Sugarbush was sweet!

Man, what a great weekend of golf and good times I just had. I am still smiling.

Dave James and I headed up to Sugarbush Mt in Warren, VT Friday morning to watch and play in the Sugarbush Open, a National Tour event. It was a three-day event with the pros playing Friday-Sunday and us AMs just playing the weekend.

The courses were amazing, especially the Peak course which plays down, across, and up the 4000-ft mountain. You have to take the chair lift to get to hole 1. There are beautiful views in every direction.

One pro tee plays downhill something like 1400 ft and the AM tee is around 900 ft I think. It sounds crazy, but it is totally doable if you play cautiously and accurately. One bad throw though, and you end up deep in the woods or half a mile down the mountain. Seriously.

I liked the Peak course a lot because it requires good touch and control. It was hard not to crank a driver off the teepad sometimes and go with a putter or midrange instead, but in many cases that was the smart throw. The Base course was more like a normal course, hilly in places, open and flat in others, with a few tough holes sprinkled in. The back 9 is similar to Devens in that many of the holes are heavily-wooded. Not surprisingly, I played better on these holes. Trees? What trees?

Ken Climo and his signature form


We got there about 1PM and decided to wait on base course hole 4 for the lead card of Ken Climo, Marcus Källström, Steve Brinster, and Avery Jenkins so that we could walk the course while watching the top players on the planet play them. It was pretty cool finally seeing Climo in person, and after a few holes I realized that he's just a regular guy (who can huck a disc a lot better than me) and the gee-whizziness of the moment passed. He even missed a putt. Good God! He's human after all!

Climo, Jenkins, Källström
It definitely was great to see all these pros in action and up close. I love watching their technique. Now if we could just get them to announce what disc they were throwing each time, that would be cool.

After the round, we met up with the rest of our crew (Tim Walsh, Daniel Marcus, and Phil Vilmorin) and headed back to the condo for some dinner, adult beverages, and a few hours of poker and BS-ing. It was my first time playing poker and thankfully they were patient with me. I almost pulled the upset of the decade and beat Tim, but missed out by a hair on the last hand.

Saturday the AMs played R1 on the Peak course. I think I represented Devens pretty well and ended up on the second card to start round two. I even aced peak hole 3! It was a beautiful, downhill 180-ft laser with an Aviar. Besides my group witnesses (including Pyebrook JD), pros Leslie Demark, Bard Soleng, and Steve Brinster also saw it go in. I think they were more excited than me! Dave James had a rough morning and left himself some work to do for the second round, but vowed to do better.

After lunch, we played the base course and I think I finish tied with 5 other guys on the second card. The top three cards were all pretty close -- I think a 5 stroke difference, so it still was anybody's ballgame.

Kevin Lord reunited with his old college friend, Jay Reading


Saturday night we went down to the players party for dinner and fun. I had a really good time getting to know some more NEFA people a little better and liked swapping war stories from the day. I brought my ace disc with me and had most of the big pros (Des and Jay Reading, Val Jenkins, Leslie Demark) sign it and I ended up chatting with eventual winner Markus Källström for a while. He also nailed an Ace on Friday.

Back to the condo we went for more poker. They weren't so patient with me this time and I quickly ran out of chips. But hey, I didn't care - I got an ace! :)

Sunday morning was another beautiful day and the AMs had early tee times on the base course so that we could watch the Pros play the Peak course later. Unfortunately, I lost confidence in my putting and missed a few that I shouldn't have. I dropped down two spots in a 5-way tie for 8th and finished -3 for the weekend.

Even so, I'm pretty happy with that! Hell, it was 72 holes on a mountain. Nice! (full results)

The weekend ended perfectly when we ran into Climo in the parking lot. He signed my ace disc and said something like, "That's a good one to get your second ace on." I replied with an eloquent "Yeah, thanks." Dave hit him up for a few sigs on his KC Eagle and new Destroyer and made much better small talk than I did.

All in all, I met some great people, played some great golf, watched some of the best golfers in the world, drank some good beer, and enjoyed some beautiful Vermont scenery. Did I mention I had a great time? You should go next year.

Here are some more pix from the weekend:

Avery Jenkins putts on base 17



Climo nails his putt on base 17



Tim comes in for his close up



Everyone lean! Phil, Dave, Daniel, Tim, John