So many divisions!!!!!!!!W

[Thumber]

why should am divisions be subsidizing the open pot? I think this would be a turnoff for am players and I don't think its an incentive for them to play pro. Eventually some of them might move up and a smaller amount may win but mostly it creates animosity.

 

[prerube]

Perhaps those businesses shouldn't be in the disc golf business.

Everything was just fine 15 years ago when you had to order from Discovering the World or Disc Golf World and you would send them money orders. Too many vendors now anyway.

Yeah, it's nice to win discs, I remember those days. But, I was always working to play for money. I ended up giving away almost everything I ever won merchwise.

Many people will never get to the money level. I am sure you can think of some guys in your local intermediate division that have been there for years.

 

[keltik]

anyone have examples from other tournament based sports/activities. The only other sport I participated in that was heavily tournament based was high school wrestling and there was no payout but pride.

Can anyone elaborate on the flight system used in ball golf tournaments?

 

[Future_Primitive]

why should am divisions be subsidizing the open pot? I think this would be a turnoff for am players and I don't think its an incentive for them to play pro. Eventually some of them might move up and a smaller amount may win but mostly it creates animosity.

:thmbup:

Also be nice if the PDGA would simply do away with this terrible names, like Pro and Amateur as neither is used correctly. Then ignorant people could stop using them as an excuse to justify trophy only for "ams" and actually be forced to think of a real workable alternative to the problem.

 

[grodney]

anyone have examples from other tournament based sports/activities.

Volleyball. I used to pay membership fee plus our team payed a fee to play in tournies. A lot of them. No payout. Maybe a trophy or t-shirt to the winner. I assume the entry fees went to paying for facilities (matches were officiated by players on other teams in the tourney), with any leftover being profit.

 

[Thumber]

Volleyball. I used to pay membership fee plus our team payed a fee to play in tournies. A lot of them. No payout. Maybe a trophy or t-shirt to the winner. I assume the entry fees went to paying for facilities (matches were officiated by players on other teams in the tourney), with any leftover being profit.

Same experience

Also use to competitively race downhill skiing. Pay lots of money and all you got for a win was a shiny medal.

The issue in disc golf is the expectation of a big return on the entry fee. In other sports, players pay their fee for the joy of playing the sport. Not because the expect anything back.

Payouts are just a nice side benefit to the satisfaction of beating the other competitors for me.

 

[joshmo65]

Chris, I don't think the huge number of divisions is the problem, I think that it is the lack of disc golfers in the area. In our area, I think that with so few people across all of the divisions, it really waters down the divisions and makes it silly to play against only 10 people. I think it is pretty stupid that the tournament has 15 Open and 13 Masters, but that is all that our area can support.

If we had more people to play, I think that the divisions work great. Breaking up the tournament into two tournaments of Pro and Ams (or Pro/Adv and Itm/Rec) and having larger fields in each division is my ideal situation. I see no reason why an 800 rated player should have to compete with a 960 rated player or a 940 maters player should compete with a 1047 rated open player.

 

[gdub58]

I don't think there are necessarily too many divisions overall, but a case where most tournaments offer too many divisions. For a one-course, one-day tournament with a max of 72 (or even 90) players, there shouldn't be more than 3 or 4 divisions, and each one should start with a fixed number of spots for those divisions.

For example, I would like to see more tournaments that are pro only (men, women, ages 45+), ones that are for players rated under 900, others that are am only with two divisions (940+/<940), etc. The divisions should, when feasible, be based on the composition of the area where the tournament is held rather than the arbitrary 970/935/900 divisions that the PDGA has created. You get rated rounds either way, right?

While it is admirable for the PDGA to encourage widespread participation in the sport, I think we have evolved enough that many tournaments should be more targeted. For larger tournaments like Worlds or BG Ams there is enough interest and variety of courses that it's fine to have a lot of divisions. Beyond that, this approach just dilutes the competition.

