Big Arms Make Big Moves at the St. Jude Charity Invitational
Big Arms Make Big Moves at the St. Jude Charity Invitational
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563 feet. That’s the average hole length on the “Steady” Ed course here at the St. Jude Disc Golf Charity Invitational. Sure, there are OB lines and sand traps, quite a lot of them actually. Hazards or not, when a course is designed with that kind of distance, big arm players are going to gain strokes on the field.
Powerful tee shots are useless if you can’t control where the disc ends up, but that wasn’t much of an issue yesterday as the players took to the tee. The winds of Monterey Bay were virtually inexistent for most of the round, taking away a lot of the risk associated with throwing tee shots and fairway drives at full power.
“Moving day”, as the Saturday round is often referred, held true to its name. Coming off an unfavorable Round 1, both Ricky Wysocki #38008 and Jeremy Koling #33705 stepped on to the grounds of Bayonet & Blackhorse looking for vengeance. Seeing that they both improved upon their Round 1 scores by an astonishing 13 strokes, it’s fair to say that they got their revenge. Koling jumped from 20th to 5th with a 1069 rated 54 (-10). Ricky jumped from 16th to 2nd, now just one off the leader Nate Doss #11794, finishing the day with a 1083 rated 52 (-12).
Twelve under par on this mega-course is unimaginable. It’s even harder to believe knowing that the round included a bogey. With three holes to go, Ricky had already carded 11 birdies and an eagle. The hot streak came to an end on the par 4 Hole 17, where he would card his first and only bogey of the day. The bogey was still a three stroke improvement from the quadruple bogey he took on the same hole one day earlier, where three throws in a row left him out of bounds. Needless to say, he wasn't too bothered with a 5.
All tee signs can be viewed in high-resolution by downloading the caddie book.
“17 and 18 are two of the hardest finishing holes I’ve ever seen. I just wanted to play them safe and finish the round.”
He’s right. They are difficult. Of the top 20 players in the Open division, only Drew Gibson #48346 birded Hole 17 and only Jeremy Koling birdied Hole 18. Hole 17 saw only eight pars while Hole 18 saw just four. The rest of the top 20 players took a bogey or worse.
Staying calm and collected, Nate Doss remained on top of the leaderboard after Round 2, once again finishing the round with just one bogey for a total score of 116. He will be joined by Ricky Wysocki, one stroke back at 117, Jared Roan #49210 at 118, and Nate Sexton #18824 at 120.
The chase card is equally exciting, as four of the biggest arms in the game are easily within reach of the leaders. Koling, Nikko Locastro #11534, Eagle McMahon #37817, and Drew Gibson will all be crushing drives, taking advantage of their powerful throws in an attempt to sneak in birdies and eagles where most others cannot.
Nikko Locastro's second throw on Hole 13, an 800' par 4.
The third and final round begins this afternoon at 1:10pm PDT/4:10pm EDT with live scores, updates, pictures, and videos on pdgalive.com.
Let’s not forget why we’re really here; to support the kids of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. We’re almost to $165k and we need your help to continue pushing that number higher and higher.
Go to pdga.com/give and make a donation today!