Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
Imagine we're back a few hundred years ago before golf had the nicely mowed greens of today. Having a chance to hole out within say 40 feet of the hole required the use of lofted clubs and a chip shot that likely bounced to its landing position if not in the hole. Even positions within 7 feet of the hole might require the ball to leave the ground unless you were fortunate to have sheep or goats trim those areas to get some roll.
It took until the middle of the last century before putters were being designed with a "loft" less than 8 degrees, like the revolutionary Ping putter in 1959, when greens were getting cut short and groomed well enough even on public courses. It wasn't until this transition early last century when players could start relying on their knowledge of the greens and how the ball would roll to where "putting" on greens really became a separate skill and game element from simply lofting the ball with a variety of clubs to get to the hole.
It seems like disc golf game play is more like this early golf game with mostly lofted shots, driving and chipping until holing out, versus the current golf game where putting uses separate equipment, skills and rolls along the ground. In other words, disc golf hasn't really developed a unique putting theater separate from simply making long throws, upshots, short throws and drop-ins. C1 and C2 could stand for Chip 1 and Chip 2. Inside the 10 meter circle may affect your foot movement but we're still throwing from there.
I'm not suggesting that disc golf needs to or might want to develop a unique putting theater of some sort. I'm not even sure what that might look like although some ideas have been suggested. My point in this thought exercise is providing one explanation why disc golf has been challenged setting par in a manner similar to the golf rule-of-thumb (shots to the green plus 2 putts). It's because we don't yet have a well defined putting theater requiring sufficiently different skills and equipment from what we already use to get close to the basket.
Some designers, TDs and promoters are disappointed when they see pros winning with scores double digits under par and try to make "putting" tougher with punitive OB like island greens. It doesn't make our "chip throws" any tougher, just perhaps more loft will be helpful. Using smaller baskets might reduce scores under par where "chip throws" hole out less frequently. But it wouldn't really create a unique putting theater, just less excitement with a higher percentage of "down in 2's" from chipping range.
Do we really need to create a unique putting theater? Requiring new skills will likely be frustrating and equipment is expensive. I suspect whatever ideas are proposed could be even less fun for players than how many currently feel about putting. Those are tough barriers to overcome.
The game as it has been before adding all of the temp OB for top tier events provided enough scoring separation to determine winners without needing a playoff very often and rarely more than two tied for first. From a spectator standpoint, do we really want more separation than necessary? Tighter separation provides more potential drama for more players to rally and come back and produce playoffs more frequently. If anything we should look at ways to keep scores close but provide scoring separation. That might warp our perspectives on setting par even more such that some new metric might be more effective for tracking live performance while still tracking over/under par scores in parallel.
It took until the middle of the last century before putters were being designed with a "loft" less than 8 degrees, like the revolutionary Ping putter in 1959, when greens were getting cut short and groomed well enough even on public courses. It wasn't until this transition early last century when players could start relying on their knowledge of the greens and how the ball would roll to where "putting" on greens really became a separate skill and game element from simply lofting the ball with a variety of clubs to get to the hole.
It seems like disc golf game play is more like this early golf game with mostly lofted shots, driving and chipping until holing out, versus the current golf game where putting uses separate equipment, skills and rolls along the ground. In other words, disc golf hasn't really developed a unique putting theater separate from simply making long throws, upshots, short throws and drop-ins. C1 and C2 could stand for Chip 1 and Chip 2. Inside the 10 meter circle may affect your foot movement but we're still throwing from there.
I'm not suggesting that disc golf needs to or might want to develop a unique putting theater of some sort. I'm not even sure what that might look like although some ideas have been suggested. My point in this thought exercise is providing one explanation why disc golf has been challenged setting par in a manner similar to the golf rule-of-thumb (shots to the green plus 2 putts). It's because we don't yet have a well defined putting theater requiring sufficiently different skills and equipment from what we already use to get close to the basket.
Some designers, TDs and promoters are disappointed when they see pros winning with scores double digits under par and try to make "putting" tougher with punitive OB like island greens. It doesn't make our "chip throws" any tougher, just perhaps more loft will be helpful. Using smaller baskets might reduce scores under par where "chip throws" hole out less frequently. But it wouldn't really create a unique putting theater, just less excitement with a higher percentage of "down in 2's" from chipping range.
Do we really need to create a unique putting theater? Requiring new skills will likely be frustrating and equipment is expensive. I suspect whatever ideas are proposed could be even less fun for players than how many currently feel about putting. Those are tough barriers to overcome.
The game as it has been before adding all of the temp OB for top tier events provided enough scoring separation to determine winners without needing a playoff very often and rarely more than two tied for first. From a spectator standpoint, do we really want more separation than necessary? Tighter separation provides more potential drama for more players to rally and come back and produce playoffs more frequently. If anything we should look at ways to keep scores close but provide scoring separation. That might warp our perspectives on setting par even more such that some new metric might be more effective for tracking live performance while still tracking over/under par scores in parallel.
Last edited:
