Tourney Week: Watch Your Nuts!

A month after the "Groan at Doane", MRK and I will be hitting up our second scheduled tournament of the season.  We will be making a stop by the 2012 Acorn Open.  Taking place at Acorn Park in Roseville, this is a course with which we are much more familiar.  After all, Acorn is a place we considered home for a time.  Being close to our Alma Mater, URBWes, the King and I frequented this place more than any other (save perhaps the Bethel course after it came online).  We threw here before I switched back to a backhand throw.  We threw here in the Minny winters.  And we throw here when we are back in the Cities.  It is that standard by which we can examine the change in our game.

In fact, MRK and I were recently in the Cities at the same time and had the opportunity to get in a round at Acorn as a warm up.  Honestly, it was rougher for us than I thought it would be.  The reason?  Changes in our games.  One would think that as we develop as players our capacity to approach a familiar course with surpassing deftness and command.  Not the case.  Our games have developed consistently throughout our time in the game.  This includes the years since Acorn was our local haunt.  Such is the result when a great change encounters that which is familiar.

Our conditioned minds have an expectation for how to play a hole.  We have played it that way many times before.  It is tried and tested and must succeed the same way in the future.  Apparently my arm failed to get the memo.  I throw a Starfire much differently than I thew it back in the day.  The same for my Roc.  This is to say nothing of the increased reliance upon such discs as the Buzzz and the Stalker.  I would even contend that this presents a unique challenge that may be even more harrowing than playing a course blind.  We must alter entrenched mental approaches, and we all know that altering standing behavior is more difficult than establishing new behaviors.  My game has changed; my approach to a course needs to change with it.

I think I am up for it.  And I think the King is as well.  We will approach the task with alacrity and verve.  We will overcome ourselves.

At least we will have fun in the attempt.


Watch your nuts, Pap,

~Diggs