Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 21, 1992 TAG: 9201210125
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FRISBEE CHALLENGER TOSSED ASIDE
Jim Holliday uses his baritone laugh liberally. Sunday, he chucked back his bearded chin often, and his laughter drifted into the treetops, tangling in the sycamore branches that thatch a roof over Fishburn Park.Holliday could afford to laugh. He won Ice Bowl III, the Roanoke Valley's premier Frisbee golf title.
It was, for me, a crushing defeat, a monster blow to my monster ego. I'd gone into the match, as I do everything else, with a psychological angle to ply. I would pass myself off as the hopeless and un-athletic buffoon.
Then I would kick butt. At 33, I'm young enough and immature enough to believe I can dance pirouettes around the Redskin defense, flatten Evander Holyfield, hit a Nolan Ryan fastball over the center-field fence and beat Jim Holliday at Frisbee golf.
I unleashed a barrage of verbal jabs on Holliday that the man clearly did not deserve. I slandered, accused, cajoled and belittled him. I wanted to goad this good-natured man with the winning smile into boneheaded play that would prove his undoing.
If Holliday was tripped up by my Assault Frisbee tactics, he concealed his confusion well. His laughter climbed the trunks of oak trees and filled the sky.
"He's tough," warned Brian Hoeppner, an accomplished member of my Frisbee-throwing fivesome. "He is really tough."
But how difficult could this be? Frisbee golf is a game so simple as to border on the inane. Stand here. Throw your Frisbee to hit that tree yonder. Fewest throws wins.
It is as mellow as a walk through the park - in fact, it is a walk through the park, interrupted only by sporadic Frisbee fire. I was a terrorist in Utopia.
There were 27 of us, as large an Ice Bowl field as has ever teed off for the title. There were 27 holes to play.
I toted my good-luck Frisbee, a green model, smallish, with gold lettering: CARTER-MONDALE/Democratic Convention/August 11-14, 1980, Madison Square Garden, New York City.
It is not a good Frisbee. In fact, it stinks, but it was free and I figured it would rattle Holliday. Carter and Mondale won six states and the District of Columbia. I would win the Ice Bowl.
I would be The Natural. The Phenom. The Champ.
Throngs of Frisbee-ists would carry me from Fishburn Park on their shoulders. Holliday, bent and broken, would give up the game for good and move out of town to live out a life as a living answer to a trivia question.
Reality set in the first time I saw Jim Holliday huck a Frisbee.
He can clear the tops of century-old trees or slice through bramble. He can skim it off the surface of creeks. He can curve them, roll them, and make them drop like wounded grouse onto their intended targets.
My Carter-Mondale model, true to form, wandered hither and yon, trying to score points but never amounting to much. As the nation leaned right, Carter-Mondale went left. As the target loomed straight, my Frisbee streaked backward.
I scored a 112, not good enough for last place, but good for next-to-last.
Jim Holliday, the champ two years running, beat me by 41 shots.
His laughter echoes in the thicket even now.