 

[joshmo65]

Oh. And I have no problem with no payouts for the ams. Drop my entry fee to $10 with no player pack or maybe $20 with one and I am fine. No way I am paying $40 if I am not really competing for anything. I can practice to become pro for free~

 

[ru4por]

I understand your frustation, but it is not all about you. First when you hit 50 or better, you will realize the limitations that come with age. Second, have you ever thought that as a 50 year old player, I have no interest in playing with 18-35 year olds. Playing a competative round with players of my general generation is far more interesting, entertaining, competative and enjoyable. I don't personally care what the tournament gives out, but keeping AM's and below happy is what grows the sport.

 

[gdub58]

anyone have examples from other tournament based sports/activities. The only other sport I participated in that was heavily tournament based was high school wrestling and there was no payout but pride.

Can anyone elaborate on the flight system used in ball golf tournaments?

Ball golf flighting is similar to what I have suggested in my previous post. There is always a "championship flight", which is analgous to open (or advanced, in that most club championships do not allow professionals to compete). Beyond that top division, you could have 2-5 other flights - it depends on how many are participating, and the handicap breakdowns for each flight depends on the handicap distribution of the participants. For example, first flight might be those with handicaps of 6-10, but if that range created a flight with 3 people in it they would make it wider to even out the number participating in each flight.

This approach only works well when everyone has an estabished USGA handicap. In some cases, flighting takes place after the first round where your flight is based on how you scored.

I would see nothing wrong with having an amateur disc golf tournament where divisions are created after sign-ups are completed to create 2-3 balanced divisions.

 

[Pwingles]

The problem about this attitude is that you want to treat tournaments as retail events, where shopping is the highest priority and good competition is secondary.

In some ways, there are events ran that way. But listen, here is the scenario im talking about;

Local club, not well established, wants to run a tournament to raise money for said clubs efforts.

They enlist a local retailer to do payout because they could never raise enough funds to get a good enough inventory for prizes.

These prizes* encourage players to come out, who may for whatever reason not normally show up to a club mini, membership drive, league or w/e. maybe theyre not local, maybe they dont care about club politics, doesnt matter, because a few more people showed up, so it worked.

Win, win, win.
Club wins, retailer wins, participants win by havig a hopefully fun event to play in that was made possible by seperate parties that individually would. Have been able to prosper.

 

[bradharris]

In some ways, there are events ran that way. But listen, here is the scenario im talking about;

Local club, not well established, wants to run a tournament to raise money for said clubs efforts.

They enlist a local retailer to do payout because they could never raise enough funds to get a good enough inventory for prizes.

These prizes* encourage players to come out, who may for whatever reason not normally show up to a club mini, membership drive, league or w/e. maybe theyre not local, maybe they dont care about club politics, doesnt matter, because a few more people showed up, so it worked.

Win, win, win.
Club wins, retailer wins, participants win by havig a hopefully fun event to play in that was made possible by seperate parties that individually would. Have been able to prosper.

That's not what you said. You said that am payouts are essential to keep vendors in business.

If a club needs to hold a fundraiser event. Simply advertise it that way. Rather than playing the payout/retail game, just advertise a tournament as a fundraiser and say $10 from all entry fees will go to the club. I've seen this done on many occasions with great success.

 

[Pwingles]

If you think that doesnt help vendors grow (and in some cases make the difference between being in business and not) , idk what to tell you. For some vendors (DD, LSDiscs or whoever) doing payout at events whether its for a club fundraiser or not, helped out both the vendor and in most cases the event. Would you disagree?

 

[Thumber]

I just don't understand why players expect a return on the entry fee in terms of merch. Its like they value the actual playing as 0$

 

[ScottyLove]

I guess I'm going the opposite direction here... but I love the am "payouts" and probably wouldn't play otherwise. I don't need a silly trophy to sit in my office. The excitement and anticipation of how much my voucher will be and what I can spend it on is part of the whole tournament feel that I love.

