This year’s Spring Fling went off as well as any Spring Fling we’ve ever run here. We had 8 different PDGA Amateur categories this year. There was one ace in the tournament. Junior player Kai Barrios skip aced hole 17 for his first ever ace. Fortunately, his mother caught the once in a lifetime magical moment on video. Kai was one happy young man walking around after the tourney with a fist full of dollars from the other players and staff keeping up the age-old tradition of giving an ace recipient a dollar for their efforts.
This year had several first-time winners. Ozzie Fausto won Advanced. He shot a two round cumulative score of -15 to edge out first round leader Charlie Grenis. David Neria survived a three way play off in Intermediate for his first win. Matt Tregidga is so happy to now officially be kicked out of Novice division as he outlasted the 21 player Novice field by a stroke. Quinny Kravitz having shot the best first round of the tournament at -8 earned his first PDGA Masters victory. Eric Ducharme having suffered thru multiple 2nd place finishes topped last year’s winner Hans Degner for his first Grand Masters victory here at Morley. We added a Senior Grandmaster division this year and John Maki the wily local veteran bested first round leader Pete Hembrow who played Morley the first day the course was ever put in way way back in 1977. In the Women’s division Rianne Hamiliton not surprisingly won for her third straight year. And finally, 12 year old Disc Golf phenom Xaelen Nash crushed his field shooting a -5 with 8 birdies in his second round to once again win the Junior Division. Xaelen has set several Junior world distance records as he’s grown up. He birdied both long 5 and hole 6 back to back in the afternoon winds this tourney. His final score was actually one stroke better than the 22 person Intermediate field. Somebody should warn Ricky and Paul. Xaelen’s coming!
This year’s included lunch was provided by my son’s restaurant Amplified Ale Works. It was a real treat for the players who were upgraded from the usual Costco pizza. Our sponsors this year were Innova Disc Golf, Discraft, Dynamic Distribution, Gateway, Legacy and MVP discs. All of whom donated hats and clothing for the free drawing and discs for the player prize packages.
I owe a big thank you to my staff which included my son Alex who will be running this event going forward, my wife Joanne, EJ, Eric (who flew in just to help out with this event), Oscar, Jesse (PDGA data and morleyfield.com updates), and all my regular staff in the shop. A special thank you goes out to Zac Burnside who as a volunteer handles both computer graphics, art coordination and gets our screenprinting done as well. Also a special thanks to Chris Dilloway for artwork and general handiman skills in making this event run as smooth as silk for the players. This was my last official PDGA tournament till I retire at the end of this year. I owe a big thanks to all the tournament participants this year who made running this tourney amazingly fun for me as well. I had a blast this year. We have some special juniors coming up. The future looks bright for Disc Golf.
Thanks for the ride…
Z ya