OB: More or Less?

[jtreadwell]

So at my local course, they have been putting in a ton of new OB using yellow rope where there was none before. Nowhere is it being done for safety reasons so in essence it is purely to make the course more difficult. Do you like a ton of OB on your courses to add challenge or are you more interested in courses that use the natural obstacles that they have already?

 

[New013]

I like OB if it's natural. Yellow Rope is just tacky.

 

[Longliveguitar]

I like "natural" OB. Paths and roads are ok, or OB that's for safety

 

[cydisc]

Dig some ponds instead.

 

[atvan]

That sounds weird to me. It is good to give more options for play difficulty though, just like the optional islands. If you don't lik it, ignore it.

 

[simpletwist]

I guess it kind of depends on the course. If the course is pretty wide open I'm ok with added OB. As long as its sensible. Yellow ropes do seem kind of tacky. Red or white stakes are much more professional looking imo.

 

[jtreadwell]

I guess it kind of depends on the course. If the course is pretty wide open I'm ok with added OB. As long as its sensible. Yellow ropes do seem kind of tacky. Red or white stakes are much more professional looking imo.

Yeah this is Bellamy Park in NH and it's wooded as hell. There is one spot on hole 12 that the OB helps though. The Bellamy river runs about 5ft. to the left of the teebox and you shoot about 150 - 200ft over a swampy rough. The fairway is raised about 8ft. over the swampy rough and the whole edge of it is covered in huge trees. from there the fairway goes slightly uphill through the woods about another 200ft. The problem lies in that without the OB there, you can simply shoot straight up the riverbed and have a very easy time landing in a dry spot as the river is not fast. From there, you can skip most of the hole and take an easy eagle putt. They made the entire riverbed OB to stop that bit of cheating but they also made a bunch of less sensible additions.

 

[NCStatePlaya]

I'm a fan of natural OB...albeit for everyone's safety; roads, ballfields, and parking lots should always be considered OB.

What's wrong with using pin flags??? Or maybe just painting the lines in??? Rope at a public park, seriously...around here it would disappear within hours.

 

[solomon.trenton]

if a hole constantly scores 2's put up some OB to make an island green to add to the difficulty or something like that

 

[B3NDER]

Tacky police tapish boundaries just sounds ridiculous.

 

[jtreadwell]

It isn't incredibly thick (more like twine) but yeah it breaks all the time and they have to replace it, so we tend to have a bunch of yellow twine bunches strewn about. I can never find the guys that do the maintenance on the field so it's tough to get a word in edgewise about a course I care about and spend 20+ hours a week on.:thmbdown:

 

[scarpfish]

Look at it in this respect...

1. Casual players can choose to ignore it if they wish.
2. If one does wish to make use of it, artificial OB can help give a player some assessment of how much risk they can take on such a shot since there isn't much chance of the added penalty of losing your disc in the drink while practicing.

 

[sillybizz]

Coming from a Golf (ball) background when I first started playing I was always asking if I'm out of bounds being in another hole's fairway and people were like "there's no out of bounds!". This always seemed strange to me. I think designers use mandos as an alternative to out of bounds but it bugs the heck out of me. MORE OB is needed in this sport. If you are in someone else's fairway, you deserve to be OB IMO. This will also help with these easy upshots to get a three no matter how bad your drive is scenarios.

 

[jtreadwell]

Coming from a Golf (ball) background when I first started playing I was always asking if I'm out of bounds being in another hole's fairway and people were like "there's no out of bounds!". This always seemed strange to me. I think designers use mandos as an alternative to out of bounds but it bugs the heck out of me. MORE OB is needed in this sport. If you are in someone else's fairway, you deserve to be OB IMO. This will also help with these easy upshots to get a three no matter how bad your drive is scenarios.

I 100% agree with this. There are a few spots where the fairways almost merge or run parallel to one another and I've taken a few shots that were my "only good shot" that totally felt like cheating but were technically within the rules. Nobody should birdie a par 4 after shanking into the woods onto another fairway and coming at the hole from the opposite direction intended... The problem is that the OB is nowhere to be seen in these situations and could be easily added.

 

[denny ritner]

noooooooo more OB. it's way overused to make up for poor course design. not every course need be a tournament course and throwing down a bunch of rope or painted lines to turn a pitch and putt beginner course into a "tournament" course is a joke. it's a pain to mark. the markings get screwed up over time and it's really rinky dink.

yes, it's a great idea to mark water bodies as OB with a painted line or string for tournaments for consistency and to avoid tough calls. yes, roads, sidewalks, playgrounds, parking lots, etc. should be OB, but in most cases they really shouldn't be in play, except for an errant roller. a playground, for instance, should never be "in play" on a disc golf course. one of the worst violations of these basic safety standards that i've seen is johnny roberts in denver.

 

[denny ritner]

I 100% agree with this. There are a few spots where the fairways almost merge or run parallel to one another and I've taken a few shots that were my "only good shot" that totally felt like cheating but were technically within the rules. Nobody should birdie a par 4 after shanking into the woods onto another fairway and coming at the hole from the opposite direction intended... The problem is that the OB is nowhere to be seen in these situations and could be easily added.

if the fairways are that jammed up on each other, then it's bad design. many recreational players don't care about mando's or marked ob's and will it play it where it lays, thus creating dangerous situations. i've seen people throw ob across four lanes of traffic on a busy road, walk over to the disc and then throw back across the traffic. proper buffers need to be given between holes and other potential hazards. if this means the holes need to be shorter, or less of them to make it safe, then that needs to happen. crowding too many holes into a small space will eventually lead to a black eye on the sport.

 

[chris deitzel]

Define NATURAL OB? Is a man-made pond natural? Is a road natural? What do you consider natural OB?

I think OB is just fine as long as it improves the way a hole plays. As for yellow rope, how is it any different than a roads edge or the edge of a pond? Usually those areas should be marked as well so that there is no discrepency as to whether or not you are truly OB or not.

OB should always be used for roads, areas that you do not want people playing on because of erosion (ex. hole 18 Moraine) There is nothing wrong with yellow rope. If done correctly it can last a long time without any need to fix it.

I think that OB is best on holes where you can see the OB line from the tee. I don't like not knowing where a disc went out-of-bounds. OB to just make a hole hard is not smart. The OB should be well thought out and should be used to punish errant shots, or to make people control there shots instead of just winging it.

I'm all for OB if it makes sense and adds to the excitement of a hole, or that is well placed and has good reason to be there.

 

[Emoney]

I like OB if it's natural. Yellow Rope is just tacky.

Exactly

 

[S.Cann]

Define NATURAL OB? Is a man-made pond natural? Is a road natural? What do you consider natural OB?

Anything there before the course was put in is natural (trees, ponds, roads, etc.). Anything that was added just to add challenge i.e. ropes, stakes, etc. are not natural.

Granted, these things can be done tastefully on just a few holes on a course can make things more interesting. If all there is a bunch of rope OB on a pitch and poor course it should be rated poorly.

 

[NCStatePlaya]

Yeah, so when I said natural, maybe I should have rephrased it as pre-existing infrastructure, water impoundments, babbling rip rap channels and the like.