I'll probably never play pro... so without the am voucher system, I'd probably just play leagues instead. For now, I travel far and wide across the country boosting the economy on the hope I get to walk through the Disc Golf Monkey trailer to get new discs/apparel/swag.

Sounds like I'm in the minority here, but wanted to chime in...

 

[ChrisWoj]

Perhaps those businesses shouldn't be in the disc golf business.

Everything was just fine 15 years ago when you had to order from Discovering the World or Disc Golf World and you would send them money orders. Too many vendors now anyway.

Yeah, it's nice to win discs, I remember those days. But, I was always working to play for money. I ended up giving away almost everything I ever won merchwise.

"Everything was fine 15 years ago." - You mean the tail end of the 15 year period during which PDGA membership was a mere fraction of what it is now, right?

A lot of people wonder: what is the reason to move up if you're paying out every division. If you have players wondering this, you're doing your payouts wrong. You need to stagger how deep you pay out divisions. In the Novice and Recreational divisions - pay out upwards of 60%, if not more, of the division. A little something on top of the player packs. A difference, but minimal, between last cash and the winners - or at least a slow slope.

Intermediate you start to compress things - paying out maybe 45%. Then 40% in Advanced - with a steeper jump up to the top guys in the division.

Additionally you encourage players to play within their PDGA Divisions. It sounds like its difficult to cash if you're making the higher divisions pay out a smaller portion of the field, but in reality - if you're at a proper rating level for your division you're going to cash within your field enough to make tournament play at that level worth it. A 935+ rated guy is going to cash regularly in Advanced. Maybe even win some events if his field isn't filled with supposed-to-be-pros bagging until Nationals or Worlds.

Like you, Chris, I come from sports that don't pay out much. I ran for a long time, played Ultimate for a long time - and in neither sport was there anything in the way of payouts. But guess what? There also wasn't nearly as much money going into the game. Disc golfers put more money into the game than anybody in those other sports, and as a result - expect something back and I see no reason that players shouldn't get it.

Most of these "amateurs" in the lower divisions don't have it in them either athletically, mentally, or in terms of time to devote outside of their real world careers to move up to the open division. Playing for some plastic is their chance to win something playing this game - that is important to many people. They don't care about their amateur vs professional status, or the legitimacy of amateurism in disc golf. Winning some discs and being able to say their supplemented their bags by playing tournament X or Y.. that does matter.

 

[Pwingles]

I guess I'm going the opposite direction here... but I love the am "payouts" and probably wouldn't play otherwise. I don't need a silly trophy to sit in my office. The excitement and anticipation of how much my voucher will be and what I can spend it on is part of the whole tournament feel that I love.

I'll probably never play pro... so without the am voucher system, I'd probably just play leagues instead. For now, I travel far and wide across the country boosting the economy on the hope I get to walk through the Disc Golf Monkey trailer to get new discs/apparel/swag.

Sounds like I'm in the minority here, but wanted to chime in...

I think its a regional thing maybe Scotty, we're from same area and I feel like doing the way Chris suggested on an every event basis is gonna alienate more people than it would appease.

 

[BraveThrower43]

If ams are paid out in merch so be it. I don't understand why Disc Golf has to be like all other sports.

 

[bradharris]

If you think that doesnt help vendors grow (and in some cases make the difference between being in business and not) , idk what to tell you. For some vendors (DD, LSDiscs or whoever) doing payout at events whether its for a club fundraiser or not, helped out both the vendor and in most cases the event. Would you disagree?

It does help the vendors, but I don't think tournaments have an obligation to do payouts in order to support vendors. If a vendor is relying on that to keep their business afloat, they maybe should consider shutting their doors for good.

If a vendor puts on a tournament for the purpose of promoting their brand and boosting sales, that's one thing. But if I'm running a tournament myself, don't tell me I need to pay out the ams so that some disc shop can stay in business.