On our travels back to the East after the Big D in the Desert, Val and I played back to back tournaments in Kentucky. The second event being the Disc 'n Dat Bluegrass Open, one of my favorites due to the courses and the travel vicinity to my parents home in Ohio, an annual tournament that I used to play every year when I lived back home. It is also great to see some old friends that I have not seen in years, great time to catch up on some past DG stories.

So the Big D in the Desert distance event was more then expected. Val and I arrived early into Primm, Nevada on Thursday afternoon along with Cary Trotter and Andrew Rich, whom drove 19 hours the day before just to make it down to the event. We drove out to the dry lake flats to get in some early throws and practice our distance technique. We were soon joined by the current world distance record holder Christian Sandstrom from Sweden who arrived early as well in order to get adapted to the desert wind conditions.

The season is now in full swing, we have played 3 tournaments thus far this year. Including a 7th Place at the Gentleman's Club Challenge in Las Vagas, a 12th Place finish at The Memorial National Tour Event in Phoenix, AZ and a 2nd Place at the Aloha Sushi Classic in Walla Walla, Washington. I shot some amazing rounds, including a hot round to start the year off in Vegas and my career best round of 1088 the last round in Phoenix.

So I arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina around 11:30 pm on Wednesday night after a 7 hour layover in Chicago due to some severe thunderstorms in the area. I was greeted and picked up at the airport by our good friend and tournament director for this weekend, Kirk Yoo. We stay at Kirk’s house every time we come to town for the tournament. He has an amazing house with lots of room to accommodate at least a couple dozen disc golfers and not to mention an $18,000 home entertainment system.

The first round of the tournament started out at Buckhorn, which is a super-tight, wooded course with various water holes on the middle holes. It is a course where there are lots of birdie opportunities, but also mixed with the possibility of taking some serious digits on an errant tree kick if you are just an inch or two off. It is all about throwing your tee shots down the middle of the fairway and hoping to at least get a putt for birdie on many of the holes. It is one of the tightest courses that we play all year on tour.