Hanging baskets at tournaments... Appropriate or not?

[BogeyNoMore]

Every year, Motor City Chain Gang runs a sanctioned Spring Fling at Sunny Brook and there's a hanging basket.
It think it's fine (cool, even) as long as you don't go overboard.

 

[sisyphus]

...I think it's fine (cool, even) as long as you don't go overboard.

Agreed.
Definition of 'overboard' is either doing it too many times or making the basket so high you can't get your disc out (I've seen that once: bottom of basket was over 7 feet off the ground! Lip was well over 8 feet... had to find a stick, as if a cedar tree caught it...gah!)

 

[j_mardis]

....which is far from being a rule, especially since the sanctioning agreement doesn't require a course to conform to PDGA Course Design Guidelines.

Wondering how much this affects the opinion of powerful people - big money sponsors - that will grow this game faster than ever?

Ball golf has no such problem with rules, but that game has been around quite a bit longer...

 

[DavidSauls]

...powerful people - big money sponsors...

Who?

 

[DavidSauls]

.....I doubt sponsors of any size give it any thought, at all.

Harold Duvall and the folks at Innova, among the more influential people in our sport, haven't given us a hanging basket, but they're certainly not averse to trying out unusual things in big events.

If we ever got to the point where we had real sponsors, putting in real money to advertise to real spectators, my guess is that they'd support the unusual and exciting.

In the meantime, the objections will come from purists and those who see hanging baskets as adding flukiness to the game. I would at least understand top pros, who have a lot riding on each putt, wanting baskets to be as uniform as possible, and that uniformity including the basket being stationary. It's why I don't think they're appropriate for Worlds and NTs.

 

[DavidSauls]

It think it's fine (cool, even) as long as you don't go overboard.

A constant danger around our place. This morning, following yesterday's extension of a hole, I revived an old idea of suspending a basket over a deep creek bed, with a pulley system to crank the basket back to the edge for retrieval of made putts.

We won't do it, because it would definitely be going overboard.

Well, we probably won't.

 

[sloppydisc]

If you build it they will come...

 

[DavidSauls]

OK, we certainly might not do it.

 

[Pbmercil]

I've seen it a number of times. The only one I really hated is the one at Trophy Lakes, just because it is SO flippin tall.