2018-04-02 Course Work Today I've spent 2,5 hours on the course. First, 20 minutes of putting, then 1.5 hours of driving the various holes, finally, 40 minutes of playing a two-disc round with Sabine, whom I met. The weather was great, there was low wind (from various directions). I spent more time putting than usual, also I putted from farther away than usual, practicing 8m and 10m putts. Today, I decided to putt with five putters (D P2 (2), D P3, Retro Pure and Zero Hard Pure), in order to figure out if those more shallow putters, which I can drive with well, could do the putting, too, and thus reduce my bag a bit. The result: I still don't know. ;-) There wasn't much difference. It feels as if the Pures lack that fade at the end, which I want to have for safety. The P3 might be the disc of choice. I like it so much for throwing. I might be able to putt with it. Currently I still like the feel of the thicker P2, but if that's the only reason to carry the P2s ... My driving practice consisted of throwing one or two bags of discs from each tee. (As I had the course for me alone -- for un- known reasons nobody was there, despite the great weather.) I tried different routes and noted the results. There were several successes. On hole 1, I parked the Champ Teebird! It's a 95m hole. I've nev- er even come close to the pin. Now I've parked it! With the Trespass, I even outdrove the hole. Unfortunately, the direction was bad, but still: these distances! The consistency is still missing, but nonetheless, suddenly I have become physically able to birdie a 95m hole with a drop-in putt! :-) Comets and Wasp flew about 80m -- a good result. On hole 2, I had several good shots: Wasp, ESP Comet, purple DX Teebird and P3 all came to rest about 5m from the pin. Months ago, I was happy to reach the 65m hole consistently with a Tee- bird, now I reach it with my P3. :-) Hole 3 is typically played as a big hyzer around some trees. On this route, I put the Trespass 4m to the pin. I've never been this close. Just recently I've watched with awe when other players did so. Now I'm able to do it myself (currently only with luck, of course). The BigZ Comet flew up to 9m from the pin, the blue DX Teebird and ESP Comet up to 12m. Several other discs reached positions for good upshots. A new shot was with the P3 on a huge anny up and over the trees. If it would have flexed more (Zone!) then this could have been a great line. Repeating this line with drivers didn't work out (also, it has the risk to hit a car if the disc stalls out and fades left). Still a nice line. Hole 4 (now we move to the woods): All four midranges (Wasp + 3 Comets) hit trees. All four putters I threw (P3, Pure (2), P2) landed within 5m to the pin. :-) Seems I should throw more putters and less Midranges. Today really got me thinking about that. (Throwing the D-Line (!) P2s with a Birdie grip worked out great as well, it also feels better now than previously, though not as good as the P3.) Hole 5 (straight and short): The X Comet hit the basket! ... and dropped right there. :-) The BigZ Comet came to rest 4m to the pin, the P3/P2/Pure 6m. Hole 6 showed some successful annies with putters (and some failed tries) plus a new thumber line, which proved to be just perfect. I threw four thumbers and all of them landed within the 10m circle. (I do have a pretty good thumber.) This is my new way to tackle this hole. Hole 7 is similar, but the low anny is more difficult and the thumber window is more a tomahawk windows, which I cannot throw that well. All tomahawks failed, but a thumber still flew to 7m from the pin. On anny, the P3 and Pure reached 5m, BigZ Comet at 10m and Wasp at 12m. Hole 8 -- oh well! I struggled hard with the big hyzer. Last year I had parked the hole once or twice, today only two shots out of twenty or so reached the circle: a thumber with the blue DX Tee- bird and a big hyzer with the Champ Teebird. All others were rather far away. I did try the hyzer route, I did try straight shots, I did try flex shots, I threw thumbers. This hole really gave me some hard times. I still don't know what to throw there. Probably I'd go with the hyzer route, as it has the most open space. Hole 9 I didn't play (I would have liked to reach it for the first time!) ... as I met Sabine then. We decided to play a round together. My choice was