It took some doing, but Rob and I finally found the disc golf course in Rotterdam. When we finally pulled over and asked a random pedestrian where we could find it, he thumbed over his shoulder at the fourth tee-pad. If it was a snake, it would have bit… well, it would have bit someone other than those driving past it in their car.
We pulled into the nearest parking area, and tried to back-track from the fourth tee-pad to the beginning of the course, but quickly gave up. So we started from four.
Hole five was short. Most of the holes were short. Granted, they’re measured in meters rather than the official “feet” of proper disc golf courses, but even after dividing by three and nudging the result up I found that the average hole length was less than 200 feet. Hole 10, for instance, was 30 meters (93-ish feet). I know guys who sink putts from that distance.
Anyway, Hole 5… it was short, and completely under a railway overpass. Your objective: shoot straight through an alley of support pilings. Embarrassingly, I bogied it. Keep in mind, though that Rob and I were both shooting with the same three discs. I left most of my collection at home, so I was naturally handicapped.
See? If I’d been using my Thumbtrack Birdie putter here on pole 9, that would have gone in.
Fortunately, Rob was a beginner, so by comparison my horrible game looked… well, less horrible.
We stopped at pin 1 to talk to a father and his two sons, one of whom turned out to be the first Holland Junior Champion in 12 years (not sure if that’s 12 years without Holland getting one, or 12 years since the last tournament, or what). Anyway, we compared discs (standard conversational fare) and talked a bit about the course. I very carefully did NOT say “the course I usually play is at least half again as long, with none of these embarrassingly short holes, and everybody calls it a short course.” After all, I’m a guest in this country, and this is apparently the ONLY permanent course in all of Holland.
I managed to find out where the locals buy their discs, so that Rob can hook his buddies in the Novell Capelle office on the sport. My work here is done.
We ran stopped at pin 1 to talk to a father and his two sons, one of whom turned out to be the first Holland Junior Champion in 12 years (not sure if that’s 12 years without Holland getting one, or 12 years since the last tournament, or what).
He might have meant in the 12-year-old (or under-12s) division. Soccer (Football) is divided up into age categories like ‘under-12s’, ‘under-16s’ etc. So maybe he’s the very first junior division champion for the age group which either is solely for 12-year-olds or the under-12 crowd.
While I was utterly astonished at how many people spoke English fluently when I was in Europe, even the most fluent ‘man-on-the-street’ still had a couple of grammar quirks that would stumble me a bit.
I’ll admit – this is my first visual reference for disc golf – it looks simultaneously cool and really fricking strange.
Lots of cool things look really fricking strange, at least at first.
Oh, the irony
Oh, the irony. You posted with that particular avatar on PURPOSE.