I played my 3rd Disc Golf Tournament yesterday. I had a lot of fun even though I shot +24 for 36 holes. That's pretty average overall, but not way out of line for me. I'm not a great disc golfer, and my PDGA rating probably will take a hit. Some thoughts:

Competing. I LOVE to compete, but not everywhere-all-the-time. Some guys are notoriously competitive at everything they do. Think: Michael Jordan. He was the best basketball player ever because he was so competitive. But, I bet it got old if you were his wife or friends. There are times to compete, times to chill. That's why I like disc golf tournaments and minis. In yesterday's C-tier tournament, when a guy in my group had a bad shot, they were dropping f-bombs like the WWII Royal Air Force was bombing Germany. I'm personally not the least bit offended by people who swear. I don't, but mostly because I'm trying to raise a bunch of kids that don't get me into trouble at church or their school because they are repeating words they heard Daddy say. I also spent some time in radio, where the rule was, "don't ever say anything in the studio you don't want going out over the airwaves." I took that rule and made it "don't ever say anything that you would not want to go over the airwaves unless you were super-sure you were safe" (like say, in a forest).

It's not the swearing I enjoyed, especially since, though I was competing Against these men, I was also rooting For Them. I wanted to BEAT them, but not because they made more bad shots than I, but because we both made great shots, and I made several amazing ones. I wasn't happy they'd made mistakes, but I loved that they were competing so hard, even on the last card in Intermediate -- in a tournament of DISC GOLF (!!!) -- that they were genuinely pissed off when they screwed up. It's good to have that around.

Some people are a little over-the-top. One dude who was in the group in front of us 1st round and in my group on the last card 2nd round was a little too angry. He took about 10 "angry" strokes. At one point he threw his hole bag over his shoulder and spent so much time brooding a few bad shots he missed some easy ones. He ended up shooting +15, followed by a +6 but if he could let things go, would have been at +5 and even, probably. Good lesson for me.

I can throw it really straight, but I don't have command of where it's released. So many shots were arrows, but nicked a tree on the edge of the fairway, or such. It was maddening, but I managed (usually), to shrug my shoulders and just think, "it was a good shot if but for 4 inches." Once I get my release point nailed, I'm going to get a lot better very fast. Problem is, I play mostly open courses that don't penalize missing the fairway by a couple of feet. I need to find places to manufacture and practice tunnel shots. I played smart and dialed back the distance for accuracy, but it didn't pay off as much as I'd hoped. I will say I'd probably have been +48 if I'd try to throw for more distance, though; I'm truly wild then.

I putted pretty well. I made a few tough putts and all the makeable ones. The problem was that I had a LOT of bad putting stances. I consider anything 30 feet and in "makeable" and feel I should make anything 20 and in (though I don't make them all). I ended up with about 15 putts that were off-balance, in a weird crouch, on tippy toes, in chest high brambles, nestled immediately in front-of or behind a tree, at the edge of a steep drop, and usually with a branch or two in my way. I made about a 1/3 of them. Where I usually play, it's rare to have a bad putting lie; usually you can get your normal stance and maybe have to dodge a branch or tree. I need to practice putting with trees poking my butt or thorns tightening on my legs.

Even cool disc golfers jump like little girls when they see a snake; some can run surprisingly fast with a bag full of discs on their back.

Actually, those guys did play it cool; I'm just glad I shanked my shot on that hole and headed off the right when the rest when down the left and nearly stepped on the snake. I'm sure I'd be well-known even only a day later as the "old guy with the deep voice who screams like a girl."

I don't just like disc golf, I NEED it. Modern society has taken, or is trying to take, most of the competition from our lives. We're not even supposed to (openly) compete for work. Sigh. We're DESIGNED to compete. Not to the death, not all the time. But come on, we're built for competition and a stupid little game of golf can go a long way to improve a man's sanity.

My sole goal going into this tournament was not to DFL (finish Dead F-ing Last). I succeeded, but just barely. Just Barely counts, though, and I look forward to my next chance to compete with guys at my level, to try to win, to be gracious when I don't, to allow them some space when they are mad for a bad shot, and to say my lame little Christian replacements for swear words when I throw a bad shot.