Timber Haul

Louie's Workshop Opens for Business 🪵

adjusts visor Nine apprentices reported to the timber yard at Northern Arizona University's 7,000-foot Ponderosa pine cathedral, where 68°F clouds and an 8.1 mph breeze made for surprisingly civil sawing weather. This is Timber Haul, Week 1 of 8 in Louie's carpentry apprenticeship saga — Blueprint Bureau versus Sawdust Syndicate, rival crews grinding toward Master Craftsman status and a bench that outlives them all on campus. Today was just about hauling the logs down the mountain, but with eagles flying and a tag mythology already writing itself, "just hauling logs" turned into appointment viewing. Next week the crews get their saws. This week, they got their first real test of who can actually read the grain.

The Audit That Cleared Itself 🏆

Jonathan Bia opened the season with a statement: -13 at a 980 rating, seizing the RPA lead from Joshua Moore after hole 4 the moment Moore's card took a bogey and never came back. From there it was a two-man eagle clinic — both players carded eagles on hole 15's 551-foot par 5 and doubled up again on hole 16's par 4, a stretch that would make any sane opponent reconsider their hobby. Bia sealed it with a clutch 59-foot Circle 2 putt on 17, finishing 3 strokes clear at -10 for Moore. Moore's back nine was bogey-free and clean as a finished dovetail joint, but the round still landed 28 points below his 967 rating — proof that even a heater can run cold on the scoreboard math.

The Fade That Wasn't a Failure 🪚

Jamiah Bia claimed RAD at -7, but the path there was contested — Kaivyn Nez pulled even through hole 7 before Bia reclaimed the lead for good after hole 8 and never let go. Stacey Briscoe rounded out the podium at -5, and all three closed with bogey-free back nines, with Nez and Briscoe both notching eagles on hole 15 for good measure. Here's the twist Louie's inspectors will love: despite leading his division wire-to-wire from hole 8 on, Bia's overall event placement slid to 6th against the full field — a division win that reads better on the standings sheet than the leaderboard.

Dead Heat in the Timber Yard 🌲

Nobody split Zach Pasteris and West Begay in RAH — both finished at -11 with identical 952-rated rounds, and the lead swapped hands more times than a shared measuring tape. Pasteris tied through hole 4, Begay retook it after hole 5 when Pasteris bogeyed, they knotted up again through hole 11, Begay surged ahead after hole 12, and they tied once more through hole 16 before Begay closed the door with a clutch 39-foot C2 putt on 18. Pasteris's back nine ran 7 strokes better than his front, a climb from 3rd to 1st that's the kind of comeback Louie writes into the workshop legend books. Noah Smith capped a bogey-free -8 for third, proving the whole card showed up sharp.

Solo Craftsman, Solo Glory 🔨

Nikolai Kitaguchi had RAG entirely to himself, and he still had to earn it — a wire-to-wire win at +10 on a 661-rated round, snapping a three-hole cold streak across holes 7-9 before the course's most brutal test, hole 12, bit back with a bogey. Division of one or not, he held the final cash line and claimed his crew's top tag. Sometimes the loneliest bracket still throws the sharpest teeth.

Hole 15: The Eagle Convention 🦅

Someone needs to check the elevation math on that par 5, because hole 15 produced six eagles across the field — Moore, Bia, Nez, Briscoe, Pasteris, and Begay all carded 3s on the 551-footer, turning a routine par 5 into a mass birdie-or-better riot. Hole 16 kept the party going with four more eagles from Bia, Moore, Smith, and Pasteris. On the stat-tracking side, Bia's Circle 2 precision — four made putts logged on PDGA Live — headlined the data, alongside Pasteris (+26 over rating) and Begay (+28 over rating) turning in standout rounds while Moore, Nez, and Briscoe all finished under their numbers. If you're not tracking your throws on PDGA Live yet, this is exactly the kind of chaos you're missing out on narrating.

Zach's One-Man Skin Harvest 💰

One skins card, three players, and Pasteris walked away with 17 of 18 available skins worth $25.50 — including an 8-skin, $12 carryover scoop on hole 18 alone. Smith picked up a single skin for $1.50, Briscoe went home empty-handed, and both Pasteris and Smith notched their first-ever skins wins this round. $27.00 changed hands total on the card. Check the skins playbook if you want in on next week's pot.

Six Percent Closer to Sitting Down 🪑

This event pushed $10.00 toward the Benches for Butts campaign — $9.00 from league registration contributions, plus $0.50 winnings donations each from Moore and Kitaguchi. The fund now sits at $60.00 of its $1,000 goal, a tidy 6% with $940.00 still standing between the campus and permanent seating. Every splinter counts — support the build at the Benches for Butts fund page.

Audit Vortex: Week One, Zero Regrets 🌀

In the Blueprint Bureau pool, Bia claims the #1 Audit Vortex tag straight out of the gate — an entity whose entire legend is built on scrutiny somehow producing better outcomes, and Bia's 4.1-stroke RPA win over Moore is the tag's lore playing out on paper. In the Sawdust Syndicate pool, Kitaguchi takes the #1 Column Ruled tag alongside his RAG title. Both pools run full AllIn reshuffle mode, so there's no dethroning happening yet — just the season's opening stakes locked in. Everyone's on notice now: this is a league where absence means an automatic slide to the bottom, and no tag stays put for long.

Next Up: Saws Older Than Democracy 🪚

With Bia's Audit Vortex and Kitaguchi's Column Ruled tag freshly claimed, the Blueprint Bureau and Sawdust Syndicate crews head into Week 2's Blueprint NAU carrying real momentum — and real targets on their backs. Louie's unveiling eight bench blueprints this time, and crews are already jockeying for drafting tables amid whispers of design espionage after one crew mysteriously swapped their joinery plan overnight. The drawings are approved. The problem? The workshop saws haven't been sharpened since the Reagan administration, which means the race to make the first clean cuts before the ponderosa grain warps into unusable pretzels is about to get very ugly, very fast.

Register for Blueprint NAU

sighs A global saw-sharpening shortage is somehow the most believable plot point this show has given me yet.