9/15: Just realized my dumb ass didn't know the course was in the SHORT holes. The alt tee covers are green and hidden in the grass; never saw them. SO. I went back out today (shot -7, BTW) and tried to find the longs. A GREATLY better course with longs. For example, 6 becomes a blind right angle shot; hole 10 now a driver, making the levee dangerous. So. This review for short pins. Can't wait to play the longs!
So Jags, pleased to say nearby Anderson, IN has a disc golf course. It doesn't have an official DGR link I know of but here's a news article from last year.
** One important update: learned these pins have an alt. Might be in the shorts? If so, that changes things!
Developmental link here. Not sure the exact process to get a true link. The course people should of course do that. Weird I can't remember the process since I most likely established the link for McCulloch. I'm 99% sure I did, which makes me feel old/kindly. I'm digging that 3.73 rating since it has matured now, and actually the Muncie course is getting more jungly and weird and overgrown. (The BSU students installed several rain collection/native plant areas and they have become Joseph Conrady.) I like it more and more. The course is actually getting better as it ages (like wine, groooaaannnn).
Seems like 3.73 is what you want, city park. No?
FB link here, if you do such a thing. Seems it's most likely called Sanders Memorial. A good direct name for a course.
So I'm on Leave, an excellent word in all its connotations. Leave. Have been trying to get in a routine to maximize time and productivity. Most days I wake, slightly wobbly/hungover, then make coffee or black tea, pack kid lunches, and then by 7:40 dawnish/fog drifting over corn I'm in the house with only my dog and a few industrious ants. I put on Mozart routinely (I found a Canadian only Mozart channel on my phone), and write until I have 500 or so words I find acceptable. (I'm working on a book but like any writer I'd rather not discuss the book.) Some days this breezes by; some days I never find acceptable words and feel hollow and lonely. Jesus, 500 words aren't that many--where do they hide? Anyway, by 11 or so I stop and either go shoot basketball (I just installed a goal with help of many friends, including Mark, long story) or shoot my air rifle or my bow, go run of course (I have a treadmill a room over), play 1943 (ancient PS 3 game),
D golf putt in backyard, feed the catfish (channel cats I bought at Rural King [they cost 60 cents each, if you are curious]), or maybe watch WW II documentary on Netflix (my grandfather served in the war--is this why I obsessively play 1943? Calm down, Freudians) narrated by Martin Sheen, or read. Read. And read. I'm very Calvinistic--I don't enjoy the "play" afterwards unless I get in my writing. Anyway, today I played D golf. First time since the tourney! Here's a quick photo of my spread out back:
Drove on out to Anderson with no real idea where I was going. I run there and canoe nearby so, OK a lie, some idea. But never this specific park. Anderson isn't a great town to be lost in: loss of jobs, a lot of drugs (most likely related to the job losses), a bit of a Bruce Springsteen desperation, but I could say the same about a lot of rust belt towns, especially after 2008. They do have a nice university and an epic Egyptian restaurant and I like their downtown Mexican place and their grocery store (one of them) is quality, but a sad, electronic casino, though you can play the horses. Live! I really admire playing the horses. I do. It's mystical. I could tell you stories of me and that casino, oh me and my brother and bourbon, swirling weird yellow smoke and other regrets, but let's go for brevity, folks. Let's focus. I was worried if the Anderson park might be janky. No reason to worry. It looked wonderful, rolling, green, many mature hardwoods and patches of shrubby and thicket, white pines and a stately sycamore, a dramatic green levee (it will be in play often), and of course the rolling White River (oddly not in play, though the running/bike/scooter-since-I-had-my- driving-license-revoked path is probably why). A nice little park, really, clean, ozone of Autumn in the air; breeze rustling the leaves, etc.
This course has LONG and SHORT tees. Good level concrete, good length, oriented to basket correctly. The short tees are useless. I'm not being an ass. Only a beginner would use them and they wouldn't use them for very long. A disc golfer would grab their left arm and shepherd them back to the long tees. This review is for the LONG tees.
The baskets were new and very good. I've never played on these, as for form. Spider but even sturdier? Multiple chains, glow catchability. A very pretty powder blue. I mean this is a GREAT basket.
There is no yardage, no signs, but the course is NEW. Those will come later. I will say it had good intuitive flow. I followed along effortlessly and ended up right back at the car, as is the best way. Glow to the flow.
OK. The course:
Hole one was not so good. A mid-range turnover or just ignore the fairway and crank a hyzer. As an opening hole, I had a sense of dread. Sort of thinking, OK, here we go. The ol' put the basket in the field routine, often pulled off by churches with good intentions but no actual technical design capability, as we know. It had a slight think-about-it, OK. But then a golfer would just get it and get it too easily.
Hole two was unremarkable. Very easy birdy. Hole tucked under a tree. I almost aced the hole. I don't think hole 2 of ANY course should be easy birdie, unless you're diabolical and setting someone up. Hole 17 of the West Virginia Black Course was such a simple huck uphill. Mark and I breathed relief and then!
Hole three was an easy turnover, trying to be tech but ultimately too short to actually elicit stress. But it did show the designer's mind. Things may be looking up. Should have tucked this thing on the river and fuck the path, then again I wasn't on ground wrangling with the small politicians. They would say no.
NOW the course changes. For the better.
Hole 4 is a longish tech shot, bender, very well-designed. Can be played from several attacks, turnover to forehand, maybe even a hyzer window for a fool.
