Here in Switzerland, we have a series of events from March to October - Swisstour. It normally consists of 6-8 events. Players get points for these events as follows: Top player gets 50, DFL gets 1. All other players get points based on a linear progression from 1 to 50. So at bigger tournaments, 2nd place gets more points than at smaller tournaments. It doesn't matter if the tournament is a 1-day event with 36 holes or a 2 day event with 54 or 72 holes. Additionally, although we compete in divisions, this pont system is applied to all players in one group - regardless of division. To have a look at exactly what I mean, go here:

Eagle Open 2008 (http://www.discgolfdatabase.com/resultat.aspx?tid=17)

Then, only half of the events plus 1 count towards your final score. So, if the Swisstour has 6 or 7 events, 4 count. If it has 8 events, 5 count. Your lowest scores are dropped and your highest 4 or 5 are used to determine your place in your division at the end of the Swisstour.

You can see what I mean by looking at these results:

2007 Swisstour (http://precision-open.discdimension.ch/download/ST07-07-Total.pdf)

I do not like this system. And since I'm the President of the Swiss Disc Golf Association, this also gives me some influence over the rules committee. I want to change the system. I have an idea, but I don't want to share it just yet.

A couple of things to keep in mind.

1) We average about 40 - 45 people at a tournament. Most of these are Open Men (18-22) and Masters Men (14-18). We have often ended up with a Grandmaster group of just 3 or 4 although our demographics are changing and there will be more GMs in the future. We allow Women and Juniors to have a category regardless of how many show up because their number are so low. It's typical to have tournaments with 1 or 2 women and/or Juniors. Although, we are expecting a few more women on the tor this year.

2) The Swiss are reluctant to change unless you show them some really good reasons why they should. After a couple of things that happened on the Swisstour the last few years, they admit there is a need to change this system. That doesn't mean they like changing or want to make significant changes although, if I can demonstrate something that would work and make sense, I can get the votes I need to pass the changes.

Help!!!

What do you think? What kind of scoring system would you put in place here? I'm open for suggestions.

Does anything ride on points? Money? Trophies?

Without you saying what is wrong with the current system or what you would want to accomplish with a different system, it is hard to make any suggestions.

Most of my players don't seem to be much aware of season points. The ones in the running for a trophy disc start to care at the next to last tournament. But we don't have much riding on season points. It is just for bragging rights and a few modest trophies.

A couple of things ride on the points system.

1) Modest trophies for the top 3 players in each division every year.

2) Every other year, the results of the Swisstour are used to help determine who gets to represent Switzerland at the European Championships.

So, every other year, it's quite important and every other year it's just for bragging rights.

Problems with the current system:

1) Last year, because of us having to ban a TD, we only had 5 events, which meant that three counted. Of our 5 events, 3 were 1-day events and 2 were 2-day events. Because of dropping the 2 lowest scores, the person who won the Masters division only played in the 3 1-day events. It's not fair that the person who won the tour played 111 holