2006 IOS #2 @ Hot Rags-Lombard-Madison Meadows

[CEValkyrie]

17 Adv/Pro & 25 Int/Rec/Jr players have preregistered for IOS #2 so far.

http://www.pdga.com/tournament/tournament_results.php?TournID=5698
http://www.pdga.com/tournament/tournament_results.php?TournID=5697

[stpitner]

I'm thinking about signing up for a PDGA membership this week.  How soon would I know my number so that I could pre-register with that number?  Would I be able to say "applied for" and then post the number here somewhere when I find out my PDGA number?

I know I'm not the greatest player, and I'm always trying to improve.  I probably would throw something like an 800 round, not sure though.  How long is that score going to hang around and haunt me in my statistics?  Is it dependant on how many tournaments I play before it might go away?

Thanks
Scott

[Bruce Brakel]

It will be part of the average that determines your rating for a year.  It is better to get your membership when you are rated low anyway.  If you wait until you are winning in Rec to get a membership, boom!, you skip right over intermediate and go straight to advanced.  If you get some rec rounds in, they slow down your average a little. 

[stpitner]

heh, ok, thanks for the advice Bruce.  I wouldn't really look forward to skipping straight to advanced... but it's going to be a while before I even have a chance at winning at rec.  I still need to shave off about 10 strokes in each round to have a chance at the rec numbers that were put up last year!  But at the same time, I've only played for 8 or 9 months now (if that), so I still have lots of time to keep learning

[Bruce Brakel]

Speaking of Hot Rags, I got a call from Hot Rags today.  They wanted to know how many t-shirts they would have to do if they wanted to do a tournament t-shirt for every player.  I said 200. 

I don't know whether they are doing 200 or some smaller number, but if you like a tournament that does a free tournament shirt, here you go.  Some of you are going to get free shirts. 

[airspuds]

adv master
trophey only

long tees will take toll 
but i ve played good course mgt here before (once - lol)

going out sat early to play  830
83 white lesabre 

i want to play longs and only have time to play 1 round 

[Bruce Brakel]

Pre-reg is at 50 already.  Weather is looking good on the long range accuweather foreguess.  

I've been dying some white Star stuff and taking care of some special orders.  [I think I can get that Spider done and maybe the Aviar too.]  I've dyed 30 discs in the last two evenings.  Friday night I'll go to work on the trophy discs.  

We've tagged and sorted the new Innova merch.  I loaded up on hats and shirts because those are always popular, but I'm almost out of the stuff I bought at the disc golf store going out of business sale so a lot of the cloth merch is a little more expensive than it has been.  

I'm supposed to be getting tournament stamped white Trackers to dye for trophy discs.  The new brass is in the mail, should be arriving tomorrow.

Getting excited too soon again.  

[stpitner]

there were 2 guys in the pond with one guy on the shore yesterday at Lombard taking an absolute ton of discs out of the pond.  When I approached them and asked if they planned on calling the original owner the response was "more than likely..." shortly followed after that by saying "well, it IS in the pond......" so translation : "yeah right we're going to call.  Why would I want to call when we're walking away with a couple hundred bucks in our pocket?"  They walked away with *at least* 30-40 discs.  Probably had some of mine in their arms too.

gah.

Do you guys have anything that would help retrieve discs that might be lost in the pond?  I have something for getting a disc if you can SEE the disc, otherwise it does me no good.  You can't see squat in that pond.

[Jon Brakel]

there were 2 guys in the pond with one guy on the shore yesterday at Lombard taking an absolute ton of discs out of the pond.  When I approached them and asked if they planned on calling the original owner the response was "more than likely..." shortly followed after that by saying "well, it IS in the pond......" so translation : "yeah right we're going to call.  Why would I want to call when we're walking away with a couple hundred bucks in our pocket?"  They walked away with *at least* 30-40 discs.  Probably had some of mine in their arms too.

gah.

Do you guys have anything that would help retrieve discs that might be lost in the pond?  I have something for getting a disc if you can SEE the disc, otherwise it does me no good.  You can't see squat in that pond.

I take a different attitude when it comes to the guys who get the discs out of the pond. If the people who threw into the pond wanted it back they would be in there getting them. If that guy wasn't in there getting discs the discs would still be in there. That guy is willing to do the work that the original owner of the disc is not. He ought to be able to profit from his effort.

[stpitner]

I would go in there and get my 4 discs that are in there if there wasn't a big "NO SWIMMING" sign in front of the pond.  They don't want you in the water.  If it was park district people that went in there and took them out and put them up for sale somewhere, I wouldn't have a problem with that.  I also wouldn't have a problem if the guys that did go in would contact the people that have name/numbers on the discs, and kept the rest.  Even if they had a $5 finders fee or something, they can still make plenty of money.

After the whole Chin-Chin incident I've been a little frustrated with people at Lombard.

[Mike S]

I would go in there and get my 4 discs that are in there if there wasn't a big "NO SWIMMING" sign in front of the pond.  They don't want you in the water.  If it was park district people that went in there and took them out and put them up for sale somewhere, I wouldn't have a problem with that.  I also wouldn't have a problem if the guys that did go in would contact the people that have name/numbers on the discs, and kept the rest.  Even if they had a $5 finders fee or something, they can still make plenty of money.

After the whole Chin-Chin incident I've been a little frustrated with people at Lombard.

Seriously.  I would be more than willing to give someone 5 bucks for one of my lost discs, or even trade them a different disc for it.  It isnt just losing a piece of plastic, its losing a part of your bag that youve gotten used to and know how to throw.  It took me a few weeks to find a good replacement for that orc that I lost the first time.  Now I make sure to keep backups in the same state of wear for all my main discs.  Luckily Ive had nearly identical backups for the last 2 discs Ive lost.

[Bruce Brakel]

I'm kind of in between on the whole pond thing but leaning Jon's way.  If I go pond diving or creek wading for my precious, I'll call people on the other discs I find, or I'll post on pdga.com, or leave them at the lost and found for the courses that have one.  But I feel like I'm being a great human being for that, and that's why I do it, not because I feel like I owe it to anyone.  I would feel like pond scum if I sold the good ones, but the cheap unmarked Innova crap that they bought at Sports Authority, sometimes I'll just leave that in the next basket! 

At this tournament in Grand Rapids there are always these kids in the pond on the holes where a lot of discs go in the pond.  They come to the tournament equiped with long handled garden tools and are pretty efficient at what they do.  Some of them will return your disc for a tip, and pretty much everyone is good about tipping them.  A couple of them will only return your disc for a price and they don't negotiate.  This one guy in my group could not come to terms with the kid at $2 for a Z driver.  He was one of your typical disc golfing socialist types who thought these kids should do this out of the goodness of their hearts and for whatever else someone else might tip them even though he was not going to give a penny.  The kid recovered the disc in the deep part of the pond and came all the way to three feet from shore with it.  The guy was set on his principles that it was his disc and he did not have to pay anything for it to get it back.  Finally the kid agreed with him.  He said, "If its not worth $2 to have it returned to you, I'll put it back where I found it," and he tossed it back into the deep part of the pond! 

Most "No Swimming" signs are posted for liability reasons. 

[discmonkey]

I always try and differentiate between a "lost" disc and an "abandoned" disc.  No sign or pond would stop me from getting back a couple of my discs (of course I wouldn't throw those near the water).  If you know where it is, but simply don't go and get it, it is abandoned and fair game by definition of that word.  If I find something in the reeds at Streamwood, though, that is lost and I know the person looked for it and didn't find it.  I will always return discs with names if possible, but that is me - I'm one of those tree hugging karma nuts.  If I leave a disc in the drink, and it doesn't get returned, I've got no right to be mad at all because I left it there, not lost it there.

[stpitner]

It will be part of the average that determines your rating for a year.  It is better to get your membership when you are rated low anyway.  If you wait until you are winning in Rec to get a membership, boom!, you skip right over intermediate and go straight to advanced.  If you get some rec rounds in, they slow down your average a little. 

Well, I went ahead and did it, I signed up to be a PDGA member (eep!) hehe.  How soon do I get to be turned into an automaton and get assigned a number?  I saw that new members are in the 30k numbers now.  I don't know if it would have been cooler to be in the 29,000 numbers or the 30,000's.  Ah well   It's the rating number that is more important... and hopefully after my first round I'm hoping for just something over 800.  We'll see though.

Am I allowed to write "applied for" on my preregistration?  or do I need to wait until I know my number?

[mirth]

applied for is good enough. you should have a number by the time IOS#2 rolls around.

[Bruce Brakel]

I was just looking at pre-reg and looking at the Throw Discraft player pack list.  It looks like the $500 ace pool and the Throw Discraft Player pack are making trophy-only Advanced an attractive Saturday option for a few Rec and Intermediate players.  That's cool.  That's why we do the trophy-only thing, so players can play up and no Advanced rated players have to come in last!    

[Mike S]

I was just looking at pre-reg and looking at the Throw Discraft player pack list.  It looks like the $500 ace pool and the Throw Discraft Player pack are making trophy-only Advanced an attractive Saturday option for a few Rec and Intermediate players.  That's cool.  That's why we do the trophy-only thing, so players can play up and no Advanced rated players have to come in last!    

I plan on playing trophy-only ADV and then playing INT for most of the IOS tournaments.  Saturday is a basically a warm-up for Sunday then, and I can work on my routes for the trickier holes.  I like playing rounds with people that are better than me anyways, I usually feel like I'm playing better also.

edit:  Also, the bonus this time is that I can take the discraft players pack on saturday and still be able to put into the brass sidebet on sunday.  Thats why I waited until my ADV registration went through to send in my email for the discraft pack.

[Bruce Brakel]

Well, I went ahead and did it, I signed up to be a PDGA member (eep!) hehe.  How soon do I get to be turned into an automaton and get assigned a number?  I saw that new members are in the 30k numbers now.  I don't know if it would have been cooler to be in the 29,000 numbers or the 30,000's.  Ah well  

I wish I would have bought a membership back in '91 when Gale Vaughn was trying to sell me one.  I think they were doing 4000 - 5000 back then.  This gives me an idea to run by Lorrie!  

[airspuds]

what did you play last year

long tees then short

or short then long

which order are we playing this year

[Bruce Brakel]

Most likely longs then shorts on Saturday and longs followed by longs on Sunday.  Jon is doing scorecards.  He'll have the final say.