The 2018 Australian Disc Golf Championships

Wow!  What an amazing start to the 2019 Australian Disc Golf Tour season.  The ADGC was held in Canberra this year so we decided to make the journey north for Evelyn’s first Australian Championships.

We arrived in Canberra with enough time to fit in just nine holes of practice on the 27 hole, par 99 course.  Holes 10 through to 27 would be a surprise for us on our first day of competition on Friday.

There are not a lot of juniors competing in the Australian Tour events and there were no other junior girls registered for Nationals this year so in a bid to challenge herself and improve her game, Evelyn made the decision to move up to the FA4 (Women’s Novice) division.

Day one of the tournament was very challenging as we navigated our way around this very long course.  It took us well over four hours to complete our first round.  It was cold and it was incredibly windy.  Who would have thought that hand warmers and beanies would be needed in Australia in November!  Despite the poor playing conditions, Evelyn played well, finishing the day in second place.

The weather on day two was slightly better.  It wasn’t as cold but it sure was windy.  Our Zuca carts kept blowing over and our discs had a life of their own dancing in the wind.  Evelyn struggled with her light weight discs on day one so we purchased a heavier, over-stable disc for those headwinds.  We wouldn’t normally recommend using a brand new, untried disc during a tournament but it payed off for Evelyn taking 12 shots off her round one score and holding on to second place behind our good friend Yasmin Murray.

With other women in the FA4 division creeping ever so much closer, the pressure was on during the third day of play to hold onto that second place.  First place was a long 15 shots off but Evelyn was keen to try and shorten that gap.  Her goal for the day was to try and stay focused and just do her best.

There were times when it was physically and emotionally challenging for all of us.  After 81 holes we were all exhausted.  Evelyn was determined to position herself as a worthy challenger in this division and sometimes put a little too much pressure on herself but after a long, hard battle, she just held onto her second place by just two throws to finish the tournament.

We would like to acknowledge the amazing effort of a new junior who has bound onto the Australian Disc Golf Tour scene.  Eight year old Archer Shaw completed all three rounds on this huge course and still had energy to burn, skipping between holes.  Archer improved on his day one score by a massive 31 throws and shot a 752 rated round throwing sidearm only.  He even putts sidearm!  We can’t wait to see you at more events Archer and maybe even at Junior Worlds????

It was such an amazing weekend.  Tournaments in Australia are like big family reunions.  We all travel so far to attend them and it is great to get together for disc golf and fun.   We must be crazy wanting to play even more disc golf after such long days but we did just that at an evening BBQ at the John Knight Memorial Park hosted by the Canberra Disc Golf Club. Evelyn and Tarron even tried combining disc golf with the flying fox.

Thank you to our TD for the event, Todd Nowack and your hard working team of helpers for creating such and amazing, professional,  coordinated event.

Thank you also to the gallery of kangaroos who casually watched us play during the weekend.  They provided a little comic relief during our rounds.  I wonder how many putters you could fit in a kangaroo pouch?

Oh, and did we mention that we even had the Disc Golf Guy, Terry Miller following the progress at this event.  We can’t wait to see footage of our friends and fellow MDGC members on the lead cards.  We have made more new friends to add to our extended disc golf family and can’t wait for the 2019 season to get into full swing.