National Tour folds into DGPT

[Rastnav]

Bowling and golf come to mind...

We had side pots, brackets during league and even after league cash games when i was bowling.

Before one of the local courses closed down, they had a friday night random draw 2man scramble that paid out skins and places as well as having an ace pot. I'm sure there are many other courses that do this around the country.

Sorry, I left out what should have been part of the last sentence.

The key additional thing is that disc golf is (almost always) free to play at the venue, which bowling and golf are definitely not. That creates something of the expectation that all of the cost involved should get paid out.

Pool is similar, where you are paying for the table. Darts might qualify? but expectation is still that you are buying drinks while you are there.

I think we have random-doubles on 4 different days of the week at courses within 15-20 minutes of me, plus a cash singles game. Go 40 minutes out and it's quite a few more, I believe. There is putting league at a local bar, but that's more akin to the darts games.

 

[Three Putt]

Thanks. Not having lived through it and witnessed all of the history, it is hard to understand. Your thorough history lesson is appreciated.

Other sports/activities I've participated in have not had as much structure or strife.
By structure, I mean you have the PDGA requirements for an A/B/C tiers.

By strife I mean you pay to participate in the event, but somehow amateurs expect to break even. Take your local 10k run type events or cycling events. Nobody enters that thinking they are going to come out ahead or break even--you pay to get to participate. You get a T-shirt and snacks at the rest stops, maybe a water bottle (the equivalent of a player pack).

Those events are typically all volunteer and used as fund raisers, so I assume they are in the black technically speaking, but it's not for profit of the organizer.

All the strife seems to be a function of the structure that the PDGA has created resulting in (unfulfilled) expectations.

My perception of the PDGA as someone who crashed the party in the 90's was that it was a very DIY attempt by some very passionate people who knew how to throw Frisbees but otherwise didn't really know what they were doing.

Once the players took control of the PDGA, they had a good idea to expand the organization to include amateur players. The problem was that they has no vision for what that actually meant. There honestly seemed to be people in leadership positions like the PDGA BoD in the early-mid 90's who were confused by the idea that some amateurs wouldn't turn pro. They saw amateurs as pro's in training; you would play there for 2-3 years and move up. Once they were 5-6 years in and they had people who were not moving up, that was considered a problem.

Since amateurs were just pro's in training, they used the pro payout scale for amateurs and just used merch instead of cash. It initially was very successful at attracting players, but pretty quickly it was evident how it would get out of hand. There was never any vision or plan to get off that payout scale. So now here we are 30 years later; still with the deep payouts for amateurs.

But the player-run PDGA at that time was a wing-and-a-prayer attempt by players to keep disc golf going in an era when Frisbee sports were tanking. They didn't have any money. They didn't have corporate backing. They didn't have professional leadership. They had their passion for disc golf and a belief in a dream that it could be a big-time sport. All they knew they could do was hold events, so they held events. They kept doing what they could do and kept that dream going year after year after year.

So...is it perfect? Nah. We screwed some stuff up. Some of it still needs to be unscrewed. Some kid from Huntington Beach is making over a million a year playing disc golf, though. That was the dream. Those folks that have been on this ride since the mid-80's have to be pretty happy about that. They didn't know where they were going or what they were doing, but here we are.

 

[dehaas]

With inventory being so tight still from Covid shutdowns and demand far exceeding supply now would be the perfect time to turn the am side to trophy only.

I know it'll never happen, enough vendors are the ones hosting am events and the tournament payouts are a decent chunk of their overall revenue.

 

[@CD-]

Potential for a contingent of U.S. players to do a month long Euro tour from late June to late July and hit Nokia Open, Alutaguse Open, PCS Sula Open, and European Open on 4 successive weekends. This would mean skipping DGPT Preserve, Idlewild, and potentially DGLO. Plus USWDGC for the FPO field might keep some in the U.S. and not go to Europe at all. Where is the Tyyni if its not on the Euro Tour? Is AM Worlds vending going to draw away some of the top pros from The Preserve?

Currently not much on the West coast for the elite/Majors schedule so could see some of the DGPT events out there get less attendance as well. No longer are the Memorial, Masters Cup, Beaver State Fling, and Utah Open on tour (for now) and unsure if the 2 Silver series Goat Hill and Resistance Discs Open would get carried over. Tour has probably outgrown the courses at Memorial & Masters Cup but BSF and Utah probably deserve a stop. Of course Innova has its USDGC qualifier tournaments so some of those off tour stops may become more appealing.