Hole 5 had character, a blind vagabond down a sort of tunnel. Would have been really great if lengthened, but certainly a solid, quirky hole.
Hole 6 sort of a disaster.
Sure, there's a little wall on the right but this basket has to do more. I mean it's sitting there. By hole 6, we are IN your course. I'm talking about all who will drive here to play this course (and they will; D golfers hunt courses), but will they drive back again? You can't give us marshmallows. No, no. Maybe a time to quirk it up? Flaming purple marshmallows? It's a new course. What could you do here? Much. I mean I've played many flaky holes dangling from tree limbs and come to love them. A mound? Why not?
NOW the course changes again and I really liked this TECH stretch. Hole 7 you throw blind over a wall of native thicket. Small trees, sedges, shrubs, forbs and whatnot. Someone really worked hard the next 3 holes, carving out fairways and sight-lines. Well done. This hole 7 is too short. Anyone who can throw a mid-range disc can ace the hole. I almost aced it myself with a Roc. I do like the landscape boulders and whatnot but it sort of reinforces this a "pretty" hole. You need a fucking gnarly hole. And you have the space. Good news is this course doesn't have alt pins. What if you went NASTY alt pins? A new kind of course. Something to ponder.
I do like the hole. It's an announcement of blindness and uncertain height. About the potential of doubt. Doubt fuels real D golf.
8 and 9 were two of favs, but I of course love techy. 8 is an awkward tunnel beauty. First real sign of actual danger, too--off the fairway is a bit of pain. Here's 8
And 9. A low tunnel techy. Also too short to cause disaster but a nice hole. This 7-9 stretch isn't crazy good but really fun. And fun is one of our goals here, folks.
10 seems a design flaw. I mean you have a giant levee and you put BOTH the tee AND basket on the top. Okay, you do need to move that way down the course. And okay, you're thinking maybe that drive (but it is not a drive) ROLLS off the summit. But in reality it isn't going to, not with grass and most anyone using a mid-range. It isn't going to come in hot. The energy isn't there to eat. Won't skip unless we're talking years from now, a beaten down 30-foot ring of walking. Anyway, this seems a concept hole that didn't make it into actual play. I pulled out a Roc and casually parked it.
Note I put disc on side of levee and it stays.
Hole 11 is going to piss off a neighbor, probably a bad idea in Anderson, Indiana. Who knows? I didn't even see the guy's backyard at all and threw a massive hyzer. Lucky it threaded through a straggly oak and a dog's loud cough. The ideal play is to come in from the other way, swooping downhill, avoiding the yard. Anyway. Cool hole but I hope the guy is also legit with precipitation of plastic, often. I do like the hole. You have to shape it downhill.
12 was risking a road but great uphill putt. Love the elevation on this course and often the designer (s) used it well. This putt is very steep!
Hole 15 maybe the signature hole (14 and 8 might argue), funky, character. An old bridge abutment the designer made into a nifty and smart obstacle. There's also a perfect tree that takes away any lazy hyzer up to it. This is made for the tomato or a sharp turnover. That's what I did and parked it, though beginner luck was mostly likely involved.
Now this is a hole any d golfer would want to play over and over and over. Great hole.
16 is a big ol' huck up the levee. I like these shots. A disc golfer occasionally needs to whale one and it goes nowhere due to slope and gravity. A classic hole found on courses with grade.
17 is just a simple long hyzer. I parked it by just throwing the most classic (and often classically beautiful) shot in the R hander's book.
18 was a dangerous hole. Not for the D golfer. But if you want to use those picnic tables or that running path, bring a helmet. As the mystic Ander Monson once noted: A Frisbee can hurt you; a disc golf disc can kill you. Decent hole at best. You can bail out and easily par, but it has trees and you are right back at the car (and hole one) so sound design.
OVERALL: Well, look, we'd like a better hole 1, a better introduction, but it's a little sneaky. But it's also a par, even if played poorly. Hole 2 lowers the ante. Hole 3 is too short to quicken even the sparrow's thready pulse. So the course BEGINS at 4. From 4 on out, only 6 and 10 stick out as a bit indifferent.
The main issue? I shot -4. I haven't picked up a disc in a good while. I don't know the yardage, the lies, the safe landing areas, where the gnaw is; where the glow is. I don't even know what disc to throw yet, per shot, per hole. So there's your issue. The course doesn't threaten you. Doesn't cause the temples to pound or the hands to sweat. Do you know the genius of one of the highest rated holes in the PGA? Certainly not the length (very short hole, even for an amateur; the length actually works against you, mentally--I mean it's often a pitch). Not that it's the 17th hole and you're trying down the stretch for a win. It's the island, the water, the disaster. The peril. That's what pleases (maybe secretly) any golfer, disc or ball.
Having said my piece there, I'll return to this course. It's very fun. It has a sense of folly, of play about it. Lots of ace runs, elevation (always hard to find in plowed-over Central Indiana), a weirdo hole 15 (I'd actually suggest more character for the course; I noticed someone stacked some wood weirdly on hole 9--I suggest more such antics. Maybe elevate hole 6 on a mound of ties or hang it from chains on that tree?).
I do want to say what a great addition to Anderson and our growing, growing, growing D golf world in the general Muncie area. I respect and thank all those who worked on this course. Well done. I'll definitely put it in my D golf rotation.
S
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