 'hello' and one of the gentlemen comes up and introduced himself and as soon as he said his name was "John" I immediately recognized him as the course designer, John Houck. Alongside him was another great designer, Harold Duvall and his son Andrew if I remember correctly.
Man, what an honorable treat it was to bump into these guys on what was already a special occassion in my book. WR Jackson was my first (and only) John Houck design played and bumping into him only made #100 more memorable. It was an equal honor meeting Harold as I had already played a few of his courses including Ashe County Park in Jefferson, NC which is one of my top 5 favorite courses played. It was really cool getting to chat with them for a few minutes as I finished out the hole. They were doing a walkthrough of the course I suppose to prepare for the tourney that was to occur the following weekend after I left. We went separate ways immediately after hole 10 but I'll never forget meeting those guys, it really made my day. I started playing better after that too. I made it through holes 11 - 14 bogey-free and then birdied holes 15 & 16 consecutively which served as my only 2 birdies on the course. This put me at even for the back 9, closing out my round with a 76 (+7). Next time if I can manage that front 9 a little better I should improve my score. Who knows how long before I return though.
When we left IDGC, I took the family into historic downtown Augusta where we ate lunch and walked the river walk area and around town a bit. We really couldn't find too much to do for the whole family so my wife wanted to go to a regular city park to let the kids play some more and so I suggested the nearby Pendleton King Park in hopes that I could also unexpectedly check that course off my list. :thmbup:
PK was a nice little course. Not much wow factor, but very similar to how I feel when I play our local Barnett Park here in Orlando. A good park course, particularly for beginners and a quick play. I played the entire course in just less than an hour knowing that my wife wasn't going to have the patience for me to play a long round plus we knew the park would be closing soon. It was a complete bonus getting to play that course and the park was very nice so the wife wasn't texting me "when are we leaving!? are you done yet? what hole are you on?" I didn't get a single text while playing, so all was good and I got to check an extra course off the list.