No gap week between Jonesboro and DDO next year so maybe Mid America Open off the Silver Series? Or will it get pushed back till after Worlds and get better weather. Its a bigger drive from Emporia to GMC though. I could see that week being better for Idlewild...but also potential for something like STL Open/Music City Open/Pittsburgh Open?

 

[@CD-]

Only a week gap between MVP and USDGC as well, that'll get filled with the DGPT Match play event potentially? Schedule is really tight after moving MVP after GMC.

 

[txmxer]

My perception of the PDGA as someone who crashed the party in the 90's was that it was a very DIY attempt by some very passionate people who knew how to throw Frisbees but otherwise didn't really know what they were doing.

Once the players took control of the PDGA, they had a good idea to expand the organization to include amateur players. The problem was that they has no vision for what that actually meant. There honestly seemed to be people in leadership positions like the PDGA BoD in the early-mid 90's who were confused by the idea that some amateurs wouldn't turn pro. They saw amateurs as pro's in training; you would play there for 2-3 years and move up. Once they were 5-6 years in and they had people who were not moving up, that was considered a problem.

Since amateurs were just pro's in training, they used the pro payout scale for amateurs and just used merch in stead of cash. It initially was very successful at attracting players, but pretty quickly it was evident how it would get out of hand. There was never any vision or plan to get off that payout scale. So now here we are 30 years later; still with the deep payouts for amateurs.

But the player-run PDGA at that time was a wing-and-a-prayer attempt by players to keep disc golf going in an era when Frisbee sports were tanking. They didn't have any money. They didn't have corporate backing. They didn't have professional leadership. They had their passion for disc golf and a belief in a dream that it could be a big-time sport. All they knew they could do was hold events, so they held events. They kept doing what they could do and kept that dream going year after year after year.

So...is it perfect? Nah. We screwed some stuff up. Some of it still needs to be unscrewed. Some kid from Huntington Beach is making over a million a year playing disc golf, though. That was the dream. Those folks that have been on this ride since the mid-80's have to be pretty happy about that. They didn't know where they were going or what they were doing, but here we are.

So here we are today. Seems it is an inflection point between the professional and am side. Maybe a bit of restructuring is in order. A bit of vision for what those two things should look like in 10-20 years.

A PDGA that provides sanctioning, rules, and amateur -open support, and a pro tour that is separate. Seems that is what is happening.

The PDGA needs to start putting forward the vision for local/regional am/open grass roots. Seems that would make a lot of people happy.

 

[JRW III]

So all these TD's are ahead (profiting , actually) from the AM side but then willingly come out of pocket for pro payout out of the goodness of their hearts? And you think I don't know economics?

Ultimately your posts answered exactly no questions.

For those TDs who also vend, there is a decent amount of profit to be made on the difference between the wholesale cost of discs and the retail price the discs are vended at. That profit is often used by the TD to fund the tournament expenses, sometimes including pro payout. On the other hand, there is no similar function on the pro side, what comes in as fees goes out as payout. Thus the "profit" from AMs is often funding the entire tournament expenses (yes there are other items such as sponsorships, but keeping it simple for this discussion). Some TDs have found a way to keep the experience level high and still make a personal profit. Other TDs do it for the sake of putting on a great event and end up at break even overall or sometimes in the red.

My original point was that whoever does the vending has the right to the vending profit. If they want to put that back into the tournament expenses, to include pro purse, that is their choice.

 

[txmxer]

For those TDs who also vend, there is a decent amount of profit to be made on the difference between the wholesale cost of discs and the retail price the discs are vended at. That profit is often used by the TD to fund the tournament expenses, sometimes including pro payout. On the other hand, there is no similar function on the pro side, what comes in as fees goes out as payout. Thus the "profit" from AMs is often funding the entire tournament expenses (yes there are other items such as sponsorships, but keeping it simple for this discussion). Some TDs have found a way to keep the experience level high and still make a personal profit. Other TDs do it for the sake of putting on a great event and end up at break even overall or sometimes in the red.

My original point was that whoever does the vending has the right to the vending profit. If they want to put that back into the tournament expenses, to include pro purse, that is their choice.

