Emma & Cindy’s Excellent Pro World’s Adventure: The Blog You’ve All Been Waiting For
World’s is busy. We would just like to get that out there right now. Between practice rounds, mandatory player’s meetings, hot tub, check-in, practice rounds of 27-54 holes a day, hot tub, movie premieres, tournament rounds, player’s banquets, hot tub… we’ve hardly found the time to even call our families (thank goodness they can follow us on facebook, right?).
Here’s how it’s gone down so far. We left Friday evening around 7:30 and rolled into Santa Cruz bright and early about 10 & ½ hours later. After a dreamy breakfast of bacon, eggs, home fries and toast and coffee at Zachary’s we rolled into De Laveaga (one of the world’s first and most famous disc golf courses) and played our first practice round. Emma, of course, couldn’t leave it at just the one round and went back out later in the evening and played again, finishing just before dark, one of the best disc golf feelings ever.
Sunday we hit up the two Monterey Bay courses, Ryan Ranch in the morning (our favorite of the four) and The Oaks at CSUMB (aka, CSUCK or Mad Max Beyond Disc Golf, which is a little bit more positive). The Oaks is desolate and gnarly and long and hard and covered in pricklies and ice plant and it’s windy. We don’t actually like it very much. Home was rad and so was the hot tub.
Monday we finished up practice rounds at Pinto Lake… we liked it. Lots of OB and some crazy tight fairways as well as some big bomber open holes, including a 1288 ft monster. Very pretty. Live Oaks dripping with moss, snowy egrets and wetlands and marsh. And then another lovely evening of cocktails and hot tubs.
Tuesday we started the tournament rounds. Emma played at De LaVeaga and Cindy started out at Ryan Ranch. We both hung in there and held our own, Emma finishing near the middle of the pack and Cindy sitting in third, beating 3 gals in her division, one of whom holds a much higher rating than her. Following the rounds we busted back to the beach house, shoved some food in our faces and headed out to the Chains movie premiere. Beautiful camera work, heart warming love stories, nice interviews with Big Names. But the hot tub was even better.
Wednesday Emma played Mad Max Beyond Disc Golf (aka The Oaks) and it ate her up, but not as much as it did the first time around. Cindy played Pinto Lake and only went OB once despite the plethora of yellow rope lining the fairways and finished up in fourth, hanging pretty dang tough. Emma had three holes that ate her up and kept her from a good round, but at least she’s learned to throw hyzers and into a headwind. We finished up Wednesday evening at the player’s banquet (not an open bar, but at least our bartender, Gregorio, knew how to take good care of some Oregonian gals). The fruit salad was outstanding as was our company, including Brian Graham, Executive Director of the PDGA, Tim Skellinger, Oregon’s cutest Pro, and Rebecca Duffy, PDGA Board Member. Perfect way to end a Wednesday? Hot tub.
Thursday Cindy was The Oaks battling the rough terrain and spooky ambience and high winds. Emma played her first really good round of the week at Pinto Lake, shooting a 912 rated round and jumping up a card (which was her personal goal). Today is the first day that we’ve had any spare time between tournament rounds, hob nobbing with the rest of the pros and various PDGA folk, hot tubs, etc. to sit down and blog it up. Uh-oh, I think it’s time to hot tub. Gotta run. Flight Crew, baby!