Just returned from our 3rd Bros disc golf weekend. I never blogged about the first one because I was crushed under the weight of the greatness of that trip and just couldn't get started. This most recent trip was also great so I'm going to just dive in and document it while it's fresh in my memory.
We were late in planning this trip. The thought came to life in late January and we started debating on a locale via email. The first idea was phoenix, then Vegas was sounding better, but we finally settled on Tampa because it had better disc golf options than vegas and flights were cheapish. I just want to say, the disc golf in Tampa was better than I ever imagined.
Mike Malmborg was going to come, but commitments came up and he couldn't. It ended up being all the Songer Bros and Bro in-laws plus papa songer. So from oldest to youngest that's:
Steve Songer
Rex Harris
Casey Songer
Jake Songer
Joey Hale
Jake Hanks
It was nice having an even number because almost every round was a team scramble. We stayed at a house south of orlando because the airBNBs were way cheaper there due to the glut of empty houses in the disney down season. It was less than $150 a night for a four bedroom house with 6 beds (two of them king), 3 1/2 bathrooms, a pool-hot tub, and a game room. The mini van was also super cheap at less than $100 for five days.
I couldn't resist looking at the weather forecast a couple weeks before the trip. I think it's foolish to do this because you can't do anything to change the weather, and you just worry yourself. A couple weeks out, it looked like we might have a couple days of light rain, but it turned out we had zero rain and sunny skies with highs approaching 80 every day of the trip. It was actually even more pleasant than that because the air was very dry for Florida and there was always a nice breeze cooling us off. We couldn't have asked for better weather.
So I had played the two Orlando 36 hole complexes before and liked them, especially the lower rated Gordon Barnett north course. However, all we knew about the tampa courses were their ratings from discgolfcoursereview.com. Four of the tampa courses were four star rated and there were almost 20 courses right there in Tampa.
After playing the tampa courses, I can't imagine that there's a better town in the entire world for disc golf, especially in the winter. The quality of disc golf here is largely due to one thing, the amazing trees. Each course in Tampa that we played had it's own unique mix of trees. So even though all these florida courses are somewhat flat i hardly missed the elevation. Here's a quick review of each of the Tampa courses we played:
Picnic Island
This was by far the highest rated course we played. I half expected that we would end up spending most of our time in Tampa at this one course. By the end of the trip, I don't think anyone would have picked Picnic Island as their favorite. I think it has a high rating because the signage is excellent, there are mutiple tees and pin placements, there are lots of interesting par 4s and 5s and it has great views of the beach. So it is a great course and I don't have any complaints about it's design and installation, but I think we preferred some of the other tampa courses because of the following:
many of picnic's fairways are carved out of thick, short, jungly foliage. This stuff grabbed a lot of our discs, in fact, the trees were full of rocks from previous disc golfers trying to dislodge their plastic. Luckily Hanks brought a disc gator, a grabber mounted to a collapsible pole about 15 feet long. We had to rescue at least a dozen discs. At one point one of the rocks stuck in a tree came loose and fell on Hanks head right as he was walking by. He bled quite a bit out of his forehead until we found a cloth to put pressure on the gash. I think most of us agreed that this dense rough is not as fun to play in as high canopy forest with a bare floor. Not only because of lost and stuck discs, but it's nice to play in the shade and watch your discs curve around tree trunks.
Cliff Stevens
This is the home course of the champ ken climo. This is a more open park style course with lots of water shots. The front nine was our first look at live oaks. These middle-earth looking trees have branches that arc down to the ground like rainbows, sometimes even touching the ground before curving back upwards. Really great tree for framing tunnel shots. These trees, along with other trees in Florida are draped in this cool weeping moss stuff. Don't know what its called. Really liked cliff Stevens, but not as much as I liked the next course we played.
4X world champ Paul McBeth and buddy playing cliff stevens with old school discs
part 2 features a cameo by some Mormon Missionaries
Taylor Park
This was my favorite course. I think what I liked most was the soaring pine canopy on the last half of the course. This course had a great variety of trees, hole lengths, tight vs. open, some elevation. Beautiful park. I didn't hurt that we played this course at sunset and we had some great views of the lake and our first sighting of a gator. This course had some really nice signs with a hand broom hanging from each tee sign to clean the tees. But the signs were a bit too ornate. They were crowded with images of wildlife. This combined with a swirly buccaneer font made them hard to read. Didn't necessarily detract from the experience. Just an observation. Keep signs simple.
Great variety of holes here with just a couple holes bringing water into play. One con of this course is that the walking paths cross some of the fairways so you spend some time waiting on pedestrians to tee off.
Cypress Point
I didn't see any cypress trees on this course, but there were a few by the parking lot. What I did see a lot of were palm trees. This was the only course we played that had palm forest canopy. Loved it. However, sometimes it was so dense that the shots were just poke and hope. This course also had my favorite par 4 and 5 holes of the trip. Favorite because you had to make it to a landing zone to set up your next shot. These holes make for exciting swings in the score. Loved cypress. Cons of this course were the walking paths like Taylor park and that it was the flattest of all the courses we played. Liked this course so much I would have given it second place had it not been for the next course we played.
