This is an interesting thread to read through as a pretty new player. There seems to be a lot of negativity and a get off my lawn attitude towards new players and the growth of "your" game. I find that very disheartening and wonder why, if you love disc golf the way you claim to, you would not want to be an ambassador of the game and teach the game. Maybe I'm wired differently, but if someone new wants to play hockey or disc golf or expresses interest in hiking, I want to help them learn and find the same passion and love that I have.
Disc golf has a very low barrier to entry, and along with that comes unique problems that definitely need to be solved, and I'm sure have been addressed on many other threads as well. An example that was presented in this thread, add more family oriented park courses to leave the tournament courses for bigger and more accurate arms. I agree that would be one way to help overcrowding, and I just reached out to my city last week to see if they would have any interest in adding a park course at a relatively large, low use park.
That being said, In my opinion, the simplest way to mitigate the negative impact that new players may have, is to teach the game, be an ambassador. As someone mentioned, they encounter players on the course that have no clue who the elite athletes are in disc golf. Logic would likely dictate that if those players exist, they have not researched anything else about the game, they just know they need a disc and that it needs to be thrown into a basket. I think at that point the onus then falls on the disc golf community to recognize teachable moments on the course, and to help new players realize how certain actions, or inactions, can negatively impact others on the course. I'm not saying call out everything, but the probably the egregious actions, or one or two other things a round, and that would have a positive snowball effect on your local courses/communities. Not everyone will want to engage new people, and not all new people will be receptive, and that's okay. A little can go a long way here.
Alternatively, you can point them to resources to help them learn the game. When I started I didn't there was a circle 1 and a circle 2 or that you had to establish balance behind your lie when putting. Those are slightly more advanced than most brand new players need, but the point stands, new players are uneducated. I watched a lot of YouTube because I wanted to learn, and having a local member on a course engage the obvious new guy holding 2 discs with no bag would have been an incredible feeling, but instead, I got a lot of the nastiness exhibited on this thread.
Anyways, I'll leave this ridiculously long post with my main point, remember, every single person on this thread was once the new guy on the course. Every single one of you. Be the ambassador for the game that you had, or wished you had when you were new, because you never know when that family of 4 throwing 3 discs walking willy nilly all over the course could be the next Paul McBeth or Paige Pierce.
