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The 1st Annual 2008 Lake Reidsville Open Sets It’s Standards High

BY TD TYSON HARTON: On a cold brisk morning in the Northern NC town of Reidsville, a group of 61 dedicated disc golfers braved the sub-freezing temperatures to attend the 1^st Annual Lake Reidsville Open presented by Scientific Disc Golf. The Lake Reidsville Park operates a championship caliber Innova designed course, called Lake’s Edge Disc Golf Course. This place is a scenic wooded and open course that plays along a 700-acre lake. The event hosted a one-day event for Recreational, Adv. Master and GM, and women’s divisions; and a two-day event for Intermediate, Advanced and Open divisions. This was done in hopes of encouraging more people to play up in divisions and lead to a higher payout for the two-day participants. This worked out well with 61 people playing the course on Saturday and 47 people coming back to play a second day on Sunday. The temperatures were 32 degrees in the morning and reached a high of 45 by mid afternoon. This made for a cold morning round for much of the field as Ed William shot a 6 under 60 on the Lake Edge Long Pads, a championship caliber course. Ed’s close friend, and local advanced player, Brian “Cheebo” Baldwin also matched the round low score of 60 to jump out to an early lead over the Advanced Field. All of the other divisions were very competitive as well.

At lunch The City of Reidsville offered every participant a $5 buffet of all you could eat hamburgers, hotdogs, all the fixins’, chips and desserts. The city really stepped up big and treated the players like royalty. Everyone quickly ate, as we needed to get the 2^nd round started by 2:30 to insure that all groups were able to finish before sunset. All groups played the shorted temporary course to make the par 66 into a par 59 (but still difficult) course. The low score this round was shot by Michael Johansen at 51 and was followed by David Wiggins Jr’s 52. Dustin Crawford and Chris Scarlet of Burlington, NC shot the Advanced low scores of 55 and 56 respectively; followed by Cheebo’s 58. The leader of the Open division after the first day was David Wiggins Jr., and Cheebo was the leader of the Advanced division. Winners of the 1-day Advanced Masters, Advanced Grandmasters Recreational, Advanced Women, Intermediate Women, and Recreation Women were as follows:

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The 2^nd day was set and we started at 9am to allow time to play 2 rounds for the Long pads on this beautiful Sunday. The Intermediate Division was very close as Stevie Ray Mclendon had the lead by two strokes over TJ “Stroker Ace” Fowler, and Eric Kirby as well as Drew Holland.

In the Open division Michael Johansen was able to pull even with David Wiggins Jr. by shooting a 61, two better than David. Craig Whitney of Charlotte shot the low round with a 58 to move into 3^rd. Chris Scarlet and Cheebo both led the Advanced field with 63s and Cheebo had a 3 stroke lead going into the final round. Stevie Ray still had the lead in the Intermediate division, but TJ was 1 stroke back and Eric Kirby was 2 strokes back. All players that participated on Sunday were given free pizza and chili by the Lake Reidsville Park Staff, making everyone feel very welcome. The players were all very appreciative and we all enjoyed getting able to chow down for free.

The Final round gave way to the best golf this course has ever seen; Michael Johansen was able to shoot a course record 51, an unbelievable 15-under par. David Wiggins and Ed Williams rounded out the top three. In the Advanced Division Chris Scarlet bettered Cheebo by 3 strokes and they decided to just be co-champions, with John Owens coming in 3^rd. Stevie Ray was able to hold off both Stroker Ace Fowler and Eric Kirby by a mere 1 stroke.

As scores were being tallied Scientific Disc Golf hosted an over hand only Closest to the Pin contest. Every player was allowed 2 throws at a basket they had set up. If any player was able to ace with an overhand, Scientific Disc Golf would pay that player $100. Cheebo Baldwin was able to win the CTP, which was a stack of discs. All players were introduced to Scientific Disc Golf’s Rip Grip, which helps players maintain good grip throughout their throw. This stuff is great for overhands and a small dab on your thumb will help your thumber fly far with a slip free release (http://www.scientificdiscgolf.com/ripgrip.html).

We would like to thank all the players that came out to the event! We have already secured the dates of November 14 & 15, 2009; as well as sponsorship. Hope you can all come out and check out this wonderful course and event.

Your Tournament Director,

Tyson Harton
PDGA # 31312

For a full list of results for this event, please visit the PDGA.com results page at:
http://www.pdga.com/tournament-results?TournID=8274

***We would like to thank Tyson Harton for writing and submitting this article