22nd Street Park
Not a very appealing name for a park. This one wasn't even on my radar for the trip. I'm not even sure how we ended up here other than it being close-ish to Cypress. We pulled into the dusty parking lot and spotted the first tee pointing out into a treeless expanse of grass. It looked to be a real loser. The 1000 ft first hole took us across the grass then down into a river bottom canopied entirely by towering live oaks. These oaks had to be at least three times the size of the ones at cliff stevens. This made for a unique course that was under a canopy but quite open because the giant oaks were spaced hundreds of feet apart. Definitely the coolest forest I've been in. The holes had a nice feel to them also. The fairways were gently curved. No scrambling through bushes. It was an unexpected and underrated winner of a course. It might not be a ratings champ because the 18 holes share nine baskets. But I never felt like we repeated a hole because of the different tee placements and it wasn't crowded even though it was a Saturday afternoon. Magical course. Can't wait to play it again. We finished up this course then it was farewell to Tampa.
Orlando
The first and last days of the trip we played just in Orlando. While there arent as many courses there as in Tampa, they are still top notch courses. The other bros played the 9 hole airport course while waiting for my flight to arrive so I can't comment on that one, but here's a quick summary of the two complexes (36 holes each) we played.
Turkey lake (bill Frederick park)
This is the highest rated (the newer t2 course) of the Orlando offerings. I prefer Gordon Barnett north. I'm not sure what it is about t2 that didn't win me over (as much as Gordon Barnett north at least). I think it might be the low ceiling on many of the holes. What I did like was that the short tees were nice and short and the par 4 and 5s were interesting. We actually saw a wild turkey. This park has a lot to do. You can camp or rent a cabin that fits 10 people for only $45. It's just minutes from universal studios so we might have to consider staying there on our next Orlando trip. Got kicked out at closing time, 5 o'clock so we still haven't played the back 9 on the original course.
Gordon Barnett
The old course is a more open park style course with some OB streams. Great course. I like grassy park courses more than I thought I did. The north course has a fair amount of grassy park but much of it wanders up into some hilly woods (where hole 8 is located, the hole I love to hate). This course has the most elevation out of any course on the trip. We got to play these courses twice all the way through on the trip. The north course is a contender for best course on the trip. It has a crowning feature that is rare in disc golf, a true island hole and even better, it's hole 18. Why does that matter? Because even if you have a four stroke lead going into 18, if you miss the island twice and end up with a 6 and your opponent shoots a 2 (both of which could happen quite easily on a 320 foot island hole), you are now tied for the round forcing a dramatic playoff. It's also nice to have an island hole at the end so you can take a few fun shots and then wait for the missed shots to float ashore without interrupting your round. We didn't have any dramatic reversals of fortune on this hole (jake parked his first drives both rounds from the long tees to preserve his leads) but we still enjoyed the tension of possibility.
Wrap up
Hard to put in words how much fun this trip was. Of course the disc golf was fantastic, but it's also just a great template for spending a ton of time with some great bros. We walked, talked, dined out and drove around for 5 straight days and I enjoyed the last round as much as the first.
Stats
This is hard to believe, but Rex swears by his GPS app that we walked 60 miles on the trip (closer to 50 for me because I missed airport park on both ends of the trip).
16 rounds of disc golf.
250 holes played
That means at least 1500 tee shots
Aces: zero
Three bros trips, thousands of tee shots and still no aces. Amazing.
Notable happenings
Jacob lost his Apple Watch at Gordon Barnett. We retraced our steps for the day, but couldn't find it. The next day Steve found it on hole 8 out in the open, but past the dogleg towards the basket. We had a fantastic celebration (way better than celebrating an ace right? Steve said that he had asked to find the watch in his prayers.
The debates. Trump. Super entertaining. Nuff said.
English Bishop. The bishop at the ward we visited had a great english accent. Ive never listened to the announcements so intently.
Good Ideas
Disc gator. Not only did this thing get a bunch of discs out of trees at Picnic Island, it also fished a bunch of discs out of the water for us. It came in handy way more than I imagined. Thanks Hanks.
Hot Tub. It was so nice to soak our aching bodies and tell stories in that tub. We used it at least twice a day. I think all will agree that a hot tub is now a requirement for future bros trips.
Birdie Bag. or some other brand of powder to help keep a consistent grip. I was borrowing Jake's on every tee during some of the warmer rounds.
Food
Jake and Rex had the idea of just eating fruit and cereal for breakfast. In the absence of a master chef like Mike Hale, this is definitely the way to go. It was a quick, easy way to start the day. I loved eating out for lunch and dinner. The best meal, of course, was when Steve treated us to Longhorn Steakhouse because he got word that he sold a big painting. The rest of the meals were just a blur of fast food and buffets, but totally guilt free because we were walking 12 miles a day.
On the plus side, the iraqi gentleman working there gave Jake the
good news that his investment in a million dinar was going
to make him a millionaire in dollars very soon,
Cramming
I haven't been playing disc golf nearly as much as I used to, there were a few months last fall that I didn't play at all. I didn't want my rusty skills to mar the trip for me, so I crammed in some driving, upshot and putting practice during lunches and in the evenings the couple of weeks before the trip. It paid off. My drives were as good as they ever were, I was even driving close to 350' on a good shot. I was worried I had lost that distance forever.My upshots were better, but my putts were way better than they have ever been, especially the first couple days of the trip. I even hit a few out of the circle putts. It was really encouraging to finally see some putting practice pay off.
Next Time?
I vote we go to Tampa/Orlando again in two years, January or February of 2018. Any Takers?
