Looking into getting a basket and thinking the marksman by DD would b an awesome basket to force me to concentrate more during practice i have thrown at gateways version of the basket...but they say practice like u will on the course/tourney rounds which makes me want to buy a normal basket...anyone have any opinions on this or used the DD Marksman or Gateway Titan (same basket) would like to get feedback thanks!
If you're going to go the practice how you'd play philosophy, then you won't be doing much putting practice at all, right? How often are you throwing putts repeatedly with no drives/approaches in between during a round, after all?
I'm just messing with you a bit.
My experience with the Marksman is that anything that it catches will also stick on pretty much any "regular" basket you'll find on a course. Which to me means that any practice on a Marksman is going to translate to any course target without much issue. On the other hand, practicing on a regular basket
might not translate as well, particularly if your practice target is a better catching target than the one on the course. You get, as wproct said, spoiled.
Every variation of course-grade disc golf target has its own strengths and weaknesses...too many chains, not enough chains, gaps in the chains, spits slow putts, spits fast putts, spits high putts, spits low putts, allows cut-throughs, kicks out wide putts, pulls in wide putts, etc, etc, etc. So many variations that pretty much all players (myself included) can't really keep track of which ones are which in order to try to account for the differences. Instead we, consciously or not, end up tailoring our putting style (speed, angle, loft, spin, etc) to suit the targets we putt on the most. And occasionally, we run into a target that doesn't favor that style and we get "robbed" a bit more often than usual on those targets. Of course, we usually chalk that up to the basket not being good enough rather than recognizing it's just different. There's a general misconception that hitting chains and making noise should automatically equate to a made putt. It's just not the case.
A Marksman really helps you hone a general technique that is more immune to the variables of the different targets out there. Plus, having the mindset of "if the Marksman wouldn't have caught it, it was a bad putt" can really help the mental side of things when you do get a spit or a cut-through that you want to blame on bad luck or poor targets. Keeps you in the frame of mind that it was a poor putt that you can easily correct rather than the defeatist attitude that it was a good putt that got unlucky or "robbed".
