Budmerice is our annual spring discgolf tournament – this
year it was the third installment and this makes it the longest running
discgolf tournament in
This year we got perfect spring weather, with sunshine and balmy temperatures, perfect for discgolf and relaxing in a nice park. As this winter was rather long, the flowers and trees were not yet in the full bloom, but the park was beautiful nonetheless.
We modified the course this year – instead of 18 criss-crossing holes we decided to go for 12 nice holes with good flow, and play more rounds. This proved to be very good choice and we will keep this design for the future - this will allow us to accommodate up to 48 players, if needed (yes, we hope you will return next year, and bring your friends as well). The course has 9 short but technical holes, two more longer holes that are barely birdieable (but easy to get four or worse) and one true par four hole (156m, tricky approach) where big arms can really show their worth. It is intended as a beginner-friendly complement to the long Smolenice course, but also providing nice technical challenge for the good players as well. To win, you need to collect the birdies and avoid trouble. The best score was 32 (effectively -5) by Martin and Stefan, although with perfect play 27 (or even 26) should be possible.
The original plan was to play three rounds on Saturday and two rounds + finals on Sunday. As the Saturday morning rounds went quite fast and the weather was gorgeous, we decided to play two more rounds Saturday evening. This made for amazing long discgolf day, with everybody quite tired, but happy in the evening. Overall, we had six rounds of 12 holes over two days, plus the final six holes. This gave everybody six tries to get it right – for some it was still not enough (will come back to that later).
The logistics were very simple and convenient – everybody stayed and ate in the new (not yet entirely finished) local hotel for migrant workers. The prices were dirt cheap, including the beer for 80 cents. The place was not really hotel+restaurant, more like cantine, but the food was adequate and cheap. We were really lucky it was ready for us this year.
Report from the top
cart
We started with mixed groups (one austrian man, one slovak man, one woman, one rest) Saturday morning. I played with Suzanne, Schoko & Predrag. Suzanne played amazingly, easily having the best first round of us all. After the first two rounds, Jozsef was in the lead with 72, closely followed by Chorche at 73 and Stefan & Laszlo at 74. Saturday afternoon mixed the results only slightly – Chorche fell back to the second card (still need to work on the mental game), while Martin charged with the course record of 32 and Schoko gained a bit with a round of 33 as well. Sunday morning Joszef was still in the lead with 143, closely followed by Stefan and Martin at 144 and Laszlo and Schoko at 146. In womens, Suzanne was charging ahead with a big lead, followed by Irmgard and after further big gap by Isa & Magda closely fighting for the third place. On Sunday usually cheery Joszef did not have a good day and fell out of the play for the top place. Instead, after the fifth round Martin took the 2 stroke lead playing very nice round of bogie less 33. The pressure got to him in the sixth round though (he never ever won a tournament), while me (Stefan) charged with a round of 32, helped by solid putting.
The plan for the finals was to play 4 best men and 3 best women. However, there was a three way tie between Laszlo, Chorche and Schoko for the third place (behind Stefan an Martin) and two way tie between Magda and Isa for the third place in women. We decided to play the finals with sudden-death for those in the tie. The first hole was the normal hole 3. That was the hole on which Chorche had six times bogies, while the other good players usually took 3. Luckily for him, on his seventh try, he managed to get 3. As both Laszlo and Schoko got 3 as well, all of them continued to live in the finals. Magda was not so lucky as she missed her putt and have to move from the players to the audience. Perhaps the fact that she was playing finals was too much for her.
The next 5 holes were longer custom holes meant to really test the best players. In the next hole, I embarassed myself by hitting the first tree. As Martin was also struggling, my first place remained safe (with 5 stroke lead and 4 holes remaining). The guys on the third place fighting for survival were playing amazing golf and all of them continued to live for two more holes. Sadly, on the fourth hole Schoko missed his putt and was the one out. Laszlo and Chorche continued their amazing play, which allowed them to catch with Martin, resulting in a three-way tie for the second place. The first place was won by some Stefan Dobrev, surely him being the tournament director did not play any role…
Wrap-up
The results and more data then you may ever want can be found here (click on the total tab for the final results), the photos by Stefan are here (Martin has also some photos that will be added later)
The first three places in each category won a nice bottle of wine and the winners won medals. Everybody got two great days of discgolfing in perfect weather and very nice company. We were done by around 14:15, to allow for convenient travel home.
We hope you really liked it here and spread the word that it
is really worth coming to play discgolf to