15/8 Ian - Frisbee golf

Man, how excited can a Frisbee fan get?

Queenstown is addicted to adrenalin, and you get sucked right in. Stay a few days and you’ll probably have skydived, jet-boated, luged, river-rafted, parascended, paraglided, bungeed, or heli-boarded all the way to a very empty wallet. I have never seen such impressively slick operations that give their punters bite sized fixes of adrenalin in such perfectly branded, incentivised, cross-marketed, photographed and filmed, certificated and merchandised packages, at such a speed. It’s like Derren Brown on speed. Blink once and you’ve missed it. The antidote? Frisbee golf, of course! A disc, a pen, some paper, and the 18 hole course in Queenstown Gardens. That’s all you need. Unless you’re serious about your Frisbee golf of course, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Now I heard about Frisbee golf years ago, but had never actually come across a course. Imagine my over-excited Christmas morning boyish glee when I discovered the course here! So we made some enquiries, hired us some discs and made our way across town for our first round yesterday morning. So we’re stood there at the tee of ‘hole’ one, reading the instruction board and thinking about some practice throws, when who should rock up for a round but James Smithells, the man responsible for the installation of this very course in 1996! And he had a disc bag, with different discs for different pitches – how cool is that?! You can guess what’s on my next birthday list, right…? You also need a disc towel so you can wipe your disc down before each shot, and you might want to tape your fingers up to avoid the dreaded ‘Frisbee finger’. So James seemed chuffed to bits that we (ok, mainly me, not Claz) were so excited about our virgin round on his course. After some technique tips for Claz we set off.

Long story short, this game is well harder than it looks, but brilliant fun, hilarious and frustrating in equal measures, and well addictive! This course was a par 56. We’ve had two rounds in the last two days and are both improving. First round: me, 23 over with 79; Claz, 71(!) over with 127. Second round: me, 13 over with 69; Claz, 53 over with 109. It’s harder for chicks – birds just can’t throw Frisbees. I reckon it’s an evolutionary thing….

I also got myself up early this morning to squeeze one last round in before we had to check out and move on. Claz stayed tucked up warm in bed, so with my iPod on I managed a 65 – 9 over. Well chuffed with that. Both my putting and driving was much improved! Still, it should have been a 61 (completely went to pieces on the 6th), but that’s the way golf goes I guess….

As soon as I get back to the UK I’ll be checking out the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) website, as apparently there are courses all over the world. James, there could be a new course in Croydon. I’m coming down for a game with you, geezer…! Perhaps we should try and get one set up in Yorkshire too?!

http://www.pdga.com/