Long Lake Disc Golf Course & More

It's been awhile since I've updated.  First off, the Fourth of July Frolf Tour.  Despite the crazy hot temperatures, it was a real blast.  Austin, Evan, Jason and I were on the road by 5AM to kick off the tour.  The first course we played was Woodruff.  What a beautiful course!  It was well maintained, had a ton of variation and lots of fun "ace runs".   None of us got an elusive ace, but we had a lot of fun.  Jason and I were tied going into the last hole and he sunk an incredible putt to eek out the win.

The next course was Sandy Point in Lac du Flambeau.  This was a 27 hole behemoth of a course, snaking its way through the woods of a resort.  It was another great course, meticulously taken care of and designed.  The only bad thing was my throwing.  I was horrible for a good 2/3 of the course.  It seemed like my discs had magnets that attracted them to trees.  Despite all of that frustration, we had a lot of fun and Jason once again took home the win.

The next course we headed to was Almon Park in Rhinelander.  This was another well designed course and, in my mind, one of the most fun of the day.  Most likely because I won the round pretty comfortably.  Austin got stung by a bee after his disc cut the nest in half, but luckily he was able to finish the round.

Next up was Sugar Camp.  This course was the biggest surprise of the day.  We figured the other courses were gonna be nice (Jason had played both Woodruff and Rhinelander before) but we had no clue what to expect with this.  The town keeps up the course wonderfully and there is a good mixture of shots here.  I was able to win this round as well, pouring it on in the last 3 holes to give myself the lead and the win.

Since we were so close and going there anyway, we decided to stop in at Eagle River's course.  This was easily the worst course of the day, but it was still fun because it was mostly wide open shots and quite a few of them were ace runs.  Again, nobody managed to get an ace.  I won the round after throwing the Teebird and Classic Roc wonderfully on a couple of the holes.  It seemed like as the day went on and I got more tired, the better my throwing became.  Maybe that means I try to put way too much power into my throws, especially when I'm fresh.

After a lot of miles and a lot of sweat, the day was over and we were all frolfed out.  It was tiring and challenging but best of all, it was a lot of fun.  I loved getting to play some new courses and see how good the people of north eastern Wisconsin have it when it comes to disc golf courses.  Speaking of which, Long Lake now has a temporary course.

The Bialy DDC has designed a course out of the Long Lake Community Park.  Now, it's nothing spectacular but it is a lot of fun to play when we don't want to drive anywhere.  In lieu of baskets, we use those fold up camping chairs for our holes.  They work surprisingly well and you use the same exact skills.  We wanted to utilize the woods more up there, but the woods in the park are very thick and we didn't have the time or tools to clear it over the weekend.  So instead we utilized the distance and the open field the best we could while using the natural objects around the park to offer some additional challenge. We set up the course on Friday night and played a round, which Austin won.  Evan began the round, but was stung by some black jackets as he tried to retrieve one of Jason's errant throws into the bushes.  For the second round, my mom, dad and their friend Don joined us.  It was the first time mom and Don had ever played and they had a lot of fun.  I threw well and won the round as night was falling rapidly.  Austin was right on my heels, only one stroke back.

The next morning I set up the course again and Jason, Austin and I played. This time I go shellacked by both Austin and Jason, who ended up tying.  A tie breaker was initiated: who could throw the squirrely Star Wraith the furthest.  Jason was able to muscle the meat-hooking disc a little further than Austin for the win. Below is a map of the Long Lake course.  I have heard that the Fay Lake Resort is planning on putting in a frolf course at some point.  I really hope they do.  They have some amazing land in the back of their property that would make an excellent course.

Upcoming Frolf Tour

Some of us from the BDDC are planning a mini tour on the Fourth of July.  99 holes in one day.  Can we do it? I sure hope so!  The courses are spread out so we'll have some down time in between to recuperate a little bit.  I'm definitely excited.  Here are the courses we are planning to visit:

Sandy Point in Lac Du Flambeau
Brandy Lake in Woodruff
Sugar Camp DGC in Sugar Camp
Almon Park in Rhinelander
Bear Creek in Crandon

Of all those courses, I've only played on Bear Creek before.  Jason has played Almon Park, Brandy Lake and Crandon, so there are two courses that will be completely new to us.  We're looking forward to the challenge.  Stay tuned for course and mini tour reviews/stories!

A Saturday Full of Frolf

Jason learned a new word during the week since I last saw him.  That word was 'frolf', a combining of the words 'frisbee' and 'golf'.  He said it correctly the first time, but then for the rest of the day he proceeded to butcher it until he gave up saying it all together.  I don't remember what he called it, but suffice to say it wasn't close.

Jason and his boys, Austin & Evan, traveled to the northern fringes of the UP to play some disc golf with me, since I was on call for work and couldn't leave the area.  There are two courses up here that we can choose from: Al Quaal in Ishpeming or Silver Creek in Harvey.  Despite seeing a note online that the Silver Creek course had been pulled to be redesigned, we decided to journey to Harvey anyway.  Fortunately for us, the course was still open and completely deserted.  The course consisted of 4 holes that weaved around a bunch of playground equipment and fences and 5 holes that went through some woods and hills.  The first 4 holes were basically wide open 'let the drivers rip' type holes, but were less fun than the challenge the wooded holes provided.  Also, it was nearly 90 degrees and the sun out on the open playground was brutal.