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Ahildy13]

This is dumb. TD's are running events and they should be treated as business events. They should make money, that's how you get good quality events because people actually care. Why is everyone in disc golf afraid of spending money? If someone puts in a week's work to running an event they deserve a week's pay. Stop complaining that TD'S make some money. Grow up people, nothing in life is free. Pay for what you enjoy. If you don't agree, then don't play

 

[dehaas]

This is dumb. TD's are running events and they should be treated as business events. They should make money, that's how you get good quality events because people actually care. Why is everyone in disc golf afraid of spending money? If someone puts in a week's work to running an event they deserve a week's pay. Stop complaining that TD'S make some money. Grow up people, nothing in life is free. Pay for what you enjoy. If you don't agree, then don't play

DG started as a counter culture hippie thing.

Unwritten bad juju if you make any kind of profit. Kinda funny though, given 3P's history lesson on the PDGA and how the early days were focused on pros and adding ams was an afterthought.

Nobody back then made their living 100% playing dg, even The Champ. It's possible now, and we're speculating on a standalone tour for the top handful of players. But when we talk about am tournaments it seems like the general consensus is TD's still are given the stink eye for paying themselves for their time and effort.

Makes no sense.

 

[Ryan P.]

DG started as a counter culture hippie thing.

I've heard this from some, heard it disputed by others. I'd guess the truth is that it was for some and wasn't for others.

Regardless, DG is trending away from that.

 

[robdeforge]

I've heard this from some, heard it disputed by others. I'd guess the truth is that it was for some and wasn't for others.

Regardless, DG is trending away from that.

if not a counter culture hippie thing, what did disc golf start as?

 

[Three Putt]

if not a counter culture hippie thing, what did disc golf start as?

Disc golf has a start that is hard to pinpoint. The object golf "make up the course as you go" thing was prolly a hippie-dippy thing to a certain extent, and certainly the hippy-dippy object golf thing had to exist before what we now know as disc golf.

What we now know as disc golf is the result of corporate marketing. Ed Headrick was a VP at Wham-O and had an idea that if the Frisbee was in the sporting goods market instead of the toy market, they would have a more consistent revenue source VS. the notoriously boom-or-bust toy market. The IFA was created with Wham-O's money to give the Frisbee the illusion of being the basis of sports competition.

Frisbee golf didn't fit the IFA model very well; the IFA model looked more like a track meet field event with an Ultimate field. Frisbee golf took too much land and needed too much set-up, but after the Rochester Disc Golf Championship Ed changed his mind about Frisbee Golf and started concentrating on it. He came up with a catching device for it, but Wham-O said hard pass. They were a toy company, they were not interested in trying to sell Frisbee golf baskets to parks departments.

Then for whatever reason Ed Headrick left Wham-O; he patented the catching device he had created and started DGA to sell them. As he had done with the IFA, he created the PDGA to create the illusion that there was an actual sport tied to these devices to help him sell them to parks departments. After a decade of propping up Frisbee players with Wham-O's money, there were enough players out there to make it look like there was demand there and off he went. He still had connections with Wham-O to sponsor events, and Wham-O was selling the discs marketed as for disc golf so there was a reason for them to do it.

So there it was, there was professional disc golf. In a really cynical oversimplified way, it was really Wham-O paying people to play disc golf so it would look like a sport so they could sell more Frisbee's. There were passionate Frisbee players and a whole Frisbee culture, though. Not everybody doing it was getting paid. They kinda went hand in hand.

The player-driven PDGA comes in when Wham-O sold out to Kransco; the new corporate overlords had no interest in paying people to Frisbee and that was the end of that. The IFA shut down, the money stopped flowing and the Ed Headrick vision of the PDGA was over. At that point, all Frisbee sports had to scramble for a path forward. The PDGA was handed over to a group of passionate Frisbee people who wanted to try to keep Pro disc golf a thing.

With Wham-O now gone, the door was open for a start-up to re-engineer the Frisbee into the beveled golf disc and Innova stepped into that role. So now you had Innova and DGA with something to sell, and some passionate people trying to keep professional disc golf going. The baby steps to where we are now started.

So I really wish we had a nice holistic hippy-dippy start, but really disc golf as we know it exists mainly because somebody had something to sell and we were marketed at to consume them.

 

[dehaas]

I think some people point to Steady Ed being a corporate exec at Wham-O for arguing against it being counter culture.

Yeah it might've been created and marketed by him, but those who picked it up in those early days and ran with it shaped the culture around the sport.

I'm sure back then nobody wanted to be compared to ball golf, but now there's a big push to grow the sport and we're trying to become ball golf.

Personally I like the keep dg weird perspective, but also like some of the things that have resulted from growth in the last 5-10 years.

