I posted above about the "excitement" or "impressive" parts of golf and disc golf. The exciting part should be truly parking a disc by the basket, OR holing a loooong putt. Right now that "long putt" distance is close to 60', and "parking it" is anything inside of about 20' for the game's best. Why not shrink that to 10' or so for a "gimme" and make a 40' putt a "long putt" that will be just as exciting?
There's a bit more to it than that, though.
Except for bad roll-aways, how often does a good disc golfer three-putt? Almost never. They have no fear of running putts on reasonably flat terrain because even if they have 20' coming back it's basically a gimme.
They're rarely going to 3-putt, anyway.
They don't now because when they run long putts, they're confident that their misses will still leave them in comfortable comeback range.
Take away that comfortable comeback range, and they won't 3-putt, they'll just be more wary of going for long putts.
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It seems there are 4 zones: (1) Gimme zone, where putts are almost automatic, (2) Good percentage zone, where the most of the scoring separation occurs, (3) low percentage zone, where players can steal a stroke with a good putt, but are unlikely to lose one with a miss because it'll land in zone 1, and (4) desperation zone, where the wise move is just to lay up, because the odds that a miss lands in zones 2 or 3 and results in a 3-putt are greater than the odds of make the putt from zone 4. (This is where the player trailing by a few strokes late in the match gambles).
Changing the percentages changes the distances, so it changes the distances for the borders of all of these zones. We still end up with them.
Reducing Zone 1 is the benefit of making the target more difficult. Zone 1 is boring.
Bringing Zone 3 closer is less dramatic. Much less for spectators---though I'm in the camp that theoretical spectators don't matter. I'm not sure it's as much fun for players, either.
Bringing Zone 4 closer is boring.
Putting more premium on precision drives and long approaches---hitting smaller Zone 1s and 2s---is a benefit.
These seem to me to be the pros and cons of more difficult targets, and it's a matter of whether the pros outweigh the cons, and by enough to justify a change. And in weighing that, we have to ask what the goal is---spectator disc golf, or participation disc golf. Would it really be more
fun for everyday players?
My opinion is that it depends on how much more difficult. I'd love to see baskets a bit smaller than the current ones, but not dramatically.
My wish is that the advocates would run more test events, and see how it affects scoring, scoring spread, strategy, and player enjoyment. The trick is that it's easier to do this with smaller events---in fact, I think the PDGA would love it if people did---than for events with top players.
But it's all theory until someone moves from the keyboard to the course, and tries it.