Pro Vs. Avg Joe- Skill Gap

[bluTDI09]

Originally Posted by iacas

So if the same holds true of going to Bullseyes, then you'd discover that shrinking the size of the target would do more to level the playing field than to separate it or spread it out.

I think you may be right about this, especially with the current courses. However, in combination with courses that make approach shots more challenging, it would more consistently separate the players with great all-around game and ones that can just putt, which IMO is the difference between the elite and the local pros.

[wake911]

Hmm, Didn't someone on here hang boards on some baskets to create an area where you couldn't hole out from? So you only had access to 75% of the basket, so thinking about your upshot and where you were going to land was extra important? This would almost be like moving hole positions in golf. You'd just have to provide at the tournament a caddy book of some sort with blocker location on each basket for each round. I wouldn't be against this, if you could get a fairly uniform way of notification to the players at the start of the tourney/round.

It would put a higher priority on upshot placement, not just "Get it within 30' for a free open shot at the basket"

BUT, i could see it as being seen as "gimmicky" at the beginning, and i can't disagree really. But if it makes the sport better, then in 5 yrs no one would even care. You'd just have old guys saying "Remember when tournaments didn't have limiters on the basket? man those were the easy days"

[smyith]

Originally Posted by bluTDI09

I also fail to see why making putting more difficult would be discouraging to rec players. It would just change the perspective on what is a long putt and their expectation of making it. No recreational golfer expects to make all of their 20 foot putts. It makes two-putting in disc golf a reasonable expectation instead of a disappointment.

I think the people arguing against this just don't want it to be harder on themselves.
Think about it though, a basket minimum for target zone size is essentially 19" x 24" (sans the chains). a disc is usually around 9". So the target zone is 2x the height and 3x the width of the disc being used. Thats extreme and unnecessary for a TRUE SKILL GAME. What other major sport, that doesn't have a goalie, out there has that huge of a target zone compared to the object going in?
Audience want to see SKILL; large target zones and holes easily reached in one shot are very unattractive to watch to a standard spectator of any sport. The goal isn't to get people who already play to be more interested in watching it, its to get everybody watching it.

Originally Posted by duckychucky

What happened to just making harder greens?

what if the land doesn't allow for this? ALOT of courses are not on preimer disc golf land.

*And this argument about just making tougher SSA courses isn't really as valid as changing the baskets. why? What is more cost effective, increasing the amount of land allotted for a course or replacing baskets? Answer is replacing baskets, 18 baskets don't cost as much as an acre in populated areas....its not even close. Don't get me wrong I would love higher SSA courses but until the sport goes mainstream that isn't going to happen for 95% of the disc golf areas. And realistically for the sport to go mainstream it will require higher SSA courses AND tougher baskets to putt on. The two-putt standard in disc golf is absolutely ridiculous as it stands, a 10m putt is not difficult to make...there is no valid reason to think the average competitive player can't make this consistently in one shot with our current baskets. Makes that target zone 1/2 the size and now your talking about a legit 2 putt scenario.

*And also, think of this. In the last decade disc technology has far out distanced course equipment and design. This needs to be equaled out before the sport can really progress into the mainstream. It doesn't matter how many kids you get into it, it's not going to move it into mainstream. To think so is delusional. Tradition holds progress back, you guys seriously need to evaluate the reasoning behind your positions on the argument. Many of you I think are being selfish and in reality don't want to make it harder on yourselves and are not thinking of the sport as a whole.
You really don't think making the game more skillful in all facets won't improve its appeal? That some how it will turn players away? Look at the most popular sports for playing and watching...they are EXTREMELY skill based...and do you really think DG is on that same level skill wise? It's not even close! Mainstream media doesn't want this to be ball golf it wants it to be a skill game with truly skilled players playing it. You can keep the identity of disc golf while making it more skilled.

Originally Posted by wake911

BUT, i could see it as being seen as "gimmicky" at the beginning, and i can't disagree really. But if it makes the sport better, then in 5 yrs no one would even care. You'd just have old guys saying "Remember when tournaments didn't have limiters on the basket? man those were the easy days"

i would stop playing. this is the same as putt-putt golf compared to ball golf.

[alcstradamus]

To the pro-Bullseye basket crowed, I think it needs pointed out that many of us who are against it are only against it in the case of making it "exclusive" to the pro tour. If the standard disc golf basket was changed to the Bullseye, then that would be just fine. We want to play the same game that everyone plays, not play on a handicapped course with bigger baskets.

But since it is not feasible to change tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of baskets around the country, and it is also not feasible to retro-fit courses with more difficulty (i.e. distance and trees), we once again come back to the starting point and have to say that everything just needs to stay how it is and people need to quit worrying about how our pro scores look to ball golfers.

[iacas]

I'm late to the party I know but I believe I've caught up now, so I'll be quiet again unless someone asks me a direct question or there's something new I'd like to respond to.

Originally Posted by wake911

And they did just remove the long putter (well, under specific conditions) from the game due to making it too much easier to putt with.

