discraft

One of the discs from the Ace Race.

Our area’s disc golf group — DisCap — held one of Discraft’s Ace Race tournaments this past Saturday.

I couldn’t participate in it last year, so I was excited to be able to do it this year. And, thankfully, Mother Nature held off the freak snowstorm until after the tournament was long over!

Anyway, the idea of an Ace Race is simple. For your entry fee, you get two Discraft prototype discs (they aren’t named or on the market yet). The plastics are different, so without working with them, you don’t know what they might or might not do. You also got a mini marker disc, a bag and a sticker.

Not bad for $25.

Tees are shortened to give people a legitamate chance at an ace. You get two shots per hole (one with each disc). You then count aces or hit metal (of the basket) and move on.

At the end, the person with the most aces/metal hit is the winner and gets a nice (and bigger) Discraft bag with eight new discs.

Pretty sweet, right?

This year’s DisCap version of the event was held at  Joralemon Park in Coeymans. This isn’t my favorite course out there (a lot of people love it… I just find it a little too draining when you hit the woods holes. They never seem to end). This course is essentially a 28-hole course (there are two hole No. 12s), but they added two baskets to make it a 30-hole layout for the Ace Race.

One of the best parts was that it was quite laid back, so groups were bigger. I think we had the biggest as the group of us from our local area were paired together — seven of us. I had a blast with the group (Chuck, Dave, Tim, Steve, Jake and Jamie). We had fun, though nobody in our group got any aces. We did have a few metal hits though.

Alas, for my first one, I didn’t get any metal. Ah well, it was still a whole heap of fun.

Our group had four metal hits. That ratio is kind of crazy, if you think about it. With two shots per hole, that’s 60 shots per person. Multiply that by seven and we had a total of 420 chances.

And we hit metal four times.

If we were playing baseball, that wouldn’t be Hall of Fame numbers, that’s for sure. That’s a batting average of .009.

Yikes!

Either way, it was still a good time. We came close several times, but discs sailed just past the basket. And, our group was a whole heap of fun.

Here is from one hole, where I thought for sure someone would make a run at it:

Jake had the best chance at an ace, missing by mere inches. (Though it should be noted that when trying out the disc before the round started, Chuck aced one of the holes).

This video shows Chuck just missing me and Jake clanging the basket.

In fact, if you listen closely when Chuck comes up he says “I’m going to smack P.J. in the freakin’ head with this shot.”

Close, Chuck, close.

So, checking the final numbers at the DisCap Ace Race, there were 11 aces and 64 metals. The tournament featured 62 players, so if you add the aces and metals together, there’s 75 “hits.”  In total, there were 3,720 chances. Going, again, in baseball terms, we hit .020. Not Hall of Fame material, that’s for sure.

In the end, though, it all worked out. Nobody had more than two aces and the top “metal” guy came in with four.

I’ll give props to Jeff and Kenji — the two DisCap guys who did the bulk of the work on this setup — as they ran an excellent show. It was a cool experience and I’ll look forward to participating again next year.

My photos from the Ace Race on Flickr.

Videos can be seen on my YouTube channel. (I uploaded 10 from our group).

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!