There was a good southwest wind blowing in with some pretty heavy gusts, so we were all over the place with our throws.  I managed to win the first round of play.  Since the course was deserted, we decided to play a few more rounds (it was only a 9 hole course after all).  The second time through, Austin really found his rhythm with his tomahawk style throw.  His drives were straight and true and by the 7th hole it was a 3 way tie for first between Austin, Jason and myself.  I fell apart, going +3 on that hole and basically taking myself out of contention with some HORRIBLE putting. Austin continued to play well on the last 2 holes and won that round.  The third round was very exciting.  Going into hole 9 it was another 3 way tie between Jason, Austin and myself.  I managed to sink an incredible putt through some branches from about 35 feet away to par the hole and win the round.  I could have thrown it 10 times and probably missed that shot 10 times.  I doubt it'll ever happen again.

After that, we drove around Marquette a bit while nibbling on cookies from Cal's, then we headed back to Ishpeming for some shrimp and steak on the grill before hitting Al Quaal to round out our day.  Al Quaal was tough because of the punishing sun beating down on us and the unpredictable winds altering our discs in midair.  I was able to win both rounds, but we were all worn out by the end.  At the end of the day, we had played 45 holes of disc golf on the hottest day of 2012 and we had a blast.  All of us saw improvement in our games throughout the day, which is excellent.  Evan developed an under hand throwing method that worked really well for putting.  I saw the little guy make some amazing putts that I doubt any of us older guys would've made. Here are the scorecards:

Though the Bialy Disc and Duck Club doesn't own land or a clubhouse yet, think it's safe to say we have two base camps.  The Wisconsin base camp would have to be my dad's place, while the Michigan base camp is my place.  There are way more disc golf courses in Wisconsin by my parents, but I heard that Marquette will be soon adding a course, which will be great.

Derrek "Thankfully no water hazards" White

BDDC Genesis

Welcome!

This is the website of the Bialy Disc and Duck Club, a club of gentlemen dedicated to the sports of duck hunting and disc golf.  The club is located in Northeastern Wisconsin and is very exclusive (well, not really).  Initiates into the club must undergo a rigorous initiation process that few are able to complete (eating a raw common merganser breast for example, though nobody knows for sure if this has actually been done).  This site will be used to record the many adventures of the club members.  Many humorous and interesting tales are sure to follow.  Stay tuned!

Here is a quick video of club member Jason and his very unorthodox disc throwing style.  The video was taken at The Tailings, an excellent disc golf course in Iron River, MI.  The cyclone throw delivered for him, as Jason went on to beat both Austin and myself.  On hole 17 and behind by 2 strokes, I decided to get brave and try to clear the river.  Well, my first throw was launched into the woods about 20 yards down the hill from the tee box.  Not how you want to start out when trying to clear a water hazard!
This is the point where most smart players will cut their losses, toss the disc out onto the fairway, then attempt an easy 30 foot throw across the river.
Not I.
I decide that I want the win.  What's the point of playing if you can't win, right?  Standing 3 feet into the brush, I let my brand spankin' new Valkyrie fly.  It was doomed from the start, curving horribly to the left and then taking a sharp dive right at the river.  Nobody saw it actually land, but we did hear the sounds of branches followed by a loud splash.  After Jason and Austin quit laughing in disbelief, we went to the river's edge to find the ill fated Valkyrie.
She was nowhere to be seen.
Worse still, the river was really deep in this area.  We walked the banks hoping to catch a glimpse of it, but it wasn't to be.  My brand new Valkyrie was gone.  I was forced to finish holes 17 and 18 with my unbelievably horrible Halex Driver.
Now, don't get me wrong.  The Halex served its purpose when I first got into disc golf.  It's made of plastic and is disc shaped and it will fly when you throw it.  But that's about where its usefulness ends.  Normally when I throw, I tend to tilt the disc at an angle that makes it fade slowly left.  Not so with the Halex.  It dove right every single time.  Even when I consciously tried not to tilt it that way, it still ended up going right.  After 3 terrible throws, guess where the Halex ended up?  Yep, that's right, the Iron River.  The only difference was that this time we could see it sitting on the bottom because it wasn't very deep and we were able to retrieve it with a stick.  Jason volunteered to hold onto the belt loop on my shorts to keep me from falling into the river as I leaned way out over the bank to retrieve the disc, but I have a feeling he was attempting to be a comedian.  A belt loop is no match for a 250 pound man falling towards a wet and cold river.  I'd end up cold and wet with a torn pair of shorts.
In the end we all had a great time at the Tailings and look forward to many more games there.  We stopped at Ace Hardware in Iron River on our way back home and I replaced my Valkyrie with a Discraft Avenger SS, which is a pretty sweet disc.  Jason also got an Avenger (not the SS variety) and Austin picked up an XL. Here is an image of the scorecard (with par adjustments for us novices) from that day.

The scorecard brings me to another point.  If you play any disc golf at all and have an Android phone (possibly an iPhone as well, but I don't have one so don't know) you need to check out the Disc Caddy 2 app. It is such a great tool.  You can import course information from DGCourseReview's website, complete with par information.  It will track all of your stats across all of your games and spit out all kinds of sweet numbers at you.  It makes keeping score a breeze.  For the three of us it literally took me 5 seconds at the end of each hole to input our scores.  The app costs $2 but it's money well spent, trust me.

Derrek "River Magnet" White