They didn't "remove the long putter." They proposed a ban to the practice of anchoring. Someone else addressed this already though...

Originally Posted by wake911

Golf is hard. Disc Golf is easy. Mainly due to how easy it is to hole out.

I don't know if I agree with that. I've seen plenty of new players fail to even make contact with the ball. As a percentage of the distance of the hole, holing out is more difficult, I agree, but then again pros regularly hit even 3-woods that fly farther than the world distance record with a disc, so it's disproportionate from the outset and makes such comparisons difficult. Heck, in golf, pros can miss a putt that's 1/500th the distance of the hole. That's like a disc golfer missing a two-foot putt on a 1000 foot hole. So the proportions are off if you want to look at it that way. The dimensions of the targets are off too. In disc golf on a 300' hole even a Bullseye (I'll imagine it's 12") is 1/300th (0.333%) of the length of the hole, and yet a 450' hole in golf is still going to a target that's 0.0787% the length of the hole... and that's only a 150-yard hole.

But still, if you look at where the best pros and any other group of players in either sport lose shots most quickly, it's probably off the tees and in the fairways for both sets. Putting in golf shows a lower spread than other categories of shot (we're in the process of writing a book on these types of things), while full swing shots show the greatest gaps between skill levels. I'd imagine the same is true on the more difficult (i.e. "top tier" or "professional level") disc golf courses.

Originally Posted by Aubin

Remove the chain assembly. Make putting as butt-puckering hard as ball golf, most par 3's become 4's, etc. Zero chains, just a basket. All current baskets could be modified.

Think about all of the greens on your local course. Imagine you are 40' away, with NO chains or pole. Getting as close to the basket as possible becomes priority number 1, not just 'close enough' to bang it in.

As an added benefit, courses would be muuuuch cheaper to install, practice baskets could be built at home, multiple pins could transform existing courses, basket theft would not be as much of an issue, Aces would be SUPER rare... really, think about it.

the only reason it's not currently like this is the whole 'throwing a disc' theory... the pole hole was designed to 'catch' a disc as if it were a person. But if you want to start a conversation about comparing ball golf Par to DG par, you have to compare the holing out techniques. DG is just to easy.

I think such an idea is worthy of further discussion (maybe not in this topic). Also, there are two dimensions - A Bullseye addresses one. What about addressing the other (which the above quote does) - the height? You'd make a lot fewer putts if you had a target zone of only 12" too.

Originally Posted by WhiteyBear

The Golden Bear argued that all pros should use the same ball, to prove how good they really are.

Jack owned an equipment company that didn't make golf balls at the time, so you can't necessarily say he was talking purely out of purity of sport.

Golf has high spin players and low spin players, and the golf balls all go the same distances (roughly) and so on, they're just personal equipment. So who do you punish by making them switch to a ball that doesn't suit their game? The disc golf equivalent would be "you must use only these eight discs." Hockey players would all have to use the same hockey stick (and gloves).

Personal equipment (balls, clubs, discs) is generally legal in all sports within a range of regulations, while "shared equipment" (the football, the puck, etc.) is uniform for all.

Regulating "personal equipment" will almost never go over very well.

Originally Posted by 811rv

Selah Ranch is defintely one of prime dg courses in the country and they charge $20 daily for unlimited play. Let say average of 20 players play in that course everyday for whole year, then the annual gross would be $146,000 which is nice. I believe the maintenance expenses are not bad such as regular mowing (not like ball golf's manicured greens). Would be great time to turn that broke 9-hole ball golf course into world class dg course and make decent money that way.

Property taxes, insurance, rainouts, windy days... maintenance, equipment, etc. will eat up that $146,000 pretty quickly.

Originally Posted by mj20300

the easiest way and what i think we should do, is to make it where you can move the the basket higher up the pole making the space from the basket to the top smaller by 4-6 inches, maybe less. That way you have a smaller target to hit and if you get into the chains it will stick. I have done this to an old discatcher sport by dilling new mounting holes on the pole and it works pretty damn well.

Good MJ. This is the "other dimension" I was talking about. You can modify the height too, not just the width (Bullseye).

Originally Posted by Cgkdisc

@iacas - It's one thing to disallow something but will that actually stop rec players from using that something? Cheater Balls I also suspect belly putters and the practice will not disappear after 2016 among rec players.

Chuck, give me a break. Do illegal balls exist? Do people kick their ball out of the trees or the long grass? Yeah. They're breaking the rules though.

What you did is not even goalpost shifting. It's chopping off one of the posts and locating the new "goalpost" behind the shortstop on a baseball diamond. :P

Originally Posted by BigSky

Just out of curiosity, what would a duffer, or "Joe" equivalent shoot at the U.S. Open? 200?

A "Joe" equivalent actually playing by the rules? I said 200 somewhere else, and even on a career day for them, 170. I don't think people realize how truly bad the average golfer is. The 50th percentile of golfers with handicaps is just barely under a 20 handicap, and that's an average score of 26 or so over the course rating at a fairly typical slope (~120), so a U.S. Open at 78 or 79 rating and 140+ slope would see even those golfers - the small percentage with official handicaps - shooting in the upper 120s.

