To Be Called A 'Bagger...'

[Kegelexercise]

I got called a "bagger" at my first ever tournament a few times by my cardmates, but the tone was pretty friendly and in jest.

Having had no experience to draw from, I had no idea what division to register for, asked a few locals what they thought, describing my relative skill level, and followed their recommendations to register for rec. Got the "bagger" needle a few times after I proceeded to smoke the field in rec, finishing -16 over 2 rounds, winning by 6 strokes over 2nd place. I probably on some level deserved the label, but playing rec was perfectly defensible, IMO. I have been and will be playing intermediate and up from here on out though.

Long story short - don't worry about a bit of (hopefully) friendly name calling. Or really even the unfriendly type either. Play your game in the divisions you qualify for, and the rest will work itself out.

 

[magictenor1]

"Sandbagging", as as sports term, has been around for much longer than disc golf has.

Yes. In college we would sandbag in intramural bowling lol. we would be up in a match and purposefully bowl lower in order to not raise our handicap score.

 

[araytx]

In the case of playing as a non-member there's no risk involved. There are no lengths to go to. There will never arise a need to prove anything. Playing on someone else's pdga number, the way I've done it, runs the risk of the player themselves noticing before the event, especially in an A-tier where you usually can't show up and register in person. Disqualification is certainly a likelihood, which would be deserved and not bother me. But it also involves stealing ten dollars from the PDGA, which I do not like. I tried some convoluted means to solve these problems and ease my conscience, but in the end decided that using someone else's number was simply the wrong thing to do. However this does not change the fact that there's little risk involved in doing so in some scenarios. If you happen to be traveling and want to bring home some frisbees it would be easy to walk up to an unfilled event day of and choose any remote rec-rated identity from the menu.

...

While I understand your accusation of cheating, I deny it. I've never tried to gain any sort of advantage, and unless getting discs for friends typically give away my winnings to a non-cashing player or simply abandon them. But my indifference to winnings is beside the point since I've never played an inappropriate division, unless you count the times I've gotten my head caved in by good open fields.



This is a lot of jabbering to examine something that's unlikely to happen and doesn't happen often. However I recall the word "impossible" being used and am uncomfortable with that kind of certainty.

As a non-member, you're right the risk is only losing your money and not getting to play the event. So it's not "Zero" risk as you say, but it's minimal.

Since you only seem to care or play by your own values, you won't agree with me that unless you simply abandoned your winnings altogether and allow the TD to pass to the next finisher, no amount of "I'm giving my winnings to friends or other players or whatever" would ever right the wrong on knowingly violating the rule -- even a rule you may not agree with. To me that's cheating. Someone else out there was negatively affected by your actions, and undeservedly so.

The qualification of a competent TD is also important to your defense of the system, but there's no requirement or guarantee of competence. In TN I know of a player, non-PDGA, who only plays MA3 and usually wins by a margin. I would guess him to be a 920-940 player. I assume this makes those directors incompetent since he's well known and has certainly been complained about for years.

lol.. I knew a disc golfer that had 2 PDGA numbers. He used them at will..... TD's don't check that stuff... lol...

Yes. I consider both of those to be cases of incompetent TDs, assuming as you both imply, that the info was KNOWN to the TD. I do absolutely agree that all are not. So please allow me the courtesy to qualify my statement (as best I can) with it's intent:

It's not legal to play in a division you are not qualified for under current PDGA rules, and extremely difficult to do so with a competent TD once; nearly impossible to do repeatedly within the same crowd.

Now can you "one-off" while traveling? -- absolutely. Barry Bremen was the master. I don't think it'd be an issue in pro where real money is involved, but I don't really know for sure.

 

[GMcAtee]

Skip down to the last line to read the whole point of this post.
I've recently played a tournament this passed Sunday, July 26. (I did fine, I suppose. Middle of the pack in the recreational division. par + 7)

During the socially distant check-in, the lunch break and the socially distant payouts at the end, I heard a term being thrown around fairly commonly.
"Bagger"
It was clearly being used as an insult: almost like a direct attack on someone's character or integrity with enough animosity and vitriol behind it to sound like more than just friendly banter. With no context or comprehension about why the term is an insult, I felt confused and saw for the first time that the disc golf community might have a dark and nasty underbelly.

Up until that day, when I thought of the term 'bagger,' I would think it meant 'course bagger' as in someone who travels far and wide to visit and play at dozens of different courses to see the various kinds of layouts, landscapes, unique features and adventurous settings that our sport can offer. I would hope to consider myself a course bagger one day, but now I see that it has a negative connotation attached to it.

So, after all that, what is a 'bagger' meant to be in that context? How does it serve as an insult?

Being called a bagger is an honor. It's only happened to me twice in my life.

 

[brutalbrutus]

Being called a bagger is an honor. It's only happened to me twice in my life.

Ehh… I've called you that more than twice...