On our last full day of staying with my mom, I had one more course nearby that I was hoping to play. Well, two…but only one that I would count as a new course. Memorial Park in St. James is a course I had actually designed several years ago. But after they did some redesign of the park that seven of the nine holes were located in? They rightly decided to move Holes 1 and 9 into the main area of the park.
Locals (and others) would always ask: “Why didn’t you put all nine holes in the main area of the park?!” As though I didn’t want that, or hadn’t thought of that. 🙂 When we put the original design in St. James, the City specifically said to have Holes 1 and 9 on a bit of municipal land between Memorial Park and the St. James Municipal Pool. I didn’t like it, but it was either that, or discs wouldn’t be flying for several years in St. James. Maybe never. But people always like to “armchair quarterback” situations like that. And after they finished a bit of new construction in the park? They knew they would be able to add two more holes in the park, eliminating the “awk” of having to start and end a round between the park and the pool.
Anyhow, I like what the designer of those two new holes did with things. I managed a -5 (23) on the new course design. An estimated round rating of 955. I couldn’t count it as an official new course played, per my (stringent) rules. 🙂 But UDisc calls it a new course for me in their directory, getting me a little closer to the number of courses they say I’ve played to the number of courses I’ve actually played. The reason for the discrepancy is that several of the courses I had played were extinct by the time there was an app called “UDisc,” and nobody wanted to take the time to add a bunch of courses to their directory that no longer existed.
So after St. James, it was on to visit Jones Park in Lake Crystal for the first time. I smiled when I saw that the tee signs listed hole distances in yards (sort of like calling disc golf “Frisbee Golf” or “Frolf,” hehe). But I thought it was fun, with enough variety in shot design to keep things interesting over nine holes. There were some safety issues designed into a few of the holes, Hole 8 in particular. And today, there were EXTRA safety issues with a bazillion kids in the park from either a local school or daycare center.
With so many kids on the course, Holes 8 and 9 were basically unplayable without throwing some SERIOUS safeties! Hole 8 just had too many kids around, so I gave up and threw my tee shot about 75-80 feet right of the basket on purpose. Hole 9 was all but impossible too…though I did get my window of opportunity to throw a safe tee shot at the basket after a few minutes, which I turned into a quick deuce to end my round. Only a -1 (26), for a terrible estimated round rating of 881. I know I would have deuced Hole 8 if given the chance, so I think of that my round as more like a -2 (25) and an estimated round rating of at LEAST 900. Sigh. 🙂
That’ll be all the courses I play in southwestern and south central Minnesota on this trip! I did quite a bit of damage to my courses played collection so far (17 new courses played). Now we’ll see if I can get to 2,100 courses played before I head back to Oregon.
Magic Number = -97 (2,097 Courses Played)
Derek Tonn is a member of the DGA’s Ambassador Team. His company, Mapformation, LLC, has been DGA’s partner in the development of disc golf tee signage since 2012. The longer our two companies have worked together, and the more Derek has gotten to know all the great folks at DGA, the more he has wanted to formally sing the company’s praises. The more he has realized that “Steady” Ed’s (the father of disc golf and the modern-day Frisbee) vision for the sport and his company perfectly describes his own interests and priorities related to disc golf, and the more Derek has recently been encouraged to share his story.