A fantastic weekend at The University Of Essex at Colchester saw 2 wins and a 3rd place for CDGC members.

Saturday and Sunday 17/18th April saw a big contingent of Croydon members make the short trip up the A12 to compete in the Essex Tour event in fantastic weather. The wind was light and the sun shone and it stayed dry all weekend. Players discs, on the other hand, did have some moisture to deal with.

The course at Essex has been recently changed somewhat  due to expansion building work. I believe that a lot of the holes from the original 1980s course have now been reintroduced. What this meant for this weekend was that there were less disc losing opportunities in the lake than is usual. Just two infact, and the first one (hole 4) is a fairly calm hole when there's no wind. This just left the big drive across the lake on hole 5... (I managed to keep dry all weekend!)

Around 45 players attended with nearly 1/3 of these from Croydon... so thank you to all those who travelled, great effort and much appreciated by the organisers.

The wins came in the two Amateur Divisions with Rich Wood (yep, thats me!) and Tom Lowes taking the Advanced Am and Int Am titles respectively.

Tom, Croydon Cup Champion, had been in decent form leading up to the tourney; he shot his PB at lloyd Park at level par (57). He was in ok position after two rounds but then cranked it up to make a 3 shot defecit into a 3 shot leads after the 3 rd round. He consolodated that score in the final to ease his way to victory... Tom will now be moving into the Advanced Ams for his next tournament!

I had a very steady weekends golf but won in dramatic style right at the death. I reckon that I have played as good a series of rounds in the last month that I can remember. I have shot a number of sub par to par rounds including my CDGC PB of -3 (54). The weekend saw 3 steady rounds of 65, 63, 64. The par is 61. By the end of the 3rd round only Dave Allaker was within 5 shots, and he had joined me on 192 with a stunning 60 in the 3rd round. He had shot 70,62,60 to get to 192 and had also TD'd the tourney with help from Ross, Paul, Sophie and Chris. 

The final was to take place on 9 holes, some of the Jungle holes. Some of them were long, a lot longer than my worn out noodle arms really wanted to throw, but, I was doing okay and Dave and I were level for the first 3 holes. Then came the lake, I shanked one terribly and got really lucky when my disc fell dry before it got to the willow tree at the lake. This left me a tight right fading drive up the path which I got wrong... I finished with a 5 to Daves' 4; Dave 1 in front. The other guys in the Final were Dan, Mark and Tim... all 5 shots behind us. 

The next hole was a new one to me... a long drive where you had to get past a couple of trees to get a decent second. Dave crushed one and i got through. I then made a right pigs ear out of the second shot leaving me in a tree. I didn't get enough on my flicked escape sidearm and dropped another shot to Dave. 2 back with 4 to play. 

Dave and I shot 3s on the next hole and then to the infamous Valley Hole. For those that don't know the new layout, the Valley or Across The Road is a hole that starts up high, finishes up high and has an OB road in the middle. Think of our hole 7 and then get steeper and have to go up the other side as well... Par 4 and it gets windy and there are trees and buses and its GREAT! But I wasn't! After seeing Dave pull his drive OB, Ozzy Dan, (my caddie!) tells me that this is my chance ... and I make the worst shot that I have all weekend. A proper newbie shot... it had turned left 2 meters from leaving my fingers... I got lucky with the lie, but, after putting out I had let Dave off the hook, my 5 to his OB 5. Still two back with 2 to play.

The penultimate hole is a long uphill hole... 2 of my least favourite attributes to a hole! I drove ok but my second clipped a tree and dropped. I thought then that I had blown it. My next shot was wide but left me with a nasty little hyser  which I nailed with my Roc... I did get a lovely bit of tree love. I sunk the putt and Dave dropped a shot. 1 behind with 1 to play. 

The last hole  is the last hole on the short 9 at Essex, an Ace Race hole (that Rich O aced 3 years ago) and I got within 8 feet with my FLX Buzz. Dave shanked his drive and was to my left 10-15 metres to the basket. Dave had the choice of going for it for the outright win, laying up to force me to birdie to force a playoff. He went for it, the disc hit the rim, dropped on its edge and rolled down the bank and OB. He then hit the rim on his 4th shot and shot an OB 5. I canned the birdie putt and, in a state of shock, won the tournament. A great feeling but it was horrible to see Daves putt roll away. He really didn't deserve that.

Jester Wilson consolidated his 3rd place in the open final behind Derek Robins and Matt Cuttler.

A great weekend had. A big thanks to Ross for putting a whole buch of us up at his place and to Paul who sorted a wicked BBQ on Saturday. And thanks to all those who got involved with the Kan Jam on both nights.