PDGA Sanctioned Tournaments

[CEValkyrie]

Jon,
    Would you like to explain to someone who doesn't understand the grouping of players for a PDGA tournament?

For example, how a Intermediate player is grouped with Jr. Boys or how an Advanced Master is grouped with Int. Women.

[Bruce Brakel]

I am not Jon but I'll jump in.

The rule says that as much as is practical, players should only play with players in their own division and that pros should be mixed with ams only if absolutely necessary.

The rules also forbid 2-somes unless there is an official walking with the group, which is rarely practical.  The procedures document says to break up people who register at the same time to not wind up making groups of car pooling buddies.

Most TDs find it impractical to run 5-somes when they are running mostly 3-somes.  The fivesome will take three and a half hours to play their round but the fast threesome will be done in 2 hours.

So the TD starts off making his threesomes pretty much randomly but sorted by division, and then when he is done he has two am women, two pro women, one am master and a pro master left over.  If he makes a foursome of am masters he is left with five players and that is not going to work.  So he puts the pros with pros and ams with ams, and an am master is playing with two women.

But wait, there's more.  During the players meeting some guy wants to register late.  The TD wants his money and you want the value of another player in the field and we made a trophy for am grand so we want to give it away.  Hmmm, he has an intermediate rating so we put him with an existing group of intermediates.  Then, after we blow the two minute warning, a guy on a nearby tee asks if he can switch from intermediate to am master.  Sure, why not?  There is nothing in the rules about not switching and we just want happy players.

Now the leader board looks like we started off following the rule, and then just threw the last dozen players on there randomly.  
---------------

At the IOS on Saturday we had two Am Masters, two left over juniors and two left over women.  Because junior boys often act like adults around adults and like animals around their peers, we split the junior boys onto the two other cards.  Then we had a guy switch from intermediate to am master after the two minute warning.  

On Sunday all the am women were originally going to play pro and it was going to be the Barrett Clinic.  Then an am woman registered towards the end and one switched to am.  Barrett was fine with the arrangement so we kept the women together.  

[Bruce Brakel]

Ahh, but now i see we are talking about the afternoon.

In the afternoon, we usually take the odd players from the bottomof the field.  So on Saturday when we need a player to make a threes some with the two left over women, we took last place intermediate.  Same with the left over two junior boys.

The rationale is to take the player who is most out of the prizes out of his division.  All of the junior boys were in the prizes.  The fourth place woman was tied for last prize in her division.  The two intermediates were several strokes out of the prizes.


Moral of the story:  Don't be DFL after the morning round.

[mirth]

Don't be DFL after the morning round.

Thats something I can relate to very well...

[myndcraft]

*runs and hides*

[Jon Brakel]

Jon,
    Would you like to explain to someone who doesn't understand the grouping of players for a PDGA tournament?

For example, how a Intermediate player is grouped with Jr. Boys or how an Advanced Master is grouped with Int. Women.

I would love to address this fully but it will have to wait until later when I have more time. I would like to comment on Bruce's post. I think his remark about the Jr. boys was rather flippant and does not represent my feelings. Those kids are real people and shouldn't be treated like they belong to some kind of undesireable demographic. That said, I agree with splitting them up only because if an adult is put into a group of 3 with the other 2 being jrs., he will probably feel out of place. It is probably not the experience he came to the tournament for. If we were running four-somes I would have no problem putting 2 jrs. with 2 adults if the numbers made sense.

[Jon Brakel]

Jon,
    Would you like to explain to someone who doesn't understand the grouping of players for a PDGA tournament?

For example, how a Intermediate player is grouped with Jr. Boys or how an Advanced Master is grouped with Int. Women.

I find it necessary to explain everything I can think of regarding this. I'm sorry if you were looking for the condesed reader's digest version.

First the rules that govern:

804.06  GROUPING & SECTIONING  
A. Professional and Amateur players should not be grouped together, and all players from different divisions shall be segregated from each other during play as much as practicable.

B. All players within a division shall be randomly grouped for the first round and grouped by cumulative score for each round thereafter.

C. Groups shall not be less than three players, except under extenuating circumstances, as deemed necessary by the director, to promote fairness. In cases where fewer than three players are required to play together, an official is required to accompany the group and may play as long as this does not interfere with the competing players.

804.07  TIES  
A. If there is a tie at the level of a cut, all players at that level shall advance.

B. Between rounds when the groups are being reset, tied positions shall be broken. The player with the lowest score in the most recent round shall have the highest ranking when the scorecards/positions are reset. In the event of low score ties, the ties shall be broken by the director through any consistently applied manner.

