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Schultz Widens His Lead with One Round Remaining at US Masters

Schultz Widens His Lead with One Round Remaining at US Masters

Sunday, August 30, 2015 - 00:25

Another beautiful day of disc golf in Charlotte is in the books meaning only one round remains for the 2015 Tim Selinske US Masters Championships. Tomorrow, the 300+ competitors that have made the trek to North Carolina for the one and only age-based PDGA-Major of the year have one last chance to move up before heading home.

After back-to-back nearly flawless rounds at Nevin yesterday, 4X US Masters Champion Barry Schultz #6840 seemed to be on a mission to capture his fifth title. The Masters played both of their rounds today at Bradford Park, a much shorter course than Nevin. Playing from the short tees, Bradford is essentially a “birdie or die” layout for players of this caliber, and it showed in the scores.

Schultz finished the morning round with a seemingly impressive 10 under par (45), but it wasn’t impressive enough. In doing so, he lost two strokes to Kevin McCoy #6453 and one to Ken Climo #4297. Even McCoy’s round of -12 wasn’t hot enough.  Cameron Todd #12827 and Matt Peckham #21325 obliterated the course in the morning, carding 15 birdies each with Todd going bogey-free.

Schultz may have lost a few strokes in the morning, but he gained them all back during the afternoon round. He improved his morning round by four, turning in a final score of -14 for the round with the next best scores being -12 by Peckham and Jon Baldwin #18114. After finishing the day at 24 under par, Schultz now leads by four over Kevin McCoy heading into one last final round at Nevin tomorrow at 12:30pm EDT.

One of many beautiful tee shots from Barry Schultz, this time on Hole 11 at Bradford Park during Round 4.

Elaine King #3090, Des Reading #15863, and Charlotte’s own Debbie Scott #43896 battled it out for two long and exhausting rounds at Nevin today as a threesome. Debbie Scott shot the hot round in the morning with a 66 on the par 64 Nevin layout, placing her in a tie for 2nd with Reading heading into Round 4 with King till ahead by three.

Reading made a run at the lead during the morning round but she wouldn’t have the chance to do so in the afternoon. King slowly but surely pulled away from the pack, finishing the afternoon at one over par with three birdies and four bogeys. Reading and Scott are still tied heading into the final round tomorrow morning at Bradford, but King now has a comfortable cushion of six throws.

The Grandmasters have been on a nonstop roller coaster ride since Round 1. At one point during their afternoon round today at Nevin, there was a 4-way tie for the lead between Stan McDaniel #2938, Jerry Goff #2431, Michael Paulette #28645, and Laymon Gray #25260. Nevin is an extremely difficult course, and the ties were bound to be broken eventually. By the end of the day, McDaniel had moved into the lead, but only by one throw.

Eric Vandenberg #3089 shot an impressive 8 under par (56) and has now moved into the fourth spot on the lead card for the final round tomorrow morning at Bradford. The Grandmasters division is still an extremely close race. The top players are all one stroke apart from one another all the way down to 5th place.

Every division plays their final round at 8:00am EDT tomorrow afternoon except for the Masters. They’ll be waiting to tee off at Nevin as the Advanced Masters, who also play at Nevin, finish up their morning round. Follow along with hole-by-hole scoring on pdgalive.com and check the PDGA Videos page for coverage via The Disc Golf Guy and Sublime Flight in the days to come. High-resolution photos from Day 1 and Day 2 are available for viewing and/or download on the PDGA Flickr page.