Tarheel Tournament

This weekend a friend and I went down to the campus disc golf course where we play most Sunday mornings. This weekend we came as spectators as the Tarheel Tournament, an official PDGA event, has closed the course to nonparticipants and I was curious to see what a tournament and professional disc golfers looked like.

As it turned out they are mostly male and uniformly white with a few, confident females mixed in. Within the male category there was a lot of variation with fat men and thin men, both comprised of the middle class and the blue collar. The most interesting of the various groupings of five players that played pasted our perch were a pair lanky teenage brothers with thick, silver chains who sauntered around the course. They talked smack to the other players in their groups and were a marked contrast to the older, tenser players who uniformly carried complicated shoulder bags containing 10-15 discs for driving and putting.

It was difficult to judge the skill level of the players since we watched each group for just three holes. Based on the scores posted on the website, some of the pros are much better than I (14 under par) and the worst of the amateurs much worse (30 over par).

I went with high expectations of being entertained but in the end I was a bit let down. Turns out that watching people you don't know throw at the basket isn't as exciting as one might think. I think it would have been more interesting if we, or they, had known who was in contention for the leader-board. There was a palpable tension in the air from the players but we couldn't tell if it was because they were tied for first or 100th. Bret and I couldn't help speculating if CBS could bring the tension of a PGA event to disc golf with cameras on the baskets, blimps overhead and Irish commentators.

 

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