Disc Golf Information: Shaping the Pro Tour for Tomorrow

It's mid January 2008 just outside Tampa, a little early for the spring break madness to hit Florida. The 3rd stop on the PDGA men's pro tour is about to get under way in Plant city just east of town. It will be held on two private courses owned by a disc manufacturing company from the Midwest and managed by a sports marketing company from New York One course is a 12,000 ft. par 71 built from the ground up and designed to challenge all of the 144 players who have qualified for the tournament. This course is the cream of the crop with many elevated tees, manicured fairways, a 30-ft wide waterway and 2 ponds. Small bushes, deep sand bunkers and mounds guard the baskets and green areas. 50% of the trees have been planted and all of the elevation is man made. The back nine is even lit for nighttime play.

Quite the contrast is the "tough" course near the swamps, which will require almost every shot you have ever thrown before. Only 9600 ft., but a hard-to-break par 72. Carved out of the jungle with palmettos everywhere and lots of underbrush. Playing too aggressively will take you off the fairway and making bogey or double bogey on almost every hole. The swamp doesn't really come into play but the thought of gators may keep you playing it safe, placements shots of 250-325 and good putting will card good scores.

Entry fee for the tournament is $125.00 for everybody and there's only one division. The top 100 money winners from 2007 who wish to enter will automatically qualify for each of the forty-two events on this year's tour. 90 of those players have pre-registered leaving 80 players signed up to play a qualifying round on Thursday for the remaining 54 spots to fill the field.

It's now Friday morning at 6:30; half the players with early tee times are on the driving range or practice green. The other half are eating in the clubhouse or resting in their travel homes. I overhear advice from a caddy on wind condition and pin placements. (No practice is allowed on the course the day of the tournament.) Each course will be played once before a cut to 68 plus ties for Sunday.

A gallery of over 1000 is expected, made up of local amateurs from the high school leagues, friends and family and players who didn't make the cut that opted to stay and watch, over traveling to Myrtle Beach for a 1-day b-tier event.

Cut to 4:00 pm on Sunday at the awards ceremony. The traditional long-winded Crazy John speeches are a thing of the past. The promoters thank the players, spectators and sponsors, give a brief description of the action, award the 1st place trophy and the check for $2500.00, and its see ya next week in Orlando. Players in the money can get their checks later that night or have them mailed.

A typical purse of 15,000 - 20,000 that pays the top 30 players will break down nicely with $1,000 for 5th, $750 for 10th, $500 for 15th, and $250 for 30th.

1st	7th	13th	19th	25th
$2,500	$900	$600	$400	$310
2nd	8th	14th	20th	26th
$1,500	$850	$550	$375	$300
3rd	9th	15th	21th	27th
$1,250	$800	$500	$350	$290
4th	10th	16th	22th	28th
$1,100	$750	$475	$340	$280
5th	11th	17th	23th	29th
$1,000	$700	$450	$330	$270
6th	12th	18th	24th	30th
$950	$650	$425	$320	$250

This kind of tournament won't happen overnight but there are things we can start doing now to head in that direction. Private courses are being installed with facilities for big time tournaments this is a step in the right direction. (John Houck and Dave Moody in Texas, many in Nor Cal and my own course in the Ozarks) just to name a few.

The PDGA should sanction all new courses to be eligible for tournament play. Some existing courses may need an update to meet certain criteria for an A tier or series event. Having stricter rules on course design will only improve layout and make future courses safer. One course in each city could be promoted as the country club style course the best city, county or state course w/ the most facilities will work until more private course can be built.

A philosophy on marketing disc golf could be to model ourselves after ball golf in as many ways as possible. This could bring help to the game-hobby-sport transition we are going through. The formats, rules, and promoting seem very successful for them why not give it a try. 18 hole courses not 19 or 23 and 72 total holes. When we start having too much room for an 18-hole course maybe we should start making the holes longer. More holes that are Par 4's & 5's w/ course par in the upper 60's, that will make it look more like ball golf scores. To quote a top German player Christian Voight "that would be really cool".

After playing in the culture clash 1998 and at the worlds the past several years and getting in many conversations w/ touring pros the talk is always the same what can we do to get to where we want to be. In the business world it would be time to hire someone for the job. Raising dues for pros to$100 a year is more of a realistic figure, especially for what some people expect from the PDGA. How far will $50 go, one night out on the town, I doubt it.100 dollars a year and $5 each time you play will raise the yearly revenue enough to spend more money on advertising, marketing and self promotions. This added income could replace that lost from the amateurs starting their own organization; it's getting close to the time for the young birds to leave the nest. Birds are unable to fly under a wing and need room to grow to be successful own their own. The amateur portion of the professional disc golf association (doesn't that sound funny saying) needs to work on player development from within their own ADGA. Their dues will be raised also, more of a tier method. A level 5 am (novice) may pay 25 a year and a level 1 advanced) $50 a year. The tournaments are getting to big anyway, for pro's and AM's to play on the same weekend. I'm not talking all tournaments just the pro tour for starters. The two organizations could be under one roof called the Disc Golf Players Association. 
I just spent x amount of time talking about the amateurs in an article about the pro tour, can you imagine how many times this happens at the PDGA. 

