![]() Despite neither having a realistic chance of winning the event outright, the heavyweights were out for blood given that they were both dangerously close to finishing outside of the top 10 the prior week. It’s a beautiful love-hate relationship on the course, a mixture of genuinely being impressed by each others’ abilities, while at the same time voraciously scrapping for pecking order at a manufacturer whose goals match the larger-than-life style of its feature players.Įagle’s stellar play surged where Simon’s waned as the weekend matured, but nearly as many eyes were on the dogged focus of McBeth and Wysocki on the chase card during the final round. The Crush Boyz delivered massively on their reputation, playing their own game of catch-me-if-you-can at Fountain Hills. Additionally, getting both Fountain rounds done on the weekdays and transitioning to Vista XL for the weekend had the rounds flowing smoothly and allowed for magic hour finishes for both moving day and the grand finale. Pushing the start back to Thursday was a welcome, though overdue, change from the touring pros’ perspective. The Memorial Championship made some very smart schedule decisions for 2019, if I may be so bold. KJ Nybo’s caddy applies sunscreen to Nybo’s leg to keep the Dane’s grip intact. Maybe it was the stunningly perfect weather, like the kind you play in when you close your eyes and daydream about disc golf, or maybe it was due to the buzz in the air surrounding spring training, either way it felt great to be back in AZ. Pro Tour, National Tour, or no tour at all, this birdiefest, this deuce-or-die, this glorified putting contest that the Memorial Championship has turned out to be is our official cultural start to the party. There are better venues, there are better courses, but this one is ours. This is where the season “feels” like it’s fully begun. Like the memory of a crisp $5 stuffed hurriedly into a jacket pocket, forgotten about completely until zapping back into the forefront of the mind the next time that coat is worn, I’m awash with nostalgia. Normal, however, turned out to be exactly as I remembered it. It wasn’t that I expected the event on-site to be different from normal, but because my LVC experience shook my concept of what “normal” really was. I left Vegas on Monday around lunchtime, having finally done one evening on the eponymous Boulevard properly, not really sure what to expect from the impending Memorial Championship experience. Hundreds of miles of driving through landscapes you won’t see again until the 2020 season can serve as sobering, and motivating, sights. The transition from the Mojave to the Sonoran was the thaw-out, not only because the tour caravan barreled down Highway 93 out of the subfreezing Vegas nights into the warmth, but also because the players had whetted their appetite for competition and many were left hungry by failing to live up to personal expectations. References that are too old for my generation aside, my experiences in Las Vegas and Scottsdale were as different as the landscapes themselves. Eagle McMahon putts as Simon Lizotte looks on. Eagle McMahon’s consistent play defies this narrative of dichotomy that I’m trying to illustrate, so let’s project him soaring above everybody else in the early morning sky like we just did mushrooms all night and conceptualized our album cover. Sunday in Las Vegas showed that we know nothing about how this season will play out, but Thursday in Fountain Hills reminded us of everything the weary veterans from just a few days ago are capable of. It was a morning of sudden death, it was an afternoon of near assassinations. It was gutting it out in the final round as a lead collapsed, it was heroic never-say-die effort by those chasing the pack leaders. It was the best of play for some, it was the worst of play for others.
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