paulw
Eagle Member
People running tournaments should make money for all the effort that they put into tournaments.
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Am world BAGGERS
- Thread starter MrRaider
- Start date
Chains Bailey
Birdie Member
I should not have used 98% and just said Majority and Minority --- that is a mistake I made and will try not to continue doing so in the future.
There must be a way I haven't discovered that all that merchandise gets handled without the TD's efforts. Because apparently the wholesale/retail margin must belong to the players, not the TD. I've got to figure out how that works one day.
I suppose when we prepare and sell lunches on site, we're scamming the players there, too.
I suppose when we prepare and sell lunches on site, we're scamming the players there, too.
Heresy! The people who WORK should make money instead of the people at PLAY? Be gone with you!
Chains Bailey
Birdie Member
OK - yes sometimes money comes out of my (TDs) pockets.
And I should just sum up things as PDGA events that start from scratch', which pay the Pros 100%+ of their entry fees + additional money for B/A Tiers in the form of Payout and take Zero money from the Pros for any other expenses = those expenses being paid for by the AM money (Entry fees/AM Scam/Merch Profit).
IMO, the majority of PDGA events follow this template. A minority of PDGA events have Club/5050 CTP/Sponsorship etc...funds available to cover such costs.
If a PDGA event pays 100%+ of Pro entry fees + additional money for A and B tiers back to the Pros in the form of Payout, I stay with my initial statement that the Pro money is not paying for any of the event.
I have hi-jacked this thread, my apologies to all - I get invested in debating too much - it is a character flaw that I am working on (Unsuccessfully).
So, the 1000 rated player is a bagger?
Its simple..... Change ALL of the player fees. Make it Novice, Am and Pro..... Novice 40$ (PP and Trophy to top5) They shouldnt be allowed to play in anything over a C tier.... Am 75$ (PP and cash within the division) They shouldnt be allowed to play in anything over a B tier..Do big Am tournaments regionally that could qualify to play in a "Open" major.... Open 100$ to 200$ (PP and Cash within the division) If the Pro's want more Cash put more in... Look at entry fees in the PGA. Flame on IDK Ill pay 150 5 times a year if it pays down 30 spots. That being said I play up because I like the competition, am I going to go out and beat Will, Ricky and Nikko? Nah but I dont call it donating either its part of the sport! There are ballers in EVERY sport and yes they tend to win when they play well!
TheArnoldPalmer
Eagle Member
^
have you looked at your average disc golfer? Most of them have a hard time justifying the $50 entry fee and don't forget about gas, food, possible time off from work.Raise tourney prices more and even less people will play tourneys, IMO.
It's crazy how the simple fact of a guy bagging has caused all of these offshoot discussions
The Sport needs money. People complain about money basically no matter if its open payout cash or Am payout Merch... Deeper payouts in every division helps everyone. Unless you can find big sponsors the only way to apease people is to charge more and pay out deeper... Do you want to be a tournament player or a novice golfer hitting the "Links" ?
Halcón
Free At Last
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2012
- Messages
- 12,038
And that would be the day the PDGA died. The am side would be just fine, there are plenty of amateurs who want to play in tournaments, and it's a whole lot easier to run am events without losing money. I'm very skeptical of how the pro side, once split off, would be able to even support what the PDGA currently does for pros and I'm positive they wouldn't be able to grow payouts without the current infrastructure supported by dues paying amateurs.
If you did all that, especially making ams trophy only and leveling out the pro entry fees, suddenly there's a whole lot less money for payouts and the "am scam" (which I have no real problem with) stops paying for all the tournament fees which lowers payout even more. I'm not seeing how that would incentivize any more people into the pro ranks unless you're looking to make that more of a trophy only situation (and then it's not any different from amateur).
I wish it was ok for TDs to keep all of that merch margin. I certainly would never complain about a TD who took all the event fees out of the entry fees and only paid out what was left rather than feeling obligated to roll that margin back into the purse. I think TDs are much more important to the sport than paying a little extra to our "pros", and I really do wish that the people who work so hard to put on great events for us could do it without having to worry about whether they'll break even.
No way I'm reading this thread...
There was a guy a few years ago that played Bowling Green every year. I think the guys name was Marc Estenfelder and he actually won the thing once. Anyway the dude had a super-inflated rating from only playing a few events at courses he knew well, but he liked playing BG and stayed AM so he could go back and play every year. I heard the guy called all sorts of nasty things, all because he didn't want to play Open and wanted to be able to come back to BG every year. If he wasn't good enough to have won the thing once, no one would have cared. Because he WAS good enough to win and had this high rating, he all of a sudden I guess had to have the priorities we wanted him to have. So screw Bowling Green with the good time and party all weekend, if you win you have to go to NT's and finish out of the cash. If you don't, you're a bagger ass.
