2011 Global Disc Golf Championships

[Dan Michler]

Has anybody read this article about the GDGC on pdga.com?

http://www.pdga.com/global-dg-championship

Maybe I'm just sipping on some haterade today, but doesn't this sound kind of corny?  The parts that get me are 1/2 the payout goes to the local payout and the other 1/2 goes to the global payout.  What happens when a few TD's inevitably take forever to report their scores?  We have to wait for 9 months before the payout is determined?  Seems like a bigger headache for the PDGA than its worth to me.

Also, I don't get the part about it only being for Pro/Adv/Int divisions, because a longer layout must be played (SSA 48-54).  As they state in the same paragraph, 3/4 of courses worldwide fall into this SSA range, so aren't lower division players typically playing on these layouts?  A player under 900 rated shouldn't bother playing because its just too hard?  What kind of message is this?  It just seems strange.

I appreciate the PDGA is trying to come up with some fresh ideas, but this one seems a little ill-conceived.  If we have a local event that weekend, I'd rather that 100% of the payout stays with the local event and we ignore the global event.  Then again, maybe I'm in the minority here?

[Bruce Brakel]

Thanks for the link.

They said excluding recs was partly because of the difficulty of the course.  That part would be about 1%.  The other 99% would be, as was recently discussed on another thread on PDGA.com, the fact that rapidly improving rec players wreak havoc on ratings, skewing them downward for everyone who plays.

What I want to know is, is this a global am-scam event?  Is chuck kennedy going to be taking in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in amateur entry fees on the global payout portion and then paying out those amateurs at retail, keeping 50% for himself?  If so, sucks not to be Chuck Kennedy! 

[pickax]

This thing is such a logistical nightmare I would go nowhere near it.

[Bruce Brakel]

For 50% of 50% the amateur entry fees, you could quit your regular job and just run global disc golf tournaments.  Well, doing some quick math, you couldn't, but you could buy some Excederine for that headache and pay cash for a new car.  

Anyway, I posted some inflammatory and insightful questions on the PDGA.com thread.  Maybe we'll get some answers. 

[Dan Michler]

Perhaps Bruce is right, that this is actually a way of raising funds for the PDGA, but then why would they have excluded Rec and Novice?  What does it matter to them if Rec/Novice skew the ratings, they'll still be taking in the extra cash?

On the same weekend in August of this year, there were 1290 amateur players playing in PDGA sanctioned events.  Probably >$40,000 in entry fees.  If they got 50% participation (I doubt they would get that, are TD's really interested in sharing more of the profits with the PDGA?), the 50% payout would be about $10,000.  If they profited 50% on that, thats just $5,000.

Still doesn't seem like its worth the headache for an organization with a $1.2 million dollar budget.

[Chainmeister]

It would seem that this event, like Bruce had posted on PDGA, will require creativity from local TD's to make it worthwhile.  A real low entry fee with an interesting series of side bets could allow people to play locally and compete globally.  I still thing that even with ratings being used, its stil apples and oranges.  If a player shoots a lights out round, his or her ratings may still be effected by the fact that a lower rated player also shot lights out.  Would this make them less likely to place at the global level?  The distribution of players on the local level will still make ratings swing. A low turnout at one of the local events could make the ratings artificially high or low depending on the range of scores.  Also, it may be beautiful at Sinnisspippi and violently windy somewhere in Florida and raining cats and dogs in North Carolina  The Same SSA may be open and longish or wooded and technical.  Did these players reallly compete against one another? 

I think the concept might be fun to do when technology gets a little better (we are close) and we can compete globally on the same course in a Wii or Xbox or whatever system tournament. This could be done in the middle of the Winter when Chuck Kennedy has three feet of snow outside his basement window.  We can all be playing a nice sunny course and the ratings will be based on a very large global pool.  PDGA can charge a nominal amount to play via a credt card entry that would turn into a huge prize pool when you have a world of players entering.   With the right techonology we could chose our foursomes.or have them assigned randomly by the computer.  Maybe I could play with one of the Japense guys I met at Worlds a couple years ago  all while looking at my television screen. If Steven Jacobs is away at college by that time he can be playing from his dorm room.

But getting back to the outdoor proposal...Meh. 

[Bruce Brakel]

Perhaps Bruce is right, that this is actually a way of raising funds for the PDGA, but then why would they have excluded Rec and Novice?  What does it matter to them if Rec/Novice skew the ratings, they'll still be taking in the extra cash?

On the same weekend in August of this year, there were 1290 amateur players playing in PDGA sanctioned events.  Probably >$40,000 in entry fees.  If they got 50% participation (I doubt they would get that, are TD's really interested in sharing more of the profits with the PDGA?), the 50% payout would be about $10,000.  If they profited 50% on that, thats just $5,000.

Still doesn't seem like its worth the headache for an organization with a $1.2 million dollar budget.

They excluded Rec and Novice because it is a Chuck Kennedy concept tournament and he knows more than anybody, although he claims otherwise, how much Rec and Novice players skew ratings. 

As to why would the PDGA bother for $5000 or $10,000, why do they bother at Am Worlds every year?  They make their 1.2 million budget $500 to $1000 at a time on 100s of B and C-tiers.  Am Worlds payout skimming brings in 10 times that.  Global payout skimming could do just as well or better.