Bad scorecards

[Bruce Brakel]

Yesterday the guys on the second card in my division turned in a bad scorecard.  Whoever was taking cards looked at it and handed it back, telling them to correct it.  The scores that were incorrect did not receive "true+2", but instead got to correct their score without a penalty.  It led to a controversy because it made the difference between last prizes.  The guy who got last prizes would not have, if he had taken the penalty for an incorrect card.  The controversy was made somewhat worse because the guy bumped out of last prizes had taken a two throw penalty for playing hole 3 immediately after hole 2.  The lead card had failed to play holes A, B and C after Hole 2.  So he was like, "I took my penalty under the rules.  He should take his."

I don't know the rest of the details.  It did not matter to my score so I stayed out of it.  But it got me thinking whether a TD should ever give a badly added scorecard back to the group.  I was curious what Jon, Brett, Mike and other Illinois TDs do currently with this kind of situation.  The TDs running this tournament are "nice guy" TDs who will usually give a badly added card back to amateurs if they are loitering around nearby, but not to pros, and not at a Major.  I'm pretty sure that has been their policy for several years, regardless of what the rules might be. 

[pickax]

The only time I typically will hand back a bad score card (w/o penalty) is it it fails the 3 second eyeball test (dashes for par, missing total, total as a +/- to par, etc.) Once I have gone through the trouble of adding someone's score, they will get a +2 if it's wrong. I do the same from the Junior division up to the pro division.

[Dan Michler]

I agree with Mike's philosophy.  It is a competition people paid money to participate in, and everyone must play by the same rules to keep a level playing field.  The guy who missed cash has a legit gripe.  It was assumed they were all using PDGA competition rules, but it turned out that some rules were enforced and others weren't.  His infraction just happened to fall into the former category.

This is off-topic, but if you want to see a lot of incorrect scorecards, just put the 'course par' on the scorecard.  20% of the field will use it as the "every hole is a par 3" total regardless.  Disc golfers aren't known for their math skills.

[CEValkyrie]

I have always penalized for incorrect score cards at PDGA events.. I believe the only time I did not do this was at the club event where there were no prizes.

That is the hard thing about being a TD. The disc golf world is a very small community. You may have to penalize your best friend or other locals. It's not much fun having to do that. One more thing on the list of being a TD that can be a pain.

[dana]

I penalize for wrong scores.

[Chainmeister]

I also agree that incorrect scores are +2 all the time.  I think it is important to stress this at the player's meeting.  Getting a +2 should be like getting your car towed.  It happens once and then you never let it happen again.  I often have players tell me that I have to sign the scorecard. I never do. However, I always check everybody's score.  I tell my fellow players that the only thing you have to do is get your score correct and the only thing you ought to do is check all scores.  That being said, I don't think there was any advantage/disadvantage in Bruce's tournamment.  Everybody knows those TD's generally cut some slack on this issue. If you have a baseball umpirer who misses the outside strike but does so consistently, you have no reason to comlplain.  Everybody knew he would give you back your card to check again.  Nobody could count on those two bonus strokes in that case.  The fact that the lead card had broken a different rule really didn't matter.  I would have more sympathy if they had broken the same rule. 

[Bruce Brakel]

Mike, if they played 24 holes and at a glance, without actually totalling the scores, it is obvious that they based par on 18X3=54, would you hand that back?  

Brett, Dana, will you stroke them or give them back the card for using dashes instead of 3s, or writing their total as +7 instead of 61 on an 18 hole par 54 course?  

I'm usually like Mike, but instead of a three second rule, its more of a first glance rule, and then only if I'm taking the card out of their hand and glancing at it while they are right there.  Then its like I never took the card. They tried to turn it in but I didn'y take it.  

But I'm asking because I'm rethinking this, having seen the argument after the tournament among people who are normally congenial competitors.  

[pickax]

Everything is just a sea of numbers to me when I'm in TD mode, so I only look to see if they have numbers. 3 seconds might be a tad long. It really is just a quick glance. In the cases where they don't have numbers, I'll call out to them even if I didn't catch it as they handed it to me.  Often times I just take it w/o looking and put it in my stack to work on since have some other line that I'm currently adding up in my head.

When checking cards I have caught occurrences where it is obvious that the entire card was misadded due to either the number of holes or some hole marked as par 4. They still get +2.

[roman]

3.8 Tournament Director Rights and Responsibilities
...
B. All Tournament Directors may be required to sign a statement acknowledging that they have read the PDGA Rules of Play and Competition Manual, and agree to abide by and enforce its contents before being able to direct any PDGA sanctioned event.
...

Krupicka stroked me at Fairfield 2 or 3 years ago for not adding up my score correctly. I counted them up 3 times after the round, and apparently all 3 times were wrong. I'll never forget that, and now I have others check my score PLUS I keep score on my phone on top of that so the computer does the math for me. I haven't submitted a wrong score since.

One of the things a TD agrees to when running a PDGA sanctioned event is to uphold PDGA rules. Stroking someone for misplaying a hole and then giving someone that miscounted their score a break is just shady. If you're going to ignore the rules that supposedly have no effect on scoring, then at least be consistent about it. I would prefer a TD to follow the rules though.

[Jon Brakel]

I go by the scoring rules except when we've agreed to give juniors a break. Personally I don't think we should give juniors a break. If you're old enough to play you're old enough to add. I didn't give the juniors a break at Iowa Worlds.