The Shot of My Life (Kaposia, Hole 13)

A little over a month ago, Mark Ehling and I got in “one last round” as a duo prior to a) the onslaught of snow we feared might be ahead in the coming weeks and b) Mark’s first child being born (Soren, nearly 3 weeks ago).

The round was intended to be at Blue Ribbon Pines in East Bethel, Minnesota (I will do a blog on this course at some point from our September outing there – a phenomenal course; one so remarkable, in fact, it might just be the tipping point course to get Sean to permanently relocate to the Twin Cities should he ever play it and the other 4-5 brilliant courses here).

After driving the 40 minutes up to Blue Ribbon Pines we discovered a tournament was already underway, so we drove back to the Cities and decided to hit the once glorious, but under renovation for years, Kaposia Park course in South St. Paul.

Kaposia was the go-to course for T-Town and myself under the tutelage of Leonard circa 1998-1999 as he introduced us to the game (and where I lodged only a 4-56 mark against Blackburn through 2003).

For those who did not play the course back in the day (Ander has several times and I believe Andy has once, back during his Iowa days), Kaposia used to be the granddaddy of the Cities courses. Its 18 holes were a perfect mixture of wooded and semi-open holes, a few long holes, and a signature “peak-to-peak” hole on which one could land an ace or a snowman as your disc risked rolling down a steep cliff on approach after approach.

Well, around 2002 or so they had to shut down the back 9 holes at Kaposia due to some toxic waste or something of that sort. They then added another 9 and later 12 holes in another section of the woods, many of which were only so-so, which brought the course rating down from a 3.75 / 4.0 in my book to about 3.0 or 3.25 tops.

But Kaposia over the past year has settled into a half-new 24-hole course that is actually pretty darn good again. I’d say it's now a 3.5+. Most of the original back 9 have now opened up, with the exception of the once signature hole (#14), the Psycho Clown hole (#15), and Hole #17.

But the point of this blog, in addition to updating the former Kaposia jags as to the state of the course, is that I landed the Shot of My Life on Hole 13 (par 3, 234 feet) during that round a month ago. (The hole is listed as Hole 12 at the outdated PlayDG.com, which still has the course from its mid 2000s interim 18 hole version):

http://www.playdg.com/courses/?s=MN&c=kaposia&h=12

Interestingly, my shot at issue was preceded by one of my worst drives in recent years – about a 25-footer straight into the ground that hit an exposed root to deny me even a skip.

That left me with about 200 feet to the pin, with plenty of trees between us.

I got out my yellow Eclipse (which tends to anhyzer, but I can throw pretty straight when I’m tossing well) and tried to heave it along the right tree line, which I did successfully. I had assumed at some point it would hit one of these trees and plop down to the ground as I worked towards bogey or a long-ass par….but, near the end of its journey, it started to hyzer back….right into the basket!

(Here is a perspective shot of the distance from where I tossed -- Ehling is waving his hand standing at the basket way down the path):

My reaction was one of shock and belated joy. If I had thought there was even a 5% chance my 2nd shot could go in from that distance, I would have been leaning back and forth under my watchful eye to coax it on into the basket. Instead, I was sort of casually watching it fly…until it hit chains.

I was composed enough to correctly tabulate my score on the hole, however:


Ehling, meanwhile, simply lost it. In a good way. He jumped several feet off the ground, flung his ball cap about 20 feet across the fairway, and came running over to give me a couple of high-ass fives, shouting “Oh my God! Oh my God!” every step of the way. It was all he could talk about for the next half dozen holes and he ennobled it the “Best shot I’d ever seen,” though, for me, that would still be Alabama alum Eliot’s ace at Inver Grove Heights circa 2005.

True to form, I used the momentum from my Shot of My Life on Hole 13 to….go on and get an inglorious 7 on Hole 14, en route to a 91-95 defeat to Ehling on the 24-hole course.

But, to date, it is the Shot of My Life.

Footnote: Pending any rounds we get in with Ander in a month when he comes up to Minneapolis, I ended up 7-24 against Ehling this year.