Eastern Mass. Championships 3

On Saturday I had the pleasure of playing in the Eastern MA Championships 3 in Topsfield MA. It was a nice warm breezy day with temps in the high 60's, yes that is warm in New England in May. Gusty breezes were a condition we had to deal with but with a really nice course open with sloping greens for us ametuers it was a challenging day. I spoke with a pro Pete Johnson who thinks it is too much an easy monotonous day there. Of course for the pros most holes are reachable on the drive and they rarely miss their putts. My experience differs and I find it a lot harder.

I play Advance Masters which is guys over 40 years old who are not good enough to play pro. There is seldom any real money to be won, sometimes a trophy, gift certificates to disc golf stores and free food are what we play for. That said it is also the great group of guys and the active competition. This day there were eight of us in the division and all really capable of winning the thing. One difference between Pros and Ams is we Ams are chronically inconsistent, not playing and practicing enough to work the flaws out of our games.
My round 1 was really good. My group started on hole 16 and got to get the tough 16, 17, 18, and 19 holes out of the way in the begining of the round. I started 3-4-4-6 with the 19th hole (unusual in its existence and distance over 700 feet)being really hard for me. Then I cruised, had birdies on hole 6 and 11 and finished with a 60 for the par 58 course, just one throw behind the two leaders.

round 1: 3-3-3-3-3-2-3-3-3-3-2-3-3-3-3-3-4-4-6-60

In round two we again started out on hole 16, the lead card with Bill(Stew) Stewart and John Campos at 59 Me and John Fissel at 60. I started off a bit better with a 4-3-3-5 on the first four we played and was feeling pretty good, in fact for a short time I lead the thing by hole eight we had all had a turn on top but I was looking at 7 holes left and the lead. That is when the wheels came off. I took a four on 8, 5 on ten, four on 11 and another four on 13. Ouch, I let a couple bad shots get in my head and that was that. So fourth place was what I threw.

round 2: 3-3-3-4-3-2-3-4-3-5-4-3-4-3-3-4-3-3-5-65

The final standing in the tournament were:
MPO (Pro Open Division)1st round 2nd round Total
1 Jason Gordon 53 53 106
2 Joe Yaskis 52 57 109
3 Brian Harrington 57 52 109
4 James Lane 54 55 109
5 Matt Stroika 52 58 110
6 Pete Johnson 57 55 112
7 Josh Rogers 57 57 114
8 Phil Vilmorin 62 56 118
9 Matt Deangelis 55 68 123
10 Matt Thomas 66 57 123
11 Mitchell Harden 62 62 124
MPM (Pro Masters)
1 Daniel Marcus 54 59 113
2 John Dickison 57 57 114
3 Rick Belhumuer 61 57 118
4 Tim Jiardini 60 59 119
5 Matt Jackson 62 62 124
6 Bill Newman 67 64 131
MPG-M (Pro Grand Masters 50+)
1 Greg Kurtz 56 60 116
2 Rick Williams 64 64 128
3 Bradley Arnall 65 65 130
MAM (Advanced Masters Am)
1 John Campos 59 61 120
2 Bill Stewart 59 63 122
3 John Fissel 60 62 122
4 Ed Hovestadt 60 65 125
5 Ted Cormier 64 67 131
6 Steve Guiliotis 68 70 138
7 Greg Jackson 70 70 140
8 Ken Dawson 61 DNF DNF
MA1 (Ametuers top division)
1 Jason Powers 58 54 112
2 Chris Piaseczny 59 57 116
3 Allen Smith 55 61 116
4 Jay Bayer 58 59 117
5 Steve Solbo 60 57 117
6 Mike Andrews 61 57 118
7 Clayton Davidson 59 61 120
8 Justin White 61 60 121
9 Sandy Redd 57 65 122
10 Chuck Gerbrands 62 61 123
11 Pat Barnett 64 60 124
12 Arty Graustein 62 64 126
13 John Borelli 62 65 127
14 Mark Valis 65 62 127
15 Keith Burtt 65 62 127
16 Eric Kaplan 67 61 128
17 Matthew Heenan 64 65 129
18 John Mucciarone 64 66 130
19 Tushar Patel 69 61 130
20 Jeff Chauvin 70 61 131
21 Bob Direnzo 70 63 133
22 Kyle Sauerbrunn 67 70 137
23 Marco Iannello 69 70 139
MA2 (AM 2 second level)
1 Sean Jack 61 62 123
2 Corey Cramer 62 63 125
3 Brian Cummings 61 64 125
4 Brandon Doster 62 65 127
5 Eric Kevorkian 66 64 130
6 Justin Anderson 70 70 140
7 Brady Martin 70 74 144
8 Tom Graustein 78 72 150
9 Sam Paul 79 73 152
10 Paul Benoit 83 77 160
WA1 (Am women)
1 Kristi Bayer 74 78 152
2 Debbie Guiliotis 88 92 180
Recreational
1 Sam Allen 57 67 124
2 Cosmas Papanikolaou 66 87 153
3 Coleman Marcus 66 96 162