To honor those in Midland who’ve just gone through the devastating flood of May 2020, I thought I’d digitize a casual round my friends and I recorded at the brand-new Chippewa Banks course back in 1999. We arrived that day from Kalamazoo and were practicing for the next day’s big MDGO tournament.
I’m the guy in the ridiculous bucket hat, age 26, playing in my first year of Am-1. Laura here is playing women’s Am-1, and I wasn’t able to reach the other people who were in our group that day so I decided to not include their shots without getting permission. The footage includes shots from only the two of us, then.
Something super cool about Laura, she played in the inaugural USDGC that year on the women’s Am-1 side.
I remember us all liking Chippewa Banks with its novel technical shots, very tough but fair. I also seem to remember Pad Timmons (of In-Flight) was the designer? The flowers lining the fairways were a nice touch, and there were cool old house foundations in the woods I liked a lot too.
The tournament had much hotter weather the next day and I played way worse, definitely remember not doing well. 95 degrees. With not many bomber holes here and me being better at the finesse and short aspects of the game, this should have been a tournament where I did better than I did at more open courses such as Brewer, where I always got smoked.
I’m wearing the tennis elbow thingy, so the elbow damage was already underway. I was mostly a RHFH player up to that point (coming from a HS baseball background). I’m, uh, still trying to learn the backhand now in 2020. Getting there!
Hope this little video brings some joy to the Disc Golfers of Midland. Crossing my fingers your course withstands the flood okay and you’ll be hopefully right back to playing again. Best wishes!
