“Yeti”

That’s the nickname that Jay Reading goes by. Who’s Jay Reading? Before last week I had no idea.

I registered for a PDGA tournament here in San Antonio: the Battle All Up In the Briars tournament at McClain Disc Golf Course. I sent a link to my son Dan, who is the one who got me into the sport a few years ago. He responded with “Jay Reading is the man – super cool”, accompanied by a picture of a signed Yeti disc. Apparently Dan had gone to a disc golf expo in Boston and met him there.

I had no clue who this guy was. I don’t really follow the professional circuit, and certainly didn’t in the late ’00s when he was one of the best playing professionally. But I thought it was pretty cool that Dan knew who he was.

On the morning of the tournament, I met Jay and introduced myself. I told him my son was a big fan, and showed him the photo of the signed disc he had. I asked if I bought a disc, would he sign it and take a selfie with it and me?

Now if you’ve ever been to any kind of tournament, it’s a lot of work for the organizers, and disc golf tournaments are no different. But Jay didn’t hesitate – he agreed immediately, with this result:

And it wasn’t just me – he seemed to connect with everyone there, even though there was a ton of other stuff going on.

They held a raffle to raise money for community disc golf programs, and one of the prizes was a hat from the Lazy Frog, a game store in Martha’s Vineyard where Dan lives that also carries a good selection of discs and other disc golf stuff. I texted Dan about that, and he told me that he had gone to the disc golf expo in Boston with the owner of the Lazy Frog!

Before I retired I got some NVIDIA swag for my kids, and Dan said to mention that he happened to be wearing the NVIDIA hoodie when he was talking to Jay. So I asked Jay if he remembered talking with anyone in an NVIDIA hoodie, and after a moment he said he did! He had bought some NVIDIA stock at some point, and thought that Dan worked there! It was crazy to have this connection almost 2,000 miles apart.

So now I’m also a Jay Reading fan: not for his disc golf abilities (although they are impressive – I watched some YouTube videos), but because he is a genuine person who seems to really care about what he does.