There was a guy a few years ago that played Bowling Green every year. I think the guys name was Marc Estenfelder and he actually won the thing once. Anyway the dude had a super-inflated rating from only playing a few events at courses he knew well, but he liked playing BG and stayed AM so he could go back and play every year. I heard the guy called all sorts of nasty things, all because he didn't want to play Open and wanted to be able to come back to BG every year. If he wasn't good enough to have won the thing once, no one would have cared. Because he WAS good enough to win and had this high rating, he all of a sudden I guess had to have the priorities we wanted him to have. So screw Bowling Green with the good time and party all weekend, if you win you have to go to NT's and finish out of the cash. If you don't, you're a bagger ass.
^^^ he gets it, Marc was a bagger.
I'm not sure you're correctly interpreting ThreePutt's opinion in that post...
i'm pretty sure a guy who is good enough to win BG Ams isn't just some guy with an inflated rating. he's probably pretty good at disc golf.
Marc Estenfelder was really good at disc golf. I just don't understand why he wasn't allowed to decide where and how he was going to play disc golf just because he was good.
FWIW, BG was won by a lot of 960-rated guys for a long time. It attracted a ton of players, but not necessarily the best Am's out there. The list of BG AM's winners is Wiggins and a bunch of people you've never heard of. They were pretty good players that had a good weekend, not the top players of the future.
FWIW, BG was won by a lot of 960-rated guys for a long time. It attracted a ton of players, but not necessarily the best Am's out there. The list of BG AM's winners is Wiggins and a bunch of people you've never heard of. They were pretty good players that had a good weekend, not the top players of the future.
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Because you're only allowed to play the way that's the most fun for you if you're not any good.
Marc was allowed and he did decide on his own. The guy had (still has, I imagine) lots of natural ability. But between work and family, he just rarely had time to hone it, let alone get out and play a bunch of tournaments. I didn't blame him in the least for staying Am all that time. And BG was always his one weekend to get away from the wife and kids and have fun doing something on his own.
Mr. America
* Ace Member *
Amidst this train wreck of a thread, was it ever stated or determined what's wrong with really good disc golfers not wanting to "go pro"?
The "Bagger here, bagger there, everywhere a bagger" mentality comes from our history. The PDGA didn't start allowing AM's to join to develop an Amateur base of players. They added AM's as a "future pros" division. It was all put in place to feed donors into the Open field. As soon as somebody played one good round, the Open guys would pat them on the back and say "time to move up." It wasn't time to move up and compete, it was time to move up and donate your entry fee to the Open division. If you didn't move up, you were a bagger. It was all a way to get more money for the Open guys to play for.
It didn't work out that way. There were a bunch of guys like me that knew that no way in Hell were we ever going to cash in Open so what was the point. We didn't move up to donate. The AM division swelled and the Open divisions stayed small. The Open guys kept yelling "bagger," but it didn't work.
The PDGA has tweaked things here and there trying to nudge people into the Open division. Allowing you to play down if your rating drops gives you a safety net. Raising the minimum rating on INT allowed a bunch of players that were donating in ADV to drop down, cutting the bottom half out of those huge ADV fields with the huge payouts from the mid 00's. All that was done to try to make those 970ish guys take a shot at Open.
It's not really working.
Disc golf payouts to AM's are so screwed up that it's hard to describe. People get so much stuff playing AM that there is no incentive to move up unless you are really driven by competition. A lot of us are not driven by competition. Disc golf is something we do for fun. If you are playing for fun, there is no way to make playing Open attractive when you can play AM, get a huge players pack and then win a bunch of discs. The only price you have to pay is listening to people call you a bagger, and that has never worked.
So we can look at a guys rating a call him a bagger. So what? Who cares? He doesn't. No one really ever has.
It didn't work out that way. There were a bunch of guys like me that knew that no way in Hell were we ever going to cash in Open so what was the point. We didn't move up to donate. The AM division swelled and the Open divisions stayed small. The Open guys kept yelling "bagger," but it didn't work.
The PDGA has tweaked things here and there trying to nudge people into the Open division. Allowing you to play down if your rating drops gives you a safety net. Raising the minimum rating on INT allowed a bunch of players that were donating in ADV to drop down, cutting the bottom half out of those huge ADV fields with the huge payouts from the mid 00's. All that was done to try to make those 970ish guys take a shot at Open.
It's not really working.
Disc golf payouts to AM's are so screwed up that it's hard to describe. People get so much stuff playing AM that there is no incentive to move up unless you are really driven by competition. A lot of us are not driven by competition. Disc golf is something we do for fun. If you are playing for fun, there is no way to make playing Open attractive when you can play AM, get a huge players pack and then win a bunch of discs. The only price you have to pay is listening to people call you a bagger, and that has never worked.
So we can look at a guys rating a call him a bagger. So what? Who cares? He doesn't. No one really ever has.
