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Fun Before the Real Fun Begins at the Maple Hill Open

Fun Before the Real Fun Begins at the Maple Hill Open

Thursday, June 25, 2015 - 01:47

It’s been less than two weeks since the end of the 2015 Beaver State Fling in Oregon, yet here we are again on the other side of the country in Leicester, MA, getting ready for the start of the 5th stop on the 2015 PDGA National Tour, the 2015 Maple Hill Open presented by Vibram. It’s a 3050+ mile trek from Oregon to Massachusetts but for those fortunate few that have had the opportunity to compete at this event in the past, the long hours on the road are well worth the trouble.

As she headed out of Colorado after a long weekend at the Rocky Mountain Women’s Disc Golf Championships, the 2014 Maple Hill Open women’s champion Paige Pierce #29190 exemplified the enthusiasm that the Maple Hill Open (often referred to as its former title, the “Vibram Open”) ignites in a post on her Facebook page.

“…I'm super pumped for this 29 hour drive on Sunday if you couldn't tell (sarcasm). The Vibram is my favorite event of the year and I hate having to rush to it (not sarcasm)!”

—Paige Pierce

The players LOVE this event and it doesn’t take much more than a few hours of simply hanging out at Maple Hill to understand why. Let’s start with the basics; Maple Hill, the course.

Maple Hill Gold

Built on a Christmas tree farm, the property that makes up the four layouts of Maple Hill is as close to perfect for disc golf as any piece of land can get. It has beautiful scenery, huge elevation changes, lakes and ponds, long tee shots, short tee shots, heavily wooded shots, wide open shots, island holes, etc. You name it, Maple Hill’s got it.

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Maple Hill Gold - Hole 1 - Par 4 (Photo By: @pdgalive)

Maple Hill Gold is the primary layout used for this PDGA National Tour event, combining beauty with difficulty in a way that is matched by only by a select few courses in the world. Coming in at just over 8000’ and a par of 59, the scores that get turned in at the end of the day might be surprising to someone that has never played it. Last year for example, shooting between two and four over par (depending on the day) would mean a 1000-rated round.

Fun N Games

A bad day on Maple Hill Gold can wreak havoc on the mentality of even the most seasoned of competitors. Perhaps it is for that reason that Tournament Director Steve Dodge #22042 and his staff go above and beyond when it comes to making sure there are plenty of other activities outside of tournament disc golf available all week long on the premises. The schedule for the Maple Hill Open is filled to the brim with stuff to do. From pie eating contests to table tennis tournaments and everything in between, there is always something fun to do or for spectators to watch. Here are just a few things you can do at Maple Hill other than play disc golf.

  • Texas HoldEm Tournament
  • Skeeball
  • Pinball
  • Darts
  • Shuffleboard
  • Table Tennis
  • Air Hockey
  • Foosball
  • Bubble Hockey
  • Arcade Games

Champion Skins

Although there are plenty of activities that don’t involve it, the long list of fun and games does indeed include several different disc golf events. The featured event for the day was a skins match consisting of the last four Open division winners: Jeremy Koling #33705 (2014), Paul McBeth #27523 (2013), Cale Leiviska #24341 (2012), and Nate Doss #11794 (2011).

Skins is a form of match play typically played in groups of three or more. The goal in skins is to get a better score on the hole than anyone else in your group, thus earning a “skin”. If two or more players tie for the low score, no one wins the skin for the hole and it is carried over and combined with the skin for the next hole. This is where skins gets really interesting, because with every hole that is tied the next becomes more valuable.

In the Champion Skins match played today, Hole 1 was worth $200 and each of the holes that followed were worth $150, combining for a total purse of $2750. On any hole where no player earned a skin, $50 of the $150 was awarded to the player whose drive was closest to pin (CTP), and the remaining $100 was rolled over to the following hole.

The skins match started out fairly close. After Koling earned a $50 CTP on Hole 5, all four men were on the board with $50 or more to their name. McBeth, having already earned $350 at the time, took a commanding lead with a birdie on Hole 7 that put him well ahead of the others, at least $600 ahead of anyone behind him. And it didn’t stop there. It didn’t even get close to stopping there...

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For the next six holes, no one took a skin. The amount of money on the line went up by $100 at every tee pad and the pressure went right up with it. On what many consider to be the signature hole of the course, Hole 14, McBeth left himself with a 25’ chance to earn $750 with just a single putt. After the other players missed their chances to prevent him taking the skin, McBeth did what he does best, and nailed a high-pressure putt to bring his total to $1500, with the next best player having just $250 and only four holes to go. And once again, it didn’t stop there.

McBeth hit his line off the tee of Hole 15 and buried another birdie putt to take the skin. He followed that with an 80’ jump putt for eagle on Hole 16, earning another. And then another on 17. When it was all said and done, McBeth had earned himself $1975 of the available $2750 in skins for the round.

McBeth nails a birdie putt on Hole 14 with $750 in skins on the line.

Skins is designed to produce results of that nature. It only takes a few fortunate breaks to appear to have beat everyone in the group by dozens of strokes. The point being, don’t mistake a lighthearted skins match as a foreshadowing of what will come over the four rounds of disc golf that will take place in the next four days. Anything can happen at Maple Hill.

Coverage

A special thanks to SmashBoxxTV for being here all week to do live streaming broadcasts of the 2015 Maple Hill Open on the SmashBoxxTV Youtube channel. Prodigy Disc is here filming for post-production videos as well. Links to all videos produced at the 2015 Maple Hill Open will be updated daily on the Maple Hill Open Video Coverage link in the Announcements section of PDGA.com.

Tee times are posted and ready to go for tomorrow morning. Follow the PDGA on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates including links, pictures, and videos. 

Note: A small section of the course, specifically holes 11-14, have very low cell signal. Because of this, it’s more than fair to say that the live video feed will likely be choppy and that pictures/videos uploaded via @pdgalive on Twitter will take much longer than usual.