1) I am not on this forum 24/7, not even 1/7 probably, so I likely won't read following posts, but I wanted to throw this out there anyways...
2) I don't know in how many threads this has been discussed or if anyone has ever mentioned this but...
How big of an interest is there to grow the sport anyway? I mean, sometimes it looks to me that people who want to grow the sport only think about the positives, like cheaper stuff, better discs (plastic, consistency and so on), more courses, better courses (design, maintenance....), more local players, more money to make for all pros, publicity (your friends will think you're cool instead of asking you "what the heck is discgolf?"). But what about the "bad things" that will happen? I mean, I'm open to anything that will happen, but I know quite a lot of guys that are just not ready for it or just don't want it. I mean those guys, that travel to tournaments to meet friends, smoke some stuff, drink alcohol, play alcohol putting games in the evening, throw some discs in between that, then drink again, be cool and so on. I know there are quite a lot out there, and I don't mean not-so-good players who (no offense) just travel to tourneys to have fun because they won't win (we only have one Pro division and that's it), but also pretty decent players who know how to throw a discs quite well. How about when discgolf grows? You will have a lot more guys like me. Guys who take discgolf as a sport. Guys who don't drink and smoke. Guys who don't go to a tourney and say "hey maaan I f**ked up sooo bad, but nevermind, I'll smoke some and drink some and I'll be fine". There won't onle be more of my kind, there will be more sub-groubs in discgolf, more rivalries (and I mean rivalries, not like friendly ones) because the drinking smokers will hate the tourney players, and the tourney players will hate those who just want to have fun instead of taking a tourney serious.
And I'm sorry to say, but I know enough people that don't even have an interest in growing discgolf. Not saying it's bad, but they like the way it is. They like discgolf as a thing for hanging around with friends and do some stuff. And what I think discgolf needs is, that we get more guys into it that are serious about the sport. We need a group of people that take it as a sport. Not only 1000+ rated players, also those who average a 900. Everyone who takes the game as such serious. And on the other side, we can have all the ones that like the game, because of all the reasons I already put up: smoking, drinking, hanging around, meeting friends. Again, don't get me wrong, I think that is perfectly reasonable. Basically every club in every sports is some kind of sitting together, hanging round (and at least where I live, drinking as well), but when it comes to the contest itself, basically in every other sport I did until now (soccer, ski jumping, snooker, ball golf, volleyball) the majority of people were more serious about it than in discgolf. I mean it's no problem that you will have every kind of people walking around in a park and just tossing discs and that's it for them. You also have people just taking their kids with a 10 year old football and head out to the soccer field to play a little. But when it comes to tourneys, I think the level of "sport" (serious competition, not just I'll throw some discs) needs to rise....
So I don't know if I somehow got out a point, but...I just wanted to get this off my mind...had this in my head for a couple of weeks now :doh:
