Chines
Par Member
The worlds shouldn't be about growing the sport it should be about showcasing the best talent available in the sport.
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WORLD FIASCO
- Thread starter Loomis
- Start date
The worlds shouldn't be about growing the sport it should be about showcasing the best talent available in the sport.
morefadeplz
Newbie
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2012
- Messages
- 25
For what it's worth, and to make a comparison. We keep talking about how close the PGA is, but they really aren't any tighter top to bottom. One recent tournament had 21 strokes between first and last, after two rounds. This isn't that far off from what we expect in our events.
Loomis, I love ya man, but you have to acknowledge the numbers they addressed above. If the women represent 17% of the total possible contenders, and the similar aged men represent 10%, you have a problem with your argument. I agree that in a perfect world there should be more than 8 WPM, but I also believe that 8 should represent more than 17% of the total number of qualified WPM players.
In short, it is really hard to make an argument turn on under representation, when the facts indicate over representation. I invite your response.
(In the abundance of caution: I truly want to give you an opportunity to overcome what I perceive to be your largest hurdle. But, one can appreciate the difficulty in responding to a factual argument, with an emotional appeal. The equities are split here.)
Loomis, I love ya man, but you have to acknowledge the numbers they addressed above. If the women represent 17% of the total possible contenders, and the similar aged men represent 10%, you have a problem with your argument. I agree that in a perfect world there should be more than 8 WPM, but I also believe that 8 should represent more than 17% of the total number of qualified WPM players.
In short, it is really hard to make an argument turn on under representation, when the facts indicate over representation. I invite your response.
(In the abundance of caution: I truly want to give you an opportunity to overcome what I perceive to be your largest hurdle. But, one can appreciate the difficulty in responding to a factual argument, with an emotional appeal. The equities are split here.)
People seem to be ignoring that the 17% is actually 8 people... lol. In the men's you are looking at 7.2 people per percentage point. In the women's one person represents over 2%. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Again if they are going to have a division just for the sake of that division that seems like a bit of a joke to me. I'm not looking to eliminate anyone, just questioning the reason for having a division where they aren't allowing room for any real sort of competition.
Again if they are going to have a division just for the sake of that division that seems like a bit of a joke to me. I'm not looking to eliminate anyone, just questioning the reason for having a division where they aren't allowing room for any real sort of competition.
Loomis
Par Member
The women in question don't frequent websites like this. I doubt they frequent any websites. Crazy as it may sound, a good portion of the disc golf community avoids this site. Other than Suzette, I don't think there are any women over the age of 35 on this site. I could be wrong, I don't know the entire roster of this forum.
And you still haven't given your name or number for them to call you and explain themselves.
Loomis
Par Member
You're a little late to the party.
Loomis
Par Member
So have I. However, they don't answer these sorts of inquiries.
Loomis
Par Member
Every tournament should aspire to grow the sport AND showcase the best talent.
If we just want to showcase the best talent then it should be a tournament of the top twenty OPEN players and that's it. No reason to mess around with all these other divisions filled with less talented players. And we can skip AM worlds all together. No one wants to see that debacle of lesser talent. I guess the Legends and the UNDER FIVE divisions... they can just be awarded a ribbon. Watching them play is nothing special.
WORLDS is an opportunity for every golfer who pays their PDGA dues and who wants to be recognized as a World Champion to play for that chance.
Regarding the earning points issue: Barry Schultz played in only one masters tournament the year he won Masters Worlds. Climo only played in OPEN tournaments the year he won Masters Worlds. So there is no way they "earned enough points to qualify for Masters Worlds" in the years they won. So the argument of points earned seems moot if you can just wiggle around the rules. I had not played one PRO event before playing Masters Worlds in 2012. So how did I qualify?
Regarding the math issue: Portland was a highly sought after location for Worlds and everyone was excited about it. They should have done some research to see how many people were interested in playing. By doing so they would have known that they need to make more accommodations for the field. You can't run the Worlds like you do BSF.
If 10 Legends players decide they want to play... Should we cut them out? Is exclusion the best way to encourage growth in the membership? And if you're going to limit the number of people who get to play, then their PDGA fees should reflect their marginalization. "You're not that important to us so therefore you only have to pay a fraction of what the others pay."
And I listed my resolutions to this. I can tell by the tone of the latest replies that a few of you haven't read the whole thread to know what has transpired.
Moonshine
Double Eagle Member
I'm sure it had nothing to do with how you approached them either.
Also, PDGA membership =/= Worlds registration fee. I've only signed up for the PDGA once, but I never saw anything about being guaranteed a spot in Worlds due to the fact that I'm a PDGA member. Point being, I don't see how not being able to register for a tournament means you should get your membership partially refunded.
You seem to have a few legitimate points beneath all the vitriol, but IMO the people running the event deserve a lot more credit/respect than you are giving them.
Have you ever ran a large event?
