Madison Open
The ultimate victory for a golfer is to win the Grand Slam, which is all four major championships in a calendar year. Only Bobby Jones has accomplished this feat, and in the modern era, only Tiger Woods has won the four in a row (but not in the same calendar year). Today, these majors are the Masters, the PGA Championship, the US Open, and the British Open.
The major championships are held over a long weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, with one round of 18 holes being played each day. Once upon a time, I think in my senior year, my friends and I decided to have a major championship of our own. Instead of golf, though, we played disc golf. Additionally, instead of playing the same course each day, we selected a city, and played four different courses in the area.
Three of us (myself, Carl, and Richard) traveled to stay with our friend Beans in Madison, WI. He was a student at UW Madison and lived in an apartment near campus. There we schemed our big weekend of disc golf. We would play two 18-hole course each day, keep score, and declare a winner at the end.
The Springs
It’s been some time since this all happened, so I might botch the order of play, or even the name of the courses themselves. The first one we went to was Capital Springs. It’s a very open course on rolling hills. Although technically I shouldn’t say hills, I should say glacial drumlins. They formed from the actions of glaciers and are shaped like half an egg. The first round was tight, but I pulled ahead for a slim lead.
This is where my memory gets a bit hazy. I don’t actually remember the second course we played. From some quick research, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was Nine Springs. The name sounds familiar, it’s 18 holes, and close to Capital Springs. The highlighted picture on the web shows a basket that is drilled into a tall tree stump. Beans would have no doubt taken us to such a place.
Disc golf can be painful. I remember one hole where the basket was perched on a small mound, so the disc had a chance of rolling away in any direction. Richard fell victim to this, tossing his disc toward the hole, only to watch it roll down the mound to the opposite side. Back and forth he went like this, as the other three of us watched with pity. Eventually he pulled it together and we moved on. This is the nightmare for disc golfers and golfers alike. There’s no way to move on to the next hole without completing the one you are on.
Elver
I took my lead into the next day. For our third course, we went to the legendary Elver Park. This is the place to be in Madison; everyone seems to have a happy reaction when it’s brought up. Badger athletes train there, locals sled down the hills in the winter, and children go to the splash park when the weather is hot. There is also an excellent disc golf course.
The big hill plays a prominent role. The course begins with a climb up the hill and ends with some fun tees going down the hill and into the open field. One of those final hill tees is epic, and the distance you can get makes you feel like a pro. In between, there is actually lots of forest. It can be very tight, and smacking trees is all but inevitable.
Over the duration of the first three courses, I slowly extended my lead, so that going into the final match I had all but locked it up. This or course excited me greatly. Despite the fact that this was in no way an official event, and only 4 of us were playing, I was still in a competitive mind. Even with family board games such as Life and Settlers of Catan I get competitive.
Hiestand
We played our final round at Hiestand. Well, at least I think we did. You can get a permit that is good for play at both Elver Park and Hiestand, so I’m assuming that’s what Beans planned. In any case, I don’t remember much about that course other than that there was a tall, grassy hill which abutted some dark forest.
I played a decent round, and thus became champion of our major tournament. Now, don’t get any foolish ideas here. The four of us are hackers; none of us would match up against someone that spends a lot of time playing the sport.
We celebrated by going to an Irish themed bar in downtown Madison. Wait a second, did we drink alcohol in a bar? We would’ve needed to be 21 to do that…and at the beginning I said I was in high school. Memory is a funny thing. Well, what’s true is we did four courses in Madison, and had so much fun we wanted to do it again in a different city.
