Sauce Masters Classic 1st Place
On Wednesday 10/14/20, I was able to participate in the 1st annual Sauce Masters Classic disc golf tournament at Joe Davis State Park ran by Evan Waterstrat. It was a picture perfect October day in Buffalo with almost 70 degree weather and no wind. The tournament consisted of two rounds of disc golf, each round having 27 holes.
The first round was pretty typical for me. The tournament started at 9am and my body felt tight as it normally does for that time of day. I played pretty consistently throughout the round and caught a hot streak birdieing holes 19-23. I finished the round -5.
After eating lunch, I came back to the course and threw a couple fairway drivers into an open field as I had missed some lines during round 1 that I knew I was very capable of hitting. I was sitting in 2nd place for the start of round 2, with 1st place sitting at -8. It was pretty cool to play in a tournament where each card (4 people on a card) would tee off on hole 1 and then the next card would go instead of a shotgun start where each card walks to a certain hole and everyone starts at the same time.
I started off round 2 hot by birdieing 4 out of the first 6 holes and moving into 1st place by 1 stroke. Going into hole 13, I was up by 3 strokes. With a terrible drive on “asshole alley” (my past continues to haunt me on that hole), I had to punch out of the woods and park my approach shot to save bogey which I did. The player in 2nd nailed his 100 foot birdie putt for deuce which cut my lead back to 1 stroke. Going into the back 9 holes, I had a 2 stroke lead. After a couple of misfortunate putts by my opponent and some timely birdies on my part, I had opened up a decent sized lead from 2nd place with only a handful of holes remaining.
I decided to play the remaining 5 holes extremely safe making sure all of my shots landed in the fairway and to play for par on each hole. Playing this “free” type of disc golf really loosens up your swing and I managed to birdie 2 out of the remaining 5 holes. Coming in on the final hole was pretty cool as the “gallery” was on the side of the final hole (the players that had already finished playing) clapping and cheering as the final card drove on hole 27. It was pretty sweet hitting my 28 foot putt for birdie in front of everyone and I ended up finishing -9 for the round and -14 for the tournament and finishing in 1st!
Although this was an unsanctioned tournament and only had 20 players, it still had the vibe of a sanctioned tournament and was a lot of fun! I was glad to have executed very consistent shots throughout the day. I have been putting in some work on putting through drills learned at Frontline Disc Golf camp with my pink Discraft Chainstar Lite portable disc golf basket nicknamed “Pink Panther”. One reason I love this basket is it is very affordable and is galvanized, meaning that it will not rust if left out in the elements. I left it out all winter last year and looks flawless. My putter of choice is Prodigy’s 350G PA3. Definitely looking forward in next year’s tournament as well as seeing some of the players I met during the tournament, out on the courses!
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