As the registration cards come in I start putting them on the leader board. I start with the division that most of my volunteers are playing and put them on the board near tournament central. I put 1 player on each hole and start spreading them out. My largest division is going to be advanced and that's usually where my main volunteers (Bruce and Brett) are playing.

Example 1
I start spreading the Advanced onto 10 holes, one on each hole as they register. This helps to seperate guys who travel together. I also take a look at where they are from. I think it's nice to group people together from different areas--it's a social thing. Once I get 10 advanced registration/leaderboard cards then I start making two-somes on each hole. Near the end of registration I don't have enough Advanced players to make three-somes on 10 holes, so I start "shoring up" the adv cards into three-somes. I have 19 advanced players and tournament numbers allow for running three-somes for the day. I can run 6 three-somes and have 1 left over. For the time being I make a four-some of the left over advanced player. At the same time (because people don't register neatly by division) I'm doing this to the other divisions. I have 2 pro women and 2 am women. I put them together for now. I get 10 Open players and put them in 3 three-somes and put the left over on a hole by himself hoping to get a two more registered in the last minutes of registration. I have 5 Pro Masters. I have spread them over 2 holes. Giving up on the idea that I'm going to get 1 more Pro Master and 2 more Open, I put the left over Open in the group with 2 Pro Masters. So, now I have 2 more players in the entire field of divisions than would be even three-somes across the board. I've already made a four-some of Adv and I have the four-some of women (half pro, half am). The rules tell me not to run the pros and ams together whenever practical. It is no longer practical. I have to run two four-somes. There is no rule to tell me to put the women together and to put the open and pro masters together. It's an art, not a science. In addition to the four-somes, I also put the gap of holes (it was not a full field of three-somes) behind the four-somes. This allows the rest of the field of three-somes to play at there own pace AND the four-somes to play at their naturally slower pace. The three-somes don't have to wait and the four-somes don't feel rushed. We take our lunch break for an hour after the LAST card comes in so everyone gets at least an hour for lunch. Of course I only have this luxury in tournaments where we are getting less than 50 players per day, but when it happens it's a nice touch to do for the players.

Example 2
OK, now for the lower division day example. There are more divisions, so I'm going to list the numbers first.

Recreational: 12
Jr. Boys: 5
Adv Masters: 3
Int: 14
Int Women: 5
Pro 2: 3

That's 42 total players which is 14 groups of three-somes. Nice number, but now it gets tricky. During most of registration it looked like I had 15 intermediates and 1 adv master. Since there was only 1 adv master, one guy decided to play intermediate instead of adv master. So, at this point I lock in the Intermediates into 5 three-somes. The Pro 2 guys are a lock in their three-some. I put 3 jr. boys on another card. I have a late registering adv master and put him with the other adv master. I lock in 3 intermediate women on a card. Now I have 2 intermediate women, 2 adv masters, and 2 jrs. to get onto cards. Combined these 6 people need to get onto two cards. The int women are a jr. girl playing up and an intermediate woman. I've decided to split the jrs. but am thinking that the int woman doesn't deserve to play with two jrs. So, I'm in a tough spot. I don't mind playing a round with juniors and women, so I take myself off a Rec card and put me with the two int women. I put a jr. onto the rec card that I was on. I put the remaining jr. onto the adv master card. Players meeting takes place, players leave to go out to their holes. The adv master who registered as an int finds out there's 2 adv masters and asks one of the non-playing officials (the TD of the day) if he can switch to adv masters since another registered after he did. The TD says ok, but since everyone is heading out to their holes already he would have to play the first round with the int group he is in. He says OK.

Now lets go to the between round break. The Adv masters are put into a three-some for the afternoon round. Since int women are so often paired with jrs. the TD puts the odd 2 jrs. with an int and the other odd int with the two odd int women. It was not practical to keep everyone playing in their divisions. These TDs choose to put the bottom of the division players mixed with the odd divisions. In this case the bottom intermediates were most likely not going to shoot back into the prizes, but the jrs. had a shot. The jrs. were more worthy of playing together than the intermediates in this case because of how well they had played relative to their division. We try our hardest not to mix division players who are in the hunt for prizes in the second round. But again it's an art, not a science. As such some people will not care for our "art" and I can live with that.

Grouping and Sectioning 101 is dismissed.

[Bruce Brakel]

"Flippant" is a compliment, right?    

Jon is so much better at the leaderboard thing than I am.  This is how I do a leaderboard:

1.  What is the farthest hole?  Put Jamie Mosier there.  [Illinois translation:  Put Mike Kutella there.]  

2.  Who most horked me off at the least tournament?  They get to play with Jamie Mosier and walk that extra mile.

3.  Throw the rest of the cards on the board without looking at the names so I can claim it was all random.

I think I'm being flippant again.    