Now back to the pro tour, some rule changes might help speed up play and legitimize the game even further.

1.	Putting out rule; this can be a rule or a courtesy. The idea would be when a putt originates from inside the ten meters you would have the option of putting out. This would definitely speed up play and keep players from hovering around the basket. When your 25ft putt hits the front, walk up, putt it in and go over to the next tee and start thinking about what disc you are going to use next.
2.	Lost disc; this rule needs changing. Why should one player's energy be wasted on searching for another player's overaggressive drive? When there's a chance to lose your disc on a hole, you need to make a decision to go for it or to lay up (course management it is called and their needs to be more of it). When you shank your green disc in the weeds, take 5 minutes to look for it by yourself or with your caddy.
3.	Lost disc, 2m and unplayable lie (where to place the lie); this is where ball golf rules would help. When a player is already being penalized a stroke, he should get a clean lie. Taking the disc back anywhere along the line of flight, no closer to the hole to have an unobstructed throw would make better sense.
4.	The water rule (lateral hazard in ball golf) would remain the same; maybe 2m in from the spot where you went in at, no closer to the hole.
5.	The out-of-bounds rule; A well-designed disc golf course should have very few O.B.'s. Shots should play away from park boundaries, but when your disc does goes O.B., stroke and distance would be the rule. This means re-throwing from the spot you last threw from. I think this would keep players in bounds more often (course management).When a long shot appears to be O.B. , a provisional shot can be thrown without going down to look at the lie. This is done at ball golf tournaments quite often.
6.	Marking the lie; here's a rule that is not obeyed by everyone. To make things equal you would be allowed to place your mini on any side of your disc (players do this anyway). When courses start getting longer and you actually play to a certain side of the fairway this would make sense, when you play to the left mark it to the left. When you want to land short of a group of trees, mark your lie on the short side and so on.

The idea for the tour would be to start in the 2nd or 3rd week in January, have 4 stops in Florida, Miami, Orlando, Clearwater and Jacksonville Then up to Mobile and New Orleans before going to Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and New Mexico in March.. Onto Phoenix, San dyego, Los Angeles, and Santa Cruz in April. San Francisco, Sacramento, Tahoe, FT Collins and Denver for May. Kansas City, and St. Louis up north to Des Moines and Minnesota in June. Wisconsin, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Detroit and St. Thomas in July. Down through the east to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Virginia in August. Up and across highway 70 to Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati and Louisville for Sept South to Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh and Atlanta in October. Huntsville, Memphis, Tulsa and ending up in Austin the week before Thanksgiving The tour would shut down for the winter holidays and start again in January 44 tour stops all in a direct line, with only a few hundred miles between each city. This is only an example of and not necessarily including or limited to these cities. The masters, women's and grandmasters could make up another tour that could follow behind or be in front of the men's tour and run along the same path. The PDGA would not sanction any other events, not even a c-tier within 300 miles.

Information contained in this article is a collaboration of opinions and ideas gathered in conversations the past 20 years on tour. I have played in over 200 tournaments in 25 states since 1983 talking and listening to everyone about these topics. International players, top ranked US pros and local amateur from the east coast to the west have all chimed in to express their views. The watering down of the competition has always been a problem. Raising the Masters age to 40 is only a temporary solution to a problem that will come up again in 3-5 years Sandbagging in the amateur ranks is a hot topic of which there's an answer . Having amateur levels 1-5 where points can be earned by scores and how well you finish in ADGA sanctioned events (kind of like bike racing) could be used. The number of amateur to pro's should be about a 1000 - 1 ratio. We need a lot more recreational players coming out to our tournaments. Creative ways to promote amateur play like handicapping, team tournaments and traveling teams could help.

The formats that we are using now will need to be adjusted to accommodate for the influx of new players. Roll starts although harder on tournament directors, have been experimented with lately and were well received. Cutting the field for the last round in big tourneys will help create a gallery (Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd). Potential outside sponsors always ask how many spectators will be there? Will there be any television or radio coverage? We are going to have to rely on people within the Sport to make the tour it happen.
The time has come to grab the bull by the horns; we need to urge the current disc manufacturers to pull together on this tour to make it work. Can you imagine where we would be right now if just ½ of the nearly $1,000,000.00 spent in litigation over Patents and Trademarks had actually been spent on Promoting, advertising and marketing for a tour. (YES THAT'S RIGHT ALMOST ONE MILLION DOLLARS SPENT ON LAWSUITS INVOLVING DISC GOLF CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?)