Arrow Flight

gills flicker with pixel artifacts Week Four of Artemis’s Thicket drags its glitchy carcass across the feed, and I’m still locked in this Baroque aquarium of a booth.

The Canopy Demanded Arrows, Not Excuses 🏹

Only ten avatars bothered to render at Cedar Hills for “Arrow Flight,” proving the forest’s reputation for surgical accuracy scares off more pilgrims than it attracts. Hybrid start, whatever—once the cards teed off it was pure tunnel-vision guuntlet as usual. The oldest woods in the Triangle don’t care about your tee-time preference; they care whether your plastic can thread needles without clipping the hit-box branches. Spoiler: several discs clipped.

Apex Predators Trade Body Blows 🥊

RPA served the main-card finish. Bradley Bushman led wire-to-wire but couldn’t shake rookie freight-train Logan Edelman making his league debut. Edelman birdied the par-4 18th to sign for a matching –7, forcing co-champion status and probably giving the PDGA algorithm indigestion: a back-nine 25 that erased a slow front. Bushman’s 967-rated 50 still clings to Tag #1; the forest respects the Bush without genuflecting. Greyson Culbreth sniped third at –5, ripping four birdies across 15-18 to remind everyone Cedar Hills’ gift hole is real estate you mortgage if you ignore it.

Stanley’s Surgical Strike (And Other Feats) ✂️

Drew Stanley logged the night’s biggest over-performance: 921-rated, bogey-free 31 on the front, finishing –3 overall—45 points north of his 876 rating and good for RAE gold. Xander Schnegelberger took second at –1, while Greg Stanley and Collin Zander shared third at +1 after Zander’s Birdie Bonanza on 9-11 tried to crash the narrative. In RAD, Zach Laciano fired a spotless back-nine –3 for the division crown; Elijah Melcher gutted out a tough +1 to place second. RAH belonged to Zak Swecker, who birdied three straight (6-8) en route to a wire-to-wire –3, shaking off a double on 11 that momentarily corrupted his scorecard.

The PDGA Live Data Stream Ran Clear 📡

PDGA stats revealed three separate Birdie Bonanza streaks (Edelman, Zander, Swecker), two clean-slate nines (Drew Stanley front, Laciano/Edelman/Culbreth back), and enough “sole birdie” separators to keep the spread-sheet honest. Stanley’s 45-point rating spike headlined the ledger; at the other pole, Melcher and Edelman both logged rounds south of their rating, proving Cedar Hills invoices everyone—some pay in strokes, others in confidence.

The Pots Remain Untouched (For Now) 💰

No aces, no CTPs, no hero selfies with ceremonial cardboard checks. The Super Ace pot on Hole 7 inflates to $336, sitting there like a loot box nobody’s cracked—yet.

Two Thrones, One Vacant (But Guarded) 👑

In Pool A the Alpha tag never left Bushman’s pocket; he defended by co-winning rather than dominating, the administrative spawn-code still counting him as apex predator. Across the Swap-mode divide, Tailey Rowley no-showed for the second time in three weeks; the system shields Tag #1 by absence, but the countdown reads 2/3 missed events before automatic forfeit. Translation: Rowley’s throne is warm, empty, and on a very short timer.

Midpoint Check: The Herd Is Thinning 🐺

Four weeks down, six to go, and the forest has already bookmarked names. Newcomers like Edelman arrived with quivers full; others are still loading. The referral pipeline keeps pumping fresh avatars into the simulation, but Cedar Hills’ collision detection hasn’t noticed—trees still win most clipping disputes. From the booth, I’ll keep logging who survives the render cycle… whether I want to or not.