Chines
Par Member
Understandable, but at the same time you can't want to grow the sport and give everybody a chance to be a world champion. No other sport is like that. You have to work your way to the top and you have to earn your shot to be a world champion. I used to ride bulls and to get to the finals you had to earn your way there. They only took the top 35 in the country and so if you wanted it you had to hit the road and earn it. You went to events and earned points. Some guys were good enough to only go to a fraction of the events and still make it. The other part of it is there was a minimum amount of events to compete in before you could qualify for finals. Showcasing the sport and having the best of the best compete will grow the sport. I was wrong in separating the two. The field for an event called a "World Championships" should be the guys who earned their spot. Competing for a world championship should not be a right it should be a privilege, an earned accomplishment. If it was this way then you would have the best players of that particular year going at it to be the World Champion. I think the sport has progressed enough for that and if you don't want to go out and work and earn a world championship then you don't really want to be a world champion.
My issue is the lack of vision. For years we didn't have to worry, World's never filled. Then it did fill, and when it did some good players got caught out and it was a mess.
Now you have a World's held in a place where event fill in lightning-fast time. No World's has filled that quickly, so the PDGA I guess decided this one wouldn't either. Then it did.
It really seems like this easily could have been forecast and prepared for. Instead (like always) the PDGA sat back and waited for it to be a problem. They could have been ahead of the curve and prepared, but they are not. No vision.
Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
The vision is there but actions are typically reactive not proactive, not just in the PDGA but pretty common in membership organizations who act conservatively until problems arise.
I'd love to, but I haven't yet figured out what Loomis means by any of this. Then again, I never quite understand what people mean by "grow the sport" since, by virtually every measure except pro payouts, it's been growing impressively in the almost 20 years that I've been around.
It is beyond my limited TD skills to figure out how a city bids on an event with an open-ended registration, expecting to find or create courses and volunteers to match however many players show up. Or how to put divisions of, say, 13, 41, 17, 96, 61, and 122 players into pools of 72, which is the inevitable dilemma of uncapped divisions.
Fun, family and beginner oriented events like Discraft and a legacy ace race, the Trilogy Challenge, Vibram birdie bash and even more competitive events like the Womens Global Event are what are meant by events "growing the sport." They provide a fun, affordable atmosphere that is accessible for all a manner of players. It allows new players to see what a structured event feels like, while providing a good showcase for better or more experienced players to "show off" a little bit and give the newer players something to strive for.
Your standard tournament, on the other hand, are more geared for serious players who thrive on competition and fellowship. I don't see how it grows the sport, as the target audience is players who are already knee deep in the game.
Your standard tournament, on the other hand, are more geared for serious players who thrive on competition and fellowship. I don't see how it grows the sport, as the target audience is players who are already knee deep in the game.
Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
Tournaments indirectly help improve courses so they are more pleasant for the rec players. On balance, I would say more effort is put into making 18+ hole courses nicer than 9-holers primarily so they are legit for competition.
Honestly people are arguing just to argue now.
Open (M) - 144
Open (W) - 40
Masters (M) - 72
Masters (W) - 8
Grandmasters (M) - 72
Grandmasters (W) - 7
So lets use the seemingly popular % method:
Open - 78% men, 22% women
Masters - 90% men, 10% women
Grandmasters - 90.3% men, 9.7% women
Totals from the top 3 divisions - 288 (M) 55 (W) - 84% (M) 16% (W)
He is simply saying it doesn't seem fair to limit the women to such a small role when there were more women looking to participate. That's it. I feel he has a valid point, but then again as I just said I don't understand the point of all of these minuscule divisions in the first place.
Open (M) - 144
Open (W) - 40
Masters (M) - 72
Masters (W) - 8
Grandmasters (M) - 72
Grandmasters (W) - 7
So lets use the seemingly popular % method:
Open - 78% men, 22% women
Masters - 90% men, 10% women
Grandmasters - 90.3% men, 9.7% women
Totals from the top 3 divisions - 288 (M) 55 (W) - 84% (M) 16% (W)
He is simply saying it doesn't seem fair to limit the women to such a small role when there were more women looking to participate. That's it. I feel he has a valid point, but then again as I just said I don't understand the point of all of these minuscule divisions in the first place.
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beereakfast
Eagle Member
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2009
- Messages
- 647
Now children, what do we call people with suggestions? Volunteers!
Basically the PDGA benefit is all indirect. There are clubs out there on the ground working hard, getting new courses, attracting new members...they are doing the "direct" work. The PDGA gives them the framework. It creates standard tournament formats. Back in the day before the Interwebz, it provided the advertising through Disc Golf World News. Without the PDGA, it's doubtful that the clubs would be as organized and doing as much of the groundwork that they do.
The PDGA was developed by Ed Headrick to promote disc golf through events so he could sell baskets. The idea of the gender and age-protected divisions was to be able to promote the sport to a wider demographic. The age-protected idea has largely worked; I'm always running into some dude older than me that just started playing.
Gender? Not so much. We keep striking out with the ladies.
World's historically was more of a gathering place. People from all over who played disc golf got together and the top players competed. The rest of the field had a big party or competed in one of these smaller gender and/or age protected divisions. They were always a part of World's becasue there were not enough Open players to fill the field.
Actually, until recently there were not enough players to fill the field even with all the gender and/or age protected players. This whole idea of not getting into World's is pretty new.
Part of what the PDGA has and will struggle with is at what point do you try to convert World's away from the big meet and greet that it has always been and more toward the actual competition, if that is even anything they want to do.
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