College Nationals

[Three Putt]

I'm baffled. I tried to follow it, but I could never figure out what was going on. It seemed like a bunch of separate events instead of one event.

I work at Missouri S&T so I play with those guys locally; in "College Disc Golf National Championship - (DI) Team" they had a doubles team tie for 1st and another team finish 4th. In "College Disc Golf National Championship - (DI) Individual" they had kids finish 2nd, T3, T9 and T14th. So I guess they did well? It seems like in 2019 there was a final team ranking somehow that they finished 4th in but I don't see anything like that this year.

[ToddL]

It is indeed a very complicated event.
Championship, Women's, First Flight, and Second Flight. Each have their own team championship and individual championship. Teams round 1 is Champ and First combined together, and they're separated into their two flights based on the results of round 1 (essentially making round 1 a qualification round to qualify for the championship flight). Any university is allowed to have a maximum of 2 teams in the Championship flight.
Each flight also has 1 (and a half) rounds of individual play. The individuals' scores are averaged together to count as a team score for the team scoring.

The College Disc Golf homepage has links to all 8 sets of results. https://collegediscgolf.com
Team Results:
Championship: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50022
Women's: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50997
First Flight: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50995
Second Flight: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50996
Individual Results:
Championship: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50018
Women's: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50994
First Flight: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50992
Second Flight: https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/50993

Saturday afternoon was torrential downpours. Missouri S&T B team put down an incredible round in the rain to jump from the chase card to the lead. Georgia A team nailed a birdie on the final hole to push tie them and force a playoff, which they won on the first hole.

Always a fun tournament, even if it's hectic and confusing. The players love it, which is the most important part.

[Three Putt]

I guess in the end it's pretty simple then, whoever wins is the team winner. I was thinking if Georgia A shot a 191 and Georgia B shot a 201 while S&T B shot a 191 and S&T A shot a 193, that would matter somehow. It doesn't, though. The team winner was whoever won that playoff between the teams that shot 191.

I don't really have a dog in the hunt so I'm not mad, but in the championship singles S&T had people finish 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 14th. Georgia had people finish 1st, 27th, 28th, and 34th. In doubles Georgia had teams finish 1st and 16th while S&T finished 2nd and 3rd. In my idea of determining the "team championship" it would seem like how well the overall team did would matter. It doesn't, though. All that matters is who wins that doubles flight, no team that doesn't win is accumulating points for a team effort and nothing from the singles side counts toward the team championship. One guy can carry a school to a "team" championship. Which Davis York did for Georgia in this event. It just seems weird that you have an individual champion and then have the "team" championship set up that way.

[ChrisWoj]

Originally Posted by Three Putt

I guess in the end it's pretty simple then, whoever wins is the team winner. I was thinking if Georgia A shot a 191 and Georgia B shot a 201 while S&T B shot a 191 and S&T A shot a 193, that would matter somehow. It doesn't, though. The team winner was whoever won that playoff between the teams that shot 191.

I don't really have a dog in the hunt so I'm not mad, but in the championship singles S&T had people finish 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 14th. Georgia had people finish 1st, 27th, 28th, and 34th. In doubles Georgia had teams finish 1st and 16th while S&T finished 2nd and 3rd. In my idea of determining the "team championship" it would seem like how well the overall team did would matter. It doesn't, though. All that matters is who wins that doubles flight, no team that doesn't win is accumulating points for a team effort and nothing from the singles side counts toward the team championship. One guy can carry a school to a "team" championship. Which Davis York did for Georgia in this event. It just seems weird that you have an individual champion and then have the "team" championship set up that way.

First lets be clear - singles action mattered. Look at the description of Round 3 when you hover over it at the top of the column: it is listed as the "singles" round. They take the two players' scores from the singles round and average them. So there were 3 paired rounds, and the averaged singles rounds combining to get the team's score. Basically paired play had 75% of influence, and individual play had 25% of the influence over the final outcome.

As to the fact that only the doubles squads counted - this was the result of CoVid protocol. They tried to do what they could to minimize the number of people in close quarters by setting it up so that 8 golfers weren't constantly crowding space around the teepads by going to doubles play this year. In prior years, and next year I assume, they go with 4-person teams. I think there were better ways they could have done it, like having 4-person rosters but no rounds with larger groupings than doubles. They didn't go with the best options, I don't think, but they were also scrambling to make sure the event could happen (keep in mind that even the location was something they had to scramble to do - with Winthrop telling them no-go on hosting it on their campus).

[Three Putt]

Originally Posted by ChrisWoj

First lets be clear - singles action mattered. Look at the description of Round 3 when you hover over it at the top of the column: it is listed as the "singles" round. They take the two players' scores from the singles round and average them. So there were 3 paired rounds, and the averaged singles rounds combining to get the team's score. Basically paired play had 75% of influence, and individual play had 25% of the influence over the final outcome.

As to the fact that only the doubles squads counted - this was the result of CoVid protocol. They tried to do what they could to minimize the number of people in close quarters by setting it up so that 8 golfers weren't constantly crowding space around the teepads by going to doubles play this year. In prior years, and next year I assume, they go with 4-person teams. I think there were better ways they could have done it, like having 4-person rosters but no rounds with larger groupings than doubles. They didn't go with the best options, I don't think, but they were also scrambling to make sure the event could happen (keep in mind that even the location was something they had to scramble to do - with Winthrop telling them no-go on hosting it on their campus).

You are missing my point.

