The 2005 Florida Open

The annual Florida Open Pistol Shooting Tournament was held 18-20 February in Frostproof, Florida and hosted by the Universal Shooting Academy. Frank Garcia is the Match Director, as well as the host of the competition. There were over 400 shooters from various countries that came to compete in the "Seventh" annual Florida Open. I'm not for certain, but this had to be the biggest FL Open since it started back in 1999. This is always my first match of the year and one of the best for sure. Frank Garcia puts on truly one of the best matches you can possibly shoot in the US.

This year in the Open category we were missing a couple of names like Eric Grauffel and Saul Kirsch. However, World Champion Todd Jarrett showed up with his Open gun! I was so excited to finally shoot against him again. I hadn't shot against him in Open in over a year. When I noticed he was shooting Open, I told him, "I don't care how I shoot now; just getting the chance to shoot against you is worth the trip." Chris Tilley, Matt Burkett and JJ Racaza were also there. This was JJ's first FL Open and he really didn't know what to expect. It was a very difficult match and would challenge all of the top shooters. This competition always brings the best from all over the world. Matt Burkett shot the match on Friday and the rest of the guys shot the match during the remainder of the weekend. JJ, Chris and myself were on the same squad and Todd was in the squad ahead of us. We arrived on the range early on Saturday morning, like always at the FL Open, as our first start time was 7:00am. As the sun started to rise the squad began to form together on Stage 1. Everyone said their hellos and we got underway.

Early on in the match it remained very close between all of the top shooters. Again, Todd was in a different squad, so we didn't really know how he was doing. At the end of the first day, JJ took a 20 point lead. Todd and I were basically tied at that point. I took WAY too many extra shots on the first day and the second day wouldn't be much better for me. I felt like I was back at the 2004 US Open all over again. I made a couple of mistakes early on day two which set me back more than 50 points! It is hard to catch 50-60 points on two stages, but I gave it my all. I picked up about 30 points on JJ on the last two stages and felt great about it. I didn't get the result I was looking for but I did hang in there and showed myself a little bit of how the rest of the season was going to go. There was one stage in particular that I picked up about 25 points on JJ. At the end of the stage there was an extremely fast swinger that swung upside down. This swinger had 2 targets on it and was quick! I was able to shoot 4 shots as the blur of brown went by and got all 4 hits. Just to play it safe, I put 1 more hit into each target on the second swing. Thinking back on it, I did actually call the 4 shots on the first swing good. Why did I make them up anyway? I'm not sure, but I was very pleased to see that I had all 6 hits and good hits at that. As the last shot was fired on stage 10 and the match was complete, the results looked like this:

Results Open:
1. JJ Racaza 100%
2. Max Michel, Jr. 98.18
3. Todd Jarrett 96.19
4. Chris Tilley 90.92
5. Matt Burkett 88.81

JJ is a great friend of mine. In fact, he is probably one of my best friends in the sport. I would like to say that he shot one of the best matches I've seen him shoot thus far. The way this match was set up, it was not JJ's style. However, he adapted to the situation and shot great! Great shooting JJ and I look forward to competing with you all year!

I would like to thank all who made this match possible and say job well done! You guys need to be extra proud of yourself this year. Over 400 shooters in a weekend is AWESOME! Excellent job and hope to see you guys again soon. We know without your hard and dedication our sport would not be alive today, thank you.

Until next time,
Max Michel, Jr.