And that's the median golfer WITH a handicap. Typically golfers with handicaps are the more avid golfers, so handicap numbers are strongly biased towards better players. And the median "better player" (using the definition I JUST gave, nothing else) is going to lose to Tiger Woods at a PGA Tour level course by 50 shots when Tiger has a bad day. Three shots a hole. Consider golf, and the U.S. Open... Tiger winning by three every hole? Easily possible. I'm scratch and if he gave me a shot a hole I'd only win an occasional hole (more likely a par three, since I only have to hit one good shot to beat him there, and he has less opportunity to recover from a poor shot for him).

Originally Posted by Cgkdisc

One thing that's hard to assess between sports is the overall difficulty of one shot. Is the "skill value" of the average ball golf shot easier, tougher or the same for people to execute?... My thought would be that the average shot in ball golf is tougher than DG which would widen the skill range differences even more than they already appear.

I'd definitely agree. Beginners whiff in golf. I don't think I've ever seen someone fail to throw a disc in some direction. The golf ball is sitting on the ground, further increasing the accuracy required, and the lever is longer, which negatively affects one's ability to control it while similarly increasing the velocity. And so on...

Originally Posted by alcstradamus

Curious as to why a small target is a better approach than more obstacles? The point of making putting harder is to conform to the ball golf notion that 2 putts should be the norm, correct? Well, if we are going to conform to ball golf then why not look at it this way: the challenge in putting in ball golf is the slope of the green and the path your ball must roll in order to land in the cup. In disc golf, our "slope" is the air route that the disc must take. So changing the air route that a disc must take (going around obstacles) would be the closest equivalent, correct?

I still prefer this approach to that of changing the targets themselves, particularly given the facts regarding a larger hole in golf that I posted earlier.

[Cgkdisc]

@iacas - you missed my point on the illegal equipment. The context of the thread discussion when you jumped in had to do with changing equipment specs doesn't mean the older equipment that becomes out-of-spec will disappear from play regardless whether now considered illegal. That's all.

[811rv]

Originally Posted by Cgkdisc

What about a hybrid approach to the future where there are specs established for a new smaller target class where the basket is allowed to be up to maybe 5" higher like MJ's idea for a smaller target zone height and the outer chains can be up to 5" closer to the pole? These baskets when sold new would be an appropriate option for blue and gold level courses but the current baskets would not be obsolete.

We would make sure existing targets could be modified to meet the new specs by raising the basket on the pole and removing their outer chains should the course owner prefer. Courses with these targets would become favored for top level competitions but wouldn't be required for Majors until enough top level courses had this type of basket.

Just like duffers can go play Pebble Beach from the tips, rec players would be able to throw on these new baskets but the majority of courses at their level would still have the current style baskets. The new style baskets would be cheaper to make and likely would be widely purchased for new courses. They would also be cheaper for educational use since a smaller target area would be good for practicing skills.

We still would want to have some opportunity for aces and fairway aces. Although rare, but they are certainly very exciting to watch

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Cgkdisc

@iacas - you missed my point on the illegal equipment. The context of the thread discussion when you jumped in had to do with changing equipment specs doesn't mean the older equipment that becomes out-of-spec will disappear from play regardless whether now considered illegal. That's all.

I don't think I did, but to the new point you're raising, I will just say that equipment that's made illegal is eventually removed from play even amongst people who couldn't care less about the rules because clubs or balls get lost, break, wear down, are replaced, are unavailable for new purchases, etc. I suspect the same would be true in disc golf.

Of course, when a rule is put into place for serious tournament play, it's replaced immediately.

But as I see it all of that stuff's a bit OT, and maybe the thread has permanently drifted OT, but I still hope discussion can be had about the gap in skill, as I feel I've made some points there which, due to my tardiness in posting, may have been wasted time by me.

[BigSky]

New chalked it up best when saying that those who think the gap is smaller only think so because the courses are easier. Even when you put Joe disc golfer on a very difficult championship level course, he's only gonna suck so bad. The Joe golfer would fair much more poorly on a very difficult golf course, as backed up by Iacas' stats.

Basically, the smaller gap in skill is inevitable, because we play an easier game. And many of us (myself not included) want to make it more difficult.

Is that about the gist of this mega-thread?

[iacas]

Originally Posted by BigSky

New chalked it up best when saying that those who think the gap is smaller only think so because the courses are easier. Even when you put Joe disc golfer on a very difficult championship level course, he's only gonna suck so bad. The Joe golfer would fair much more poorly on a very difficult golf course, as backed up by Iacas' stats.

Basically, the smaller gap in skill is inevitable, because we play an easier game. And many of us (myself not included) want to make it more difficult.

Is that about the gist of this mega-thread?

Seems reasonable.

I also think an increase in money would further separate the top pros (who may not be the same as the current top pros) from every other level below (while simultaneously smoothing the gradient with a BUNCH more disc golfers, if you know what I mean...).