Here's the thing with their solution. Look at Tyler Frank. He takes 2nd individually, two strokes off the lead. His double team comes in 4th, again two strokes off the lead. His "team" is in a playoff for the championship, but what Tyler did all weekend at that point contributed nothing to them being there. The only scores that counted at that point were the scores Mark and Carl put up. Tyler could have finished last in every round he played all weekend instead of putting up the scores he did, and S&T still finishes second. You take the kid with arguably the most impressive tournament for the school who finished #2, and his performance didn't count toward finishing #2.

You end up with two S&T teams that shot a 191 and a 193 along with two Georgia teams that shot a 191 and a 201, but those eight strokes between 193 and 201 don't matter. None of that counts, even though this is supposed to be a "team" event. That just seems like a really bad decision given that it would have been really easy to have a system where it would count.

tl;dr: My goal is to point out that S&T got screwed by the bad decision since a 2nd and 4th was pretty clearly the best "team" result.

But it's just Internet bitching, the results are what they are. In the grand scheme of life it's not a big deal. I just spend five days a week on a crappy engineering school campus and it would have been fun if they had won.

[ChrisWoj]

Originally Posted by Three Putt

You are missing my point.

Here's the thing with their solution. Look at Tyler Frank. He takes 2nd individually, two strokes off the lead. His double team comes in 4th, again two strokes off the lead. His "team" is in a playoff for the championship, but what Tyler did all weekend at that point contributed nothing to them being there. The only scores that counted at that point were the scores Mark and Carl put up. Tyler could have finished last in every round he played all weekend instead of putting up the scores he did, and S&T still finishes second. You take the kid with arguably the most impressive tournament for the school who finished #2, and his performance didn't count toward finishing #2.

You end up with two S&T teams that shot a 191 and a 193 along with two Georgia teams that shot a 191 and a 201, but those eight strokes between 193 and 201 don't matter. None of that counts, even though this is supposed to be a "team" event. That just seems like a really bad decision given that it would have been really easy to have a system where it would count.

tl;dr: My goal is to point out that S&T got screwed by the bad decision since a 2nd and 4th was pretty clearly the best "team" result.

But it's just Internet bitching, the results are what they are. In the grand scheme of life it's not a big deal. I just spend five days a week on a crappy engineering school campus and it would have been fun if they had won.

I don't believe I did miss your point. I was just taking the time out to explain that this was a CoVid situation - it wasn't normal, it will go back to being a 4-Man grouping next year. And lets also keep in mind that Missouri S&T also took advantage of CoVid to add to their team depth - they would not have had the defending 2019 National Champion, Mark Anderson, on their team this year if not for CDG extending a year of eligibility to competitors who were graduating seniors last year. So they definitely garnered a big advantage from the alterations to the 2021 format to get the finish that they got.

[Three Putt]

Originally Posted by ChrisWoj

I don't believe I did miss your point. I was just taking the time out to explain that this was a CoVid situation - it wasn't normal, it will go back to being a 4-Man grouping next year. And lets also keep in mind that Missouri S&T also took advantage of CoVid to add to their team depth - they would not have had the defending 2019 National Champion, Mark Anderson, on their team this year if not for CDG extending a year of eligibility to competitors who were graduating seniors last year. So they definitely garnered a big advantage from the alterations to the 2021 format to get the finish that they got.

I'm not really interested in facts obscuring my bellyaching.

They still went with a format that allowed one guy to essentially win the team title, and that's what Davis York did. I'll stand by my assertion that it wasn't a Georgia team win, it was a Davis York win. If the playoff goes the other way, in reality it wouldn't have been an S&T win, it would have been a Mark Anderson win. That's a dumb "team" format. They easily could have done something better. One-year situation or not, it was still dumb.

[ChrisWoj]

Originally Posted by Three Putt

I'm not really interested in facts obscuring my bellyaching.

They still went with a format that allowed one guy to essentially win the team title, and that's what Davis York did. I'll stand by my assertion that it wasn't a Georgia team win, it was a Davis York win. If the playoff goes the other way, in reality it wouldn't have been an S&T win, it would have been a Mark Anderson win. That's a dumb "team" format. They easily could have done something better. One-year situation or not, it was still dumb.

So in a tied championship, with a one shot difference between the tie and 3rd place Texas A&M, where Michigan, NC State, Liberty, and Texas Tech were all within 3 shots of the lead, the contributions of Carl Eastman to S&T and David Gunn to Georgia were insignificant? It took good partners to get their teams into that playoff, it wasn't enough of a runaway for those two teams to say that any one guy carried his team to that spot. One thing I also didn't mention - and again lets keep in mind that I agreed with you already in my initial post: the format was NOT the best choice. But Missouri S&T knew the format since January and had every opportunity that every other team did to put together their 2 best players and get it. They were screwed out of nothing as far as I'm concerned.

I have a number of annoyances with the event including one already mentioned: it was a DISASTER to try to keep track of. With 8 teammates down there playing in an event that our club essentially paid $100/man to get them into: I expect to be able to keep track of their scores as easily as I can a $40 C Tier. That the scoring was that difficult to keep track of for people following it is a disaster for a growing Collegiate Major. Figuring out the best format to deal with CoVid - I can put that down to inexperience dealing with unexpected situations and hope they'll get the feedback they need to think things through more thoroughly next time they need to mess with anything. But botching live scoring that bad, and not having results up until late in the evening after the day's events were over with? Come on now. The PDGA expects C Tiers to have this stuff entirely digital and live - a damn Major should have it handled.