Pro Vs. Avg Joe- Skill Gap

[BigSky]

Originally Posted by WhiteyBear

If you think that there is no relative bearing on par being in a competition, you must not know the par+4 rule either.

Change the rule to a 7 throw penalty. Simple.

[mashnut]

Sure, except that if say a group of juniors knows they're starting on a 1000'+ hole, that 7 sounds better than a 9 or 10. Then we're giving incentive to skip that hole and show up on the next one. If you set par correctly, that's a par 5 and you get a score of 9 for missing that hole. Otherwise missing a tough par 5 gets the same penalty as missing an easy deuce hole.

[tom12003]

Originally Posted by mashnut

Par and scoring spread can also inform good hole design. If you set par in a consistent and meaningful way, looking at the number of birdies/pars/bogies on a hole and on the course can be valuable information.

AGREE! There is an EXTREMELY long par 4 hole (318', a horseshoe) at my local course (#9 at Plantation Ruins). The hole averaged 4.0 during the 2012 Worlds. Miss a good line on the "drive" and a 5+ is quite possible. Turned out to be a fairly good scoring separator hole.

[dusty5150]

Originally Posted by mashnut

Sure, except that if say a group of juniors knows they're starting on a 1000'+ hole, that 7 sounds better than a 9 or 10. Then we're giving incentive to skip that hole and show up on the next one. If you set par correctly, that's a par 5 and you get a score of 9 for missing that hole. Otherwise missing a tough par 5 gets the same penalty as missing an easy deuce hole.

crap now we hafta merge the '888' rule thread with this one now

oh what a tangled web we weave.

[keith johnson]

Originally Posted by Cgkdisc

He's talking about physically detaching and sliding just the basket part of the target up the pole and not moving the pole itself any higher so the putting window height is 4-5 inches smaller. Less chain links needed per strand.

Build the Discatchers upside down and you get the same effect WITHOUT drilling new holes!

[Central Scrutinizer]

I like Disc Golf baskets as they are. Nothing beats the sound of your Disc hitting the sweet spot of the chains, which is accessible from all directions. (Love the sound a new Mach III made 20 years ago!) It's one of the intrinsic reasons why this sport is awesome.

I don't really care that holing out is easy compared to ball golf, to be honest. Our sport is more focused on the ability of our projectile to more easily traverse vertical obstacles. So we should have more of those if we think we need to make more skill involved in tournaments for our 99.9th percentile players.

(I too have thought about having just a hole in the ground, and you've gotta make your Disc end up in it. It would surely cut down on the price of installing courses, and it would still make holing out objective! Hmmmmm.....A nice big fat flag pole in it, too?...I often joke with my friends about making a "Lard Basket" just made out of a column of lard. Your putter has to stick to it to count...)

[sloppydisc]

Is making a smaller basket, creating more missed putts making the sport any more fun to watch or play? Sure, we can make the great players score higher, but should that be the sole goal? It sounds like we'll be watching more guys shank putts. Great. For everybody that wants DG to become more popular, or become more commercially lucrative, I'm not sure tougher baskets are the answer. Nothing like trying to get new players excited while watching the best players miss shots. In my limited experience it seems course design is the first and best place to focus. Longer, well designed courses can make the Pros scores higher, while offering shorter tee pads for us mortals so we don't get frustrated. Tough greens and approach lanes could solve many of the putting issues. Sure, there may a better basket design out there, and that's fine, but by itself it doesn't make the sport more FUN. And fun is what most of us want. The focus should be on how to make it so there are challenging exciting shots in the highest level of play. There are probably several ways to accomplish that. And a tiny little target on a boring course doesn't sound like a lot of excitement to me.

[bholy08]

Originally Posted by justactnormal

I guess I don't get it then and probably won't. If the whole point is that the skill gap is unnoticeable "due to easy courses, easy 'pars' and makes" then wouldn't making courses more difficult be the obvious answer; to stop playing majors and NT events at pitch and putt courses but rather courses with legit par 4 and 5's? Having pros play the same "easy" courses but putting at a smaller target would just show that they are more accurate putters than the average joe, but says nothing about how large the skill gap is. I mean all skills. Obviously, pros are much better putters than the average player, way more accurate and consistent. I don't need a bullseye only tournament to show me that.

To me, it's kinda like saying NBA players are really great basketball players b/c they can shoot free throws better than everybody else. Of course they can shoot free throws, that says nothing about the skill gap between them and dudes playing at the YMCA. Is the best way to show the public their skill v/s the average joe to have Kobe shoot free throws at a teeny tiny basket? Or should everybody else play on an 8' goal that's 32" across instead? Would that would show how much more accurate they are?

I know it's all hypothetical and whatnot. I'm just thinking about this whole thing too seriously and had hoped that pros would lend advice about what things rec players can work on to build their skills. That would be more interesting to me than how to build a squatty basket.

At any rate, instead of watching pros still drill deadly accurate putts at a tiny basket, which they would, wouldn't it be more fun to have am level tourneys or casual courses with super huge baskets! Like 4 feet wide huge. That would be super sweet! I could putt like Nikko for a day and the point that pros are way better putters would not be lost on me, not for a minute.

Exactly, and this has been said in several different ways.

[New013]

so this discussion has gone from some of you denying the fact that major sports have a larger gap between pros and joes to you admitting it only looks like the gap is smaller because our courses aren't hard enough.


does that about some it up?

[dscmn]

Smaller targets might actually level the playing field at the top and might lead to a greater number of players being able to compete. It won't all be about putting. A 10 footer on a Bullseye is just a 10 footer, not really more difficult than a standard size polehole.