[Jon Brakel]

Only you would think flippant is a compliment.   And yes, you are being flippant again. Anyway, I think I am good at the leaderboard because it uses the same part of the brain that scheduling at the cafeteria did and I did that for 4 years. I also like using that part of my brain every once in a while.

[CEValkyrie]

Thanks for the explanation guys. Jon, thanks for spending the time to really get into detail. This may help players understand why they are playing with players of another division.  

[Dan Michler]

I told my boss that she was flippant today, thinking it was a compliment because Bruce said so, and now I am looking for a new job.   thanks alot bruce.  ur so flippin flippant.

[mirth]

Nah, they just finally found out you've been pharming.

[Guest]

well CEValkryie,
    maybe if you would tell people that certain things are or are not allowed; not saying it wasnt allowed because the "rulebook" said it was, then maybe there would have never been a problem, or for that matter very rude sarcasm to which you are refering to certain people without having enough testosterone to say the name or names to the thing or things that you let or did not let happen. i mean in reality if you hadn't let some old weird dude do whatever it is that he wanted to do. then i dont think those "someones who doesnt understand the grouping of players" wouldnt have had a problem with it in the first place. if it was done properly. i mean really. what would it have taken so that there wasnt a problem? a hey you old weird dude, go run over there and play with the other people in your division. and then an oh no scratch out the names on the scorecards and write the new ones? i mean to solve the problem and not bother many people it could have easily been addessed. maybe if those in charge had done the right thing by finishing what they started, which was putting everyone in right groups, or taking a few minutes to switch people and cards around, it wouldnt be such a big deal to those, i mean you, who seemed to have a problem by posting a dumb request of talking about people to other people on the internet and being extremly rude about it.

thanx for your time, and have a great day!
see ya at the next tourney ;-)

[mirth]

Myk's right. Trolls will be trolls....

[mirth]

And I think the reason why it was allowed is because the rulebook doesn't say one can't change divisions before the tournament started.

You're certainly local, Guest....

[Myk]

Part of me wanted to start a huge flame war, but then I remembered that I shouldn't do that anymore.  Instead I would like to thank our guest for voicing his opinions about the tournement.  All forms of criticism are accepted and appreciated.  Please be advised that the next tournament will be run by me with help from Bruce B., Jon B., Brett C., and Allan S..  It will be run very similar to the IOS.  Just wanted to point that out so you know and can accordingly.

[Dan Michler]

well Guest,
If certain things were not done this certain way just to please this one certain person then i guess there must be some sort of conspiracy against the said person.  this must have caused the certain people to talk about people to other people on the internet, that being the people with low testosterone i think.

well now i'm a little confused.  my writing skills aren't quite up to par with 'guest'.  he did have one thing right though, CE Valkyrie does have very little testosterone.

[Jon Brakel]

...Please be advised that the next tournament will be run by me with help from Bruce B., Jon B., Brett C., and Allan S...

I thought that the next tournament is IOS #3 The Fairfield Farewell?  

[Bruce Brakel]

[flippant]All I know is if anyone signs his registration card, "Guest unregistered," he better enjoy playing with Jamie Mosier and be looking forward to a long walk to his tee hole in the morning!  I'm thinking his group starts on the overflow holes at Adler.[/flippant]

Seriously, if we had not allowed that late switching am master to switch, the horked off party still would have had to play with a junior in the morning because there would have only been two am masters looking for an odd player.  Then in the afternoon they would have been playing with the last place woman because she was out of it in her division.  So by allowing the switch all the am masters got to play together for one round.

[Jon Brakel]

Guest,

Once the guy that had registered as an Intermediate asked to be switched to Advanced Master there were only two options.

1) Allow the switch and the guy plays with the Intermediate group the 1st round. The second round the Advanced Masters get to play in a three-some with only their division in it. The other two Advanced Masters play the 1st round with the jr.

2) Don't allow the switch. The guy continues with the tournament playing Intermediate. The two Advanced Masters play with the jr. the first round and with one of the lower finishing Int Women the second round.

I can't think of a situation in which I would allow shuffling of players on the tee pad. I've been to tournaments where this has been done and it is always a mess. It would not have been fair to the jr. on the card to tell him he has to run half way across the course to get onto a different card two minutes before tee off.

I did not have to run Advanced Masters since there wasn't the PDGA minimum number of players required for me to run it. I usually do run the micro-divisions even when they don't make the minimum because I think it helps to support those micro divisions and I think that's good for the sport. If members of those micro divisions complain about who they get grouped with I might reconsider running the division. I don't need the trouble.

Barrett White, one of my favorite disc golf players, tells me when I put her in groups with Amateurs "I'm just glad to be here. Thanks for running my division!" I love her.

See you at Farifield!

Jon The Some-what Frustrated TD