to play a round with the new Z Wasp and my P2 only. I felt that the Wasp needed more throws to learn to know it better. IIRC, Sabine threw only a Star Leo (all drives), an ESP Buzzz (all upshots), and her putter, a Challenger, I think. I outdrove here on all holes, but eventually finished +2, while she scored par even. That's right what you encounter when a new- ish young man plays with an experienced older disc golfer with most likely a noodle arm: the young hero will be the one to take lessons in disc golf! :-) My round was okay. I shot par on hole 8 and the long holes 9 and 1. I could have birdied hole 2 if I had omitted the two-putt. I threw a bad approach on hole 3, leaving me with an equally long comebacker, which I missed, resulting in a bogey. (I should have jump putted for a lay-up instead, and scored par.) I hit a tree and two-putted on hole 4, for bogey. I thew the putter down the slope on the easy hole 5, forehand-rollered out and sank an im- portant putt to save par. I threw this new thumber line on hole 6 with the wasp for my only birdie. That was the highlight drive. (I think that route is not played by other locals yet.) I ended on hole 7 after a tree hit and a two-putt with a bogey. The round was still good, meaning I've played much worse ones (with more discs, drivers even!). I two-putted three times and made one ap- proach mistake, that's four strokes lost because of missing con- centration or practice or experience. The drives and approaches were good. The putting distances were short enough that I should have been able to make them ... just, I did not, three times. ;-) Without the four mistakes, this would have been my best round on the course ... playing with only two discs, one being my putter (which I haven't thrown much yet) and the other a new to me mi- drange. Wow! What does this mean about bags! All that plastic is just not necessary! All you need is a putter and an allround disc (straight with some fade). This brings me back to the garubag: [0] One OS driver, one straight driver, one stable midrange, one putter -- four discs (he actually talks about molds, but nonethe- less). Or BlakeT's bag [1] (which probably was the inspiration for garu): Predator, Teebird, Roc, Wizard -- he has several of each, but still. My full bag is more crowded: (Trespass) Ch Teebird / DX Teebird Wasp / Comet Zone / P3 / (Pure) P2 (2) for putting It's still small (especially disc-wise, although not mold-wise). But, do I really score better with it, than with only two, three, four discs? A sign that my bag is still in good shape, is the fact that I al- ways know instantly what disc to throw next. Already when I leave the tee, I have the next disc in my hand, and only rarely do I reconsider. But now, with the Wasp in the bag, overlap seems to appear. I've thrown the Comet seldom, recently. The P3 provides a lot of dis- tance and had the dependable fade the ESP Comet lacks (meanwhile). Now I have the new BigZ Comet, but does it still have a slot in the bag? The P3 does long annies as well. I real- ly do love Comets, but do I also really need them on the course? Do they lower my scores? I don't think so, currently. And the Wasp?, the new disc, that I bought to fill a vacant slot -- was this slot really vacant? Or is it now filled by my recent dis- tance improvement? The Zone is the clearly better out-of-trouble disc and it does provide some shots and behavior the Champ Tee- bird lacks. And the Zone goes almost as far as the Wasp does. Thus, it seems I should stay with the Zone and leave the newly ordered Wasp out -- fine purchase! Really, a bad day for my midranges! At the moment, I'm thinking about dropping them all from the bag. A bit shocking, the thought to go without a Comet at all! But my P3 covers most Comet lines so well ... and most Pure lines. Yes, it is a wonderfully versa- tile disc. I might even putt with it in the future. It does not cover Zone work well enough, though. Hence, my newest bag thoughts are: (Trespass) Champ Teebird / DX Teebird Zone / P3 P2 (2) for putting What a bag! Even more so if I drop the P2s for another P3. :-) But let's see if that really works out that way. [0] https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32790 [1] https://www.dgcoursereview.com/dgr/interact/contributors/blaket.shtml http://marmaro.de/discgolf/ markus schnalke