Rick O' Shay (Nick Lachey's brother): Acorn (+5) There's a first time for everything. (for the year)

I got a very nice, surprising phone call on Friday night from a Mr. Mark Nordling. He was calling to ask if I wanted to play disc golf the next day. Ecstatic from his request, I replied with eager excitement telling him something along the lines of "Mark, that's the best thing that you could have asked me!" Mark was equally excited (I assume), he just didn't verbalize it in those exact words. I was at the Leaning Tower of Pizza on Lyndale when Mark had called me, Loran and I had biked there and met-up with a bunch of my co-workers. Basically, there were a bunch of unfortunate lay-offs at our company this week, so it was nice for a group of us to get together after this stressful week. Because we decided to bike there, before we had left we were in our garage getting Loran's bike ready for it's first ride of the season, we decided we both didn't need our keys, so I locked mine in our car that was also in the garage. It was a fun night, filled with great company and it was great to ride our bikes in the beautiful, warm weather. The next morning I woke up and did some freelance and Loran went with Hope to the gym for her first experience at yoga. I was finished with my work for the morning early, so since it was such a nice day out, I thought, we should get out to the course while it's still somewhat early, before it gets busy. So I called Mark and we decided to go to Acorn to play, and I wanted to get a new putter at Fairway Flyerz. So, we agreed to meet there in 45 minutes or so. As I walked towards the door to leave, I realized that my keys weren't hanging where they should be, and then I realized where my keys were and I how I wasn't going to be able to get them until Loran got home. This was annoying in 2 ways, first, I was pissed because this is going to hold us up from beating the crowd and getting on the course before noon. Secondly, I felt bad because I have a reputation for not having a very good concept of time and I knew that Mark was going to be annoyed with me calling and telling him to wait longer. So, as anyone would do, I called the gym to see if they could page Loran, but apparently they don't interrupt yoga classes for emergencies, the lady said it has something to do with meditation and focusing your mind or something, whatever, I didn't really listen to what she was saying. So, I thought I will just have to wait until they are done in a half hour and get the keys out of the car when Loran gets home. This ended up being OK because I cleaned the apartment while I was waiting. I was finally on my way, Mark called and said he was on Rice St. so we decided to meet at the DG shop. I really wanted to get a Discraft Magnet putter, but then after asking the very knowledgeable man a few questions, I decided to go with something else. My current putter is an Innova Factory Second, basically it's a disc that has minor blemishes or was misprinted, so they sell it for cheaper. I am pretty sure that it is really comparable to an Innova Aviar. I wanted something that was much stiffer, and not so "floaty" as I describe it. I have been putting with my Roc lately because I like it's stiffness and rigidity. I realized that the magnet was really similar to my current putter, so I asked the owner what the stiffest putter that he had was. He took me over to the wall and introduced me to the Gateway Wizard. I held this disc in my hand, "Wow! This thing really is STIFF!," I said. I then went to the practice basket in the store and I sunk my first putt with it. Alright, I'm getting this one I decided (see photos below). I feel like a while ago Jake was looking for a putter and the same guy showed him the wizard, or we realized that Jake's putter was a wizard or a similar Gateway putter, I can't quite remember but it was something like that. Either way, since I had a store credit I got my new putter for $2.63 - nice. By the way, this thing is like a piece of iron. It clanks so loud when it hits the chains and falls into the basket - I love it, it's not gonna be some floppy flipper that the wind takes on a field trip, this thing will fly straight. We got to Acorn and started playing. It was a lot of fun to play with Mark on such a nice day, I had a great time. We were able to talk about how are jobs are going and I was able to get the scoop on all the new Wet Cement development. (Derek's a biiiiiiiig machine) I have been working on my backhand throw a lot lately. It is still very unpredictable and I can't get the distance that I think I should be getting. I know that it's all about my form, I've been trying to analyze my throw and think about each step of the process, because I always seem to forget/not do at least one thing which throws off my drive. But, when I do things right, I can tell that I'm learning because it feels so good and the disc actually does what I imagine it to do in my head. I had a few terrible backhand drives/throws on the first few holes, but then I seemed to get a hold of it a bit more. Mark played well for his first time out for the year (at least I think it was), he had a really nice putt on hole 18, and that's a hard hole to putt on because the basket is on such a steep hill. I had birdie-worthy drives on both hole 16 and 17 but only got the actually birdie putt on 17, grrrrr. I finished at +5 for the round, I was happy with it but I knew had errors and should have gotten a +3. My new putter is going to take some getting used to, I kept having to fight the urge to want to use my Roc to putt with, but I had just gotten a new putter for a reason. I've also been working on my putting form, trying to keep the disc centered with my body in between my shoulders, and I have my body perpendicular of the basket so I am looking right at it. Again, just like my backhand drives, I need to remember all parts of the process in order for it to work correctly, but when it does, man does it feel good - CHING!