Rules Changes for 2018

[Lazerface]

I support a stand and deliver rule banning fairway runups. You don't get to spike a tee in the ground in ball golf, driving is different than subsequent shots.

BUT I actually like the wide line rule. There are two kinds of foot faults; ones that happen to be foot faults and ones that improve the lie. How often are people running up and improving their lie by missing 3" to one side? Not very often at all. Usually it is a mistake if the miss is that small. For those that actually improved their lie we are talking a foot at least.

To me this rule makes me disregard the ones where players run up and happen to miss their line without a real impact on play. It also gives an immediate penalty to those that take a lie improving foot fault.

I hate the no re-throw rule. Allows people to improve their lie for a stroke. No bueno.

No run ups in the fairway is stupid.

That is all

 

[netposer]

Someone on reddit made a good point about abusing this rule, teeing off then making a 400' foot fault to drop it in the basket for a penalty 3. Curious to see what language there is to prevent this.

When I heard about his new rule on the Smashboxx podcast that's the first thing I thought of too. How egregious does the "foot fault" have to be?

 

[biscoe]

Whoa. I can certainly take advantage of this when stuck up a tree though I think it breaks the spirit of playing where it lies.

the way to fix that was to get rid of the silly 2 meter rule in its entirety.

 

[biscoe]

I don't understand the "foot fault" with this new rule. So I could, from the tee, run down the fairway and drop my disc in the basket for a 2?

as long as no one deems you to be deliberately doing so in which case you could be subject to dq.

 

[biscoe]

There has been a lot of half hearted talk over the years about dg needing another organization. i do not subscribe to this in general but if they decided to mandate stand and deliver i would form the darn thing myself.

 

[hellbound]

i want to know last week if i remember right on smashboxx it was side +1 for foot fault and +1 for ob on the same throw? but the new rule book states you can't have to penilties on the same throw?

 

[lyleoross]

Public discourse. I work in insurance. Public discourse on rules changes is the norm. It works quiet well. They include some effort in the process so that only those who are interested participate. Weakness, invested interests participate.

Stand and Deliver vs new box rule. Going back fifteen years I was told by board members that the PDGA wasn't invested in open field foot faults. If you eliminated the open field run up you would make the game less interesting. This rule strikes me as a way to make the foot faults due to open field run ups more ambiguous, thus decreasing calls. The PDGA wants the spirit of the rule obeyed, but not the hard fact of the written word. Ive felt for some time that sans stand and deliver this option is a good one. If you're so far off that box that your card can tell, you're not trying and should be called. Good solution IMO. And I'm a stand and deliver guy.

 

[stratedge]

Most of our trees are in clusters. If it get stuck and take a 2 meter penalty, chances are I'm in the middle of a group of trees and throwing through them is usually not an attractive line. Backing up would be very helpful.

Except keep in mind you're backing up along the lie... which in pretty much any case I can think of on courses I am familiar with, takes me further into trouble/OB. If the idea here is "you've already been punished, so we want you to allow you to come out to make a decent shot", then I could see this rule becoming on a line back towards where you last threw from, rather than away from the basket (lie). This would have the presumably desired effect of taking you into the fairway.

 

[giles]

So am I reading the change correctly. "Missing a hole is par +4" It doesn't stipulate that it is in regards to the start of the round.
I get a gnarly cut, I can go back to my truck to doctor it up, then resume the round at my leisure?
I get sick and don't finish my round, can I come back the next day if I'm feeling better?
If this is the case I like the idea. I would be bummed if I traveled to a tournament and for some reason had to miss a few holes I'm still eligible to play the remainder of the event.

 

[_MTL_]

Running up and dropping a disc is clearly an attempt to circumvent the rules. That's defined in the rule book as a DQ.

Obviously someone running up 100 feet is clear and not even worth discussing But at some point it's not clear and that's a valid concern.

Let's compare the same situation where it's not clear someone is doing it intentionally to the current rule and the upcoming rule.