 

[Monocacy]

Disc golf has a start that is hard to pinpoint. The object golf "make up the course as you go" thing was prolly a hippie-dippy thing to a certain extent, and certainly the hippy-dippy object golf thing had to exist before what we now know as disc golf.

No opinion on hippie-dippy, but there was an object Frisbee golf course at my neighborhood pool as far back as 1970 or 1971. One of the lifeguards went to college somewhere in New England and brought the idea back.

Course is still pretty much there, but tricky to play because they moved the fence and you would need a key to play several holes.

 

[Three Putt]

I think some people point to Steady Ed being a corporate exec at Wham-O for arguing against it being counter culture.

Yeah it might've been created and marketed by him, but those who picked it up in those early days and ran with it shaped the culture around the sport.

I'm sure back then nobody wanted to be compared to ball golf, but now there's a big push to grow the sport and we're trying to become ball golf.

Personally I like the keep dg weird perspective, but also like some of the things that have resulted from growth in the last 5-10 years.

That's the trick, isn't it? There was something special about the bunch 'o weirdos that used to gather in the park and throw cheap golf discs at trees back when I started. I was drawn in probably as much by the bunch 'o weirdos as I was the game itself. How do you go mainstream and hang onto the weird?

*Cue Run-DMC*

 

[Three Putt]

No opinion on hippie-dippy, but there was an object Frisbee golf course at my neighborhood pool as far back as 1970 or 1971. One of the lifeguards went to college somewhere in New England and brought the idea back.

Course is still pretty much there, but tricky to play because they moved the fence and you would need a key to play several holes.

Oh, certainly if what you are trying to trace is "when did people first take a flying disc and adapt golf-like rules to a game with it" the answer probably predates the Frisbee. There was a undercurrent of Frisbee golf happening for a long time before the mid-70's.

The Ed Headrick step is the significant step, though. You don't get to where Disc Golf is today without that step. It's a major change. Wildcat object courses were fun, but having permanent official courses with an official consistent target and official rules is the difference between a game and a sport.

So where does disc golf start? Do you mean the game or the sport? The game is hard to pinpoint. The sport it easy, it starts with Ed.

 

[Rastnav]

Oh, certainly if what you are trying to trace is "when did people first take a flying disc and adapt golf-like rules to a game with it" the answer probably predates the Frisbee. There was a undercurrent of Frisbee golf happening for a long time before the mid-70's.

The Ed Headrick step is the significant step, though. You don't get to where Disc Golf is today without that step. It's a major change. Wildcat object courses were fun, but having permanent official courses with an official consistent target and official rules is the difference between a game and a sport.

So where does disc golf start? Do you mean the game or the sport? The game is hard to pinpoint. The sport it easy, it starts with Ed.

Well, it's not quite so simple is it? Because no matter that Wham-O saw a market opportunity, the question really is "who were the players of the courses developed with those first baskets ?"

I imagine that they weren't de novo players dug up in the salt mines of the advertising executives. Would it be fair to say that most of those people were already playing object golf? And this was just an avenue for them to be able to play more often, in a more dedicated environment, without people trying to run them off from dinging their lampost or garbage can?

 

[Three Putt]

Well, it's not quite so simple is it? Because no matter that Wham-O saw a market opportunity, the question really is "who were the players of the courses developed with those first baskets ?"

I imagine that they weren't de novo players dug up in the salt mines of the advertising executives. Would it be fair to say that most of those people were already playing object golf? And this was just an avenue for them to be able to play more often, in a more dedicated environment, without people trying to run them off from dinging their lampost or garbage can?

I ran White Birch in Hazelwood for the Parks Department there; we were about 15 years in on a first-generation course and I had some originals who were still regulars. From talking to them, most of them had played object golf at some time. They just played object golf spread out over a bunch of local parks blissfully unaware of anyone else doing it except for the handful of friends they played with. Some of them just liked playing Frisbee and had never heard of Frisbee golf until there was a course. Some of them did neither and White Birch was their introduction to both Frisbee and Frisbee golf.

What I took as important is that none of them knew each other before White Birch. Whatever it was that they were doing before the course went in, it wasn't anything that gathered a large group. By the summer after the course went in, they had a crew of 30 throwing in a league. The established permanent course created they environment where a scene could grow and thrive. As much as people like to mention that there was an object course in Endicott, Endicott never developed a scene. White Birch did.

 

[brutalbrutus]

Regardless, DG is trending away from that.

Not in my experience...