Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
Separate from the fact that human binocular depth perception disappears around 18-20 ft away, people will not be able to judge how far away some scattered white wire flags are located around a pond with its front edge equal to a tree also at 200 feet. Even if they've seen where they are or taken laser measurements, the tree will still be easier for a player's unconscious throw mechanics to make judgments on where and how much energy to throw.
The issue about OB messing up ratings is that GOLF, whether ball or disc, with unthrown strokes in the scores is a different game the same as the difference between shooting stats in basketball before versus after the 3-pointer was introduced. An unthrown penalty stroke is like adding a 2-stroker to a game where, by design, every stroke shot counts just 1 whether a 500 ft drive or a drop-in. Golf scoring doesn't evaluate the goodness of any throw, just how many actual strokes/throws are made along the pathway your disc takes from tee to target.
There's nothing inherently wrong with OB and other penalties where unthrown strokes are regularly tacked on, it just needs to be defined as a different game and courses designed with penalties regularly generated on every hole in the same way 3-pointers can be scored throughout a basketball game. Most would agree that Stableford and mulligans on every hole are also different games that need separate stats calculations.
While there's some crossover in terms of skills/ratings, each of these games should have separate player ratings and only use propagators to generate those ratings whose ratings were generated from playing that specific game. Imagine if mulligan rounds where players had up to five to use were introduced at the USDGC as a legit version of disc golf back when significant OB was introduced instead. Everyone would be saying the mulligan game was not real disc golf as people understood it back then and needed to be X-tier and have its own ratings. However, more and more OB slipped into the game since then with few questioning its validity as the same game and not a separate variant like including mulligans.
When significant OB started to be introduced in the early 2000s, it was thought to just be a tougher form of disc golf because OB was allowed by the rules in DG and BG and there were no well-known design standards discouraging it. However, OB was primarily in BG rules because it was needed for shots beyond the outer boundaries of the course. It was not a specific design element within the regular play area.
You might say, "look at all the water hazards with penalty strokes in BG." However, at the PGA level, the average penalties for the tour (not just water hazards) is 1 stroke per player every 2.5 rounds or 0.4, essentially zero if rounding down. In other words, they have designed to keep that number below 0.5 so from a practical standpoint, every stroke in a player's score has been struck. It keeps their statistics uncluttered with no phantom strokes. For example, even though the famous island green hole seems intimidating, it only generates a penalty 17% of the time and that's the highest percentage on tour (and not beyond criticism as ideal).
By comparison, look at many courses on our elite tour with significant OB and they range from 2 up to 7 strokes per player on average per round with a few holes averaging over 1 penalty per player per round. BTW, I'm not saying that's too high for courses that are intentionally designed with penalties on every hole, just that design guidelines, stats and ratings should be established for this separate disc golf game. Many courses currently on tour that are penalty tweeners with penalties in the 2 to 4 penalties per player per round would ideally decide to shift their design rules to either produce less than 1 stroke per player per round (call it Traditional DG) like W.R. Jackson before "dismembering" or ramp it up to at least 5 penalties per player per round (call it Pressure DG) to get in the typical range of USDGC, Lake Eureka and DDO.
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