Situation: John really wants to be as far forward as he can. He decides to step across his mini intentionally to gain as much advantage as he can. John does this.

Current Rule: A player or an official would have to call a foot fault. Should this be called, John get's to rethrow without penalty (assuming it's the first one of the round).
Future rule - A player and a second or an official would have to call the foot fault. John gets a penalty.

I think that John is more likely to try and do it intentionally in the first example b/c the punishment if caught is way less severe. I just don't see how people will suddenly take advantage of this when they had more opportunity before.

 

[stratedge]

I don't understand the "foot fault" with this new rule. So I could, from the tee, run down the fairway and drop my disc in the basket for a 2?

This really deserves more attention. I spent the last half hour trying to find a reason you can't do this; something that puts some boundaries on rule violations so that you can't do crazy things, and I can't find it anywhere in the new rules.

It just doesn't fundamentally make sense to say "you broke a rule... but it still counts". That's just.... stupid. It makes an assumption that the degree to which the rule was broken was minor, but you can't make that assumption.

 

[_MTL_]

This really deserves more attention. I spent the last half hour trying to find a reason you can't do this; something that puts some boundaries on rule violations so that you can't do crazy things, and I can't find it anywhere in the new rules.

It just doesn't fundamentally make sense to say "you broke a rule... but it still counts". That's just.... stupid. It makes an assumption that the degree to which the rule was broken was minor, but you can't make that assumption.

Comp Manual 3.3 B 5 Clearly states a willful attempt to circumvent the rules of play can be DQed.

https://www.pdga.com/rules/competition-manual/section-3-player-code-conduct/33-player-misconduct

Read my post before yours - I don't understand why people think this is suddenly an issue.

 

[stratedge]

This really deserves more attention. I spent the last half hour trying to find a reason you can't do this; something that puts some boundaries on rule violations so that you can't do crazy things, and I can't find it anywhere in the new rules.

It just doesn't fundamentally make sense to say "you broke a rule... but it still counts". That's just.... stupid. It makes an assumption that the degree to which the rule was broken was minor, but you can't make that assumption.

Responding to myself here... so it's I think a matter of debate to draw a line between "misplay" and "stance violation". If my opponent runs up the fairway and drops his disc in the basket on a par 5, calling it a penalty 2 stance violation, my argument is going to be it's a misplay because he "played from the wrong lie".

QA-MIS-2
I threw from another player's disc
by accident. Was that a foot fault,
or a misplay?
That's a misplay because the wrong lie
was used. A foot fault, or stance violation,
presumes that the correct lie is being
used but that the player missed it when
throwing.

Similar thing, right? But... exactly when does a stance violation become a misplay?

If I step on my mini... stance violation.
If I am a full stride past my mini... stance violation or misplay?
What about half a stride? What about 2? What about 10?

If I read 811-F-1, really either all of these things are the "wrong lie", or none of them are. We need a good firm line between a small error in a throw, and an egregious one, where one is allowed to stand with a penalty, and one is not.

 

[stratedge]

Comp Manual 3.3 B 5 Clearly states a willful attempt to circumvent the rules of play can be DQed.

https://www.pdga.com/rules/competition-manual/section-3-player-code-conduct/33-player-misconduct

Read my post before yours - I don't understand why people think this is suddenly an issue.

It's suddenly an issue because of the fact that the you didn't need to differentiate between a small error in throw, and a large error before; they all resulted in a re-throw. Now that you don't have to re-throw, it opens up loopholes.

See my more recent post, how do you define a willful attempt to circumvent the rules when it comes to a stand violation? What if someone runs way past their mini, or is a meter off to the side when trying to get out of trouble? Do we now call those misplays?

 

[_MTL_]

Difference between running up and throwing it in and a misplay is there is an established lie present in a misplay.

And then we get back to logical assumptions. If you hit the first tree and your opponent parks it, you can't just run up to his lie and hole out. It's clearly intentionally breaking the rules.

 

[_MTL_]

I honestly think people are looking waaaaaaaaaaay too into this and creating scenarios that are clearly cheating, clearly situations people wouldn't allow to happen and situations I've never heard of in over 25 years of playing, running events and being on a committee that hears the craziest of the crazy for 10 years.

 

[biscoe]

It's suddenly an issue because of the fact that the you didn't need to differentiate between a small error in throw, and a large error before; they all resulted in a re-throw. Now that you don't have to re-throw, it opens up loopholes.

See my more recent post, how do you define a willful attempt to circumvent the rules when it comes to a stand violation? What if someone runs way past their mini, or is a meter off to the side when trying to get out of trouble? Do we now call those misplays?

Exactly- rules should be written to proscribe actions rather than to judge intent.

 

[teemkey]

From the PDGA 2018 new rules page:

There is no longer a separate section for definitions. Terms are defined where they first appear. That way, there is no need to flip back and forth between the definitions and the rules. Each defined term is listed in an index in the back, along with the rule where it is defined.

Defined terms are generally needed when a word or phrase is used in a very specific sense, and only that sense, within a document (as opposed to other uses of the word or phrase that may occur in natural language). Any word of phrase with multiple meanings could be possibility for specific use, and there are a lot of multiple meanings in the English language.

So when consulting a rule in the new rule book, the reader will have to determine which words or phrases might be a term that needs definition. Essentially, there's no a priori way to know which words or phrases are unique to the rule book, and, without a definitions section to identify them, the reader will have to read the entire book to discover them.

Requiring PDGA members to read and remember every PDGA-unique definition in rule book would ostensibly be a good thing; but, being DG players most concerned with throwing plastic and Homo sapiens with imperfect memories, a thing extremely rarely realized. I imagine this will result in doubling or tripling the amount of time needed to make a consensus ruling on the course.

This may be my new definition of a WTF moment. Just sayin'

 

[_MTL_]

From the PDGA 2018 new rules page:



Defined terms are generally needed when a word or phrase is used in a very specific sense, and only that sense, within a document (as opposed to other uses of the word or phrase that may occur in natural language). Any word of phrase with multiple meanings could be possibility for specific use, and there are a lot of multiple meanings in the English language.

So when consulting a rule in the new rule book, the reader will have to determine which words or phrases might be a term that needs definition. Essentially, there's no a priori way to know which words or phrases are unique to the rule book, and, without a definitions section to identify them, the reader will have to read the entire book to discover them.

Requiring PDGA members to read and remember every PDGA-unique definition in rule book would ostensibly be a good thing; but, being DG players most concerned with throwing plastic and Homo sapiens with imperfect memories, a thing extremely rarely realized. I can't imagine this will result in doubling or tripling the amount of time needed to make a consensus ruling on the course.

This may be my new definition of a WTF moment. Just sayin'

This I agree with.

 

[stratedge]

I honestly think people are looking waaaaaaaaaaay too into this and creating scenarios that are clearly cheating, clearly situations people wouldn't allow to happen and situations I've never heard of in over 25 years of playing, running events and being on a committee that hears the craziest of the crazy for 10 years.

That's because disc golf is small potatoes even at the highest level of competition, but if it grows to where we all think it will grow, this stuff will matter.

I always come back to my analogy of playing computer games competitively 20 years ago... when I played in early computer gaming tournaments, the prizes were worth $300 and we never really worried about cheating because it wasn't a profitable enterprise. Now computer gaming tournaments are worth millions of dollars, there's plenty of cheating, match fixing, and so on, and it all has to be managed. There were plenty of growing pains there, because initial games/rules/leagues didn't take cheating seriously enough.

When the prize at your local C tier is $5000... this stuff is going to be come an issue. People are going to push the boundaries. You incentivize people to do it, they will.

Or to turn it around... how about the rules should be solid simply because they so easily can be. Why have problems like this when the PDGA can very easily address them with a quick change. There should have been a feedback period to troubleshoot these things, where players say "what about this" and they answer the question by pointing to the rule that addresses it, and if they recognize the rule isn't crystal clear, make an edit so it is.