Roc up the middle

Every Tuesday throughout the spring and summer, a group of 20 or so Michigan disc golfers gather to compete in the Club Dead Match Play League. In this format, handicapped players are going head to head to earn points for their team on each hole played. That is, if you card a two on the first hole and I card a three, you earn two points for your team. The player with the most points at the end of the round wins the match, and the team with the most match wins are the season champs.

The golden rule of disc golf My teammate this year is Pat Hawks, who many of you might recognize as the player at the upper left of the DiscLife.com homepage. Pat is a good pro disc golfer, certainly a much stronger player than me. He throws farther and putts better. Despite this fact, our scores in the league are often similar.

The match play league shoots at a course that is long and tight, with unforgiving rough on virtually every hole. If you're going to try to throw birdies here, you'll need distance and accuracy.

For years, my strategy on this course has often been to throw a Roc up the middle. When sufficiently broken in, the Roc is an ultra-stable approach disc, and the most important disc in my bag. Whatever angle you throw it on is the angle it will finish on. I choose the Roc here for this reason: driving 450 feet up a 40-foot wide fairway is a risky proposition, whereas throwing two 225-foot shots straight and true is relatively easy. Avoiding bogeys will always increase your chances for success.

Any disc golfer with some experience understands that most players love to throw long. It's human nature to want to out-throw your buddies, and my teammate Pat is no exception. He's got one of the longest arms in the region, and regularly elicits the the 'oohs' and 'aahs' of bystanders as they watch his drives glide 450 feet. Of course, those bystanders will often finish with an 'aww' when a slight miscalculation or timing error results in a drive well off the fairway and into the shule. With every huge birdie crush, a potential bogey waits to pounce.

disc golf photo: Pat Hawks throws for huge distance For reasons of his own, Pat picked a new strategy last week. After watching me throw conservatively time after time, he finally made the decision to put his driver away and reach for his own trusty Roc.

Par. Par. Par.

18 holes later, Pat had shot his way to a -1, the first time in over five years he had thrown under par at this very difficult course (by comparison, his score the previous week was +13). With all of his years of experience, he'd finally applied the golden rule: if you want to win at disc golf, you have to play the course. It's golf, not a distance competition. Wow your friends with lower scores instead of longer drives.

After the record-breaking round, we were discussing the day's match over some beers, and trying to come up with a name for our team. Pat's enthusiastic first suggestion would be our eventual choice: Roc Up The Middle.

Sounds like a winner to me.