Please don’t throw me in that briar patch

No, seriously, damn that hurts.

Well, I finally found a ‘Cincy’ course down here. Many of the courses here have trees, obstructions, hard holes, long holes, etc, but none so far have bushes. Bushes? Big deal. Oh, you don’t get it. I mean, man-eating, disc-sucking bushes. Low to the ground and as far as the eye can see. It’s even better when they tag team with briar patches, viny trees and lots of leaves. Ugh.

So Renaissance looks like a nice challenge from the start. And it was, but I have to be honest – I was having a great round. I think it was mostly because I was in a groove. After taking many wrong turns and getting actual wrong directions, I finally found the place. But seeing as it was getting late, I knew I had to hurry. So I was running from shot to shot and hole to hole. Playing through most of the groups since I was alone and fast (and frankly better than everyone I played through), it was fun and nice.

Until I got behind this one guy. Also playing alone and with a decent pace, he never let me play through. This ruined my groove and at one point he actually irked me enough to result in a shanked tee shot. My only double. Ugh. I finally caught up to him on Hole 17 (he lost his disc for a bit). This is when I found out he wasn’t too bright. I mean, the kind you feel sorry for. I helped him find his disc, and of course I was the one who ended up with ripped legs from the briars. My penance for cursing him earlier I suppose.

So now I’m on 18, which is pretty open but long. A little too open actually. After a mistake off the tee I make yet another mistake that puts me in the really open spot – a downhill, briar-covered gorge. I can see the disc – off the beaten path, down the hill, laying on top of the briars. There is no path to get there and most of the vines and briars lay over top of each other so much you can’t see if there’s ground underneath or not. Scary actually.

But I’m not losing a good disc I can spot! At first, jumping from cliff to cliff on weak briars seemed like a bad idea. Then I tried to climb up and down and found it to be a worse idea. Ugh. I did make it to the disc, but now I couldn’t see the hole. Being as directionally and memory deficient as I am, I assumed the wrong pin placement. While I did get off a good hammer, it was aimed incorrectly and cost me a stroke later. Still, bloody knees or not, I was back in the fairway with the disc!

I finished out and was going back to the truck so I could get out to the pro shop there (S&P Kites, really cool store and owner). By now I’m panting, sweating and bleeding. So of course, guys are laughing at me. In good humor actually. We got to talking about courses and turns out these guys have played all over NC and Cincy and it appears they’re actually on the Tour (the polo tour shirt gave it away, lol). There was a tourny there the next day but I couldn’t stay.

It also turns out they remembered (as did I once they said it) that S&P wasn’t open on Mondays. Dammit. Was I back in WI already? So I went to Hooters instead.

Next up: Is there anything worse than bad porn?