You make the call

[Bruce Brakel]

Bruce's Answers:

Ice and snow do a lot to obscure the boundary for out of bounds, just as bog and mud do when the ice has melted.  As a TD and a player, I give the iffy calls to the thrower.  As a TD I try to have as little o.b. as possible that does not have a marked or reasonably well defined line.  There will always be grey areas.

If the creek is o.b. a disc is not safe by being on the ice above the creek.  The o.b. area includes the area above the o.b. playing surface.  The o.b. line is actually a vertical plane.  The o.b. area is three dimensional.  A disc suspended above o.b. is o.b.

If the wood wall is ob. and the disc touched the o.b. side of the wood wall, then it never touched in bounds there. 

[Chainmeister]

On the wall, I think we gave a freebie to the guy in our group when we said the wall was on the other side. However, it was still a penalty.  We ruled the disc had gone over and then went back in so he took his penalty and threw from the far side of the creek. He was close to the basket on 2.  I think he should have thrown from the other side of the creek but didn't make a stink about it. 

On the disc in the creek in 1 part of the problem is that the entire course had lots of ice due to rapid snow melt.  Lots of ice was snow melt and not creek overflow.  I think the boundries of the creeks were tougher to call due to this.  We had ruled that a disc on 1 was in bounds and I agreed with the call because the ground was tilted toward the creek and snow melt had then frozen making the line between the creek and the ground very tough to call.  I think we properly gave the benefit to the thrower. The grass poking through is an indication that this was land and that the ice was due to the rapid snow melt last week and not the creek overflowing.

I think there was one other situation that arose Saturday due to the late rounds-- a curtesy issue.  It was pitch black when we finished.  The last hole was a pure guess.  I bogieyed the last hole becuase I mis guessed where the basked was located.  The problem was the two previous holes. As we all hustled to play in the remaining shreds of light I encouraged the group ahead of us to let us throw as they looked on the side for what was apparently an errant disc.  They were a bit miffed when we landed our drives behind them.  At that point of the day the normal routine has to change.  Everybody needs to be afforded a chance to throw with a sliver of remaining light.  We tried to balance safety, reason and desire.  Also, who knows if anybody was playing their disc where it landed. I did, but I have no clue about anybody else, as I could not see anybody else.  For the last few holes it was almost as if we were all playing alone. It was a tough balance. That being said, the day was too long. Scott did a great job running things. However, 22 holes was simply to much.  The last four holes were really too dark to play.  Frankly, we should have played 2 rounds of 18 and capped the thing at 90 players. 

[can't putt]

If the wood wall is ob. and the disc touched the o.b. side of the wood wall, then it never touched in bounds there.

Making this a conditional statement also makes it a non-answer.  The wall was NOT declared OB, the creek was.  This makes the actual OB line a vertical extension of the creek/wall interface.  So to determine if a disc hit or is leaning OB or IB one must determine if the surface of the wall where the disc rests or impacted is on the OB or IB side of the line.  This has been discussed at length on the PDGA site.

IMO this is just silliness.  Intuitively, and in the interest of sportsmanship and fair play if the leading edge of a disc didn't clear the face of the wall and the disc landed in the drink then that disc never made it to IB territory past the creek, is OB, and was last IB on the side of the creek from where the throw originated.  Simple, straightforward, and non-arbitrary.

[skipache]

if you hit the wall and fell in the creek you were never in bounds, that person should always be shooting with a penalty on the far side of the creek

[UMphreak]

here's an idea- park the drive and drop the putt it.  It's hard to be OB  that way