On paper, it all but seems impossible …
How can a disc be lost if you can see it?
Well, perhaps that’s what makes today’s beef the stinkiest cut of ‘em all …
Storytime.
One of my local courses plays across the grounds of a mental hospital – it’s beautiful. The 16th hole requires a 180-foot tunnel shot along the side of a small hill. Though dinky in distance, when combined with the slope of the ground, the gap gets tough to hit – it’s mostly mental.
If you’re confident with a straight-flying putter or mid, go for it. The easier shot, however, is to throw a short, over-the-top spike hyzer away from the hill on a forehand line. As you’re tossing downhill and the hole’s only 180 feet to begin with, the flight’s got to be pretty up-and-down.
The problem?
To make it work, you’ve got to hug the top of a MASSIVE pine tree with your disc – the closer you get to kissing it, the better. Here’s the issue: If you don’t yet know it, you soon will …
Pine trees devour golf discs.
Evergreens are to golf discs what Jerry Rice’s hands were to Steve Young’s passes.
Back in 2019, I acquired my first-ever Sexton Firebird. The stamp was ugly as heck, but I’d seen what Daddy Sexy could do with his, so I was anxious to see if I could do some of the same with mine. You can already see where this is going: Feeling myself, I went for glory on the 16th …
Bad call.
It clipped the top of the Christmas tree, but instead of attempting to Plinko down the branches like normal, it popped up and landed on a pillow of needles about five feet from the top of the pine. Its final resting place was too perfect – it was almost as if the tree was “displaying” its latest conquest. Standing on the 16th teepad, you could read the disc’s flight plate …
It sat there for two weeks.
For a solid 45 minutes, I threw rocks and pinecones at the dumb thing to knock it down. I even offered up a half-filled water bottle as tribute, but the stupid softwood was relentless …
I could see the disc; I’d lost the disc.
Sixty-five-foot, 100-year-old pines aren’t the only culprits, though …
Crystal-clear bodies of water might be fun to look at, but when icy cold, the hypothermia isn’t worth disc recovery. Unstable or unreachable cliffs are capable of claiming discs, too. Even straight-up leaving a frisbee atop a basket after tapping out happens on the regular.
I once played a doubles round with a guy from Florida who told me he threw a seasoned Opto Compass into a pond back in his home state. Only 25 feet from the shore, he could see the faint outline of his mid. Still, with signs everywhere warning parkgoers about alligators near bodies of water, he figured it’d be best to withdraw his name from potential Darwin Awards candidacy.
So the next time you lose a disc, be thankful it’s at least legit lost …
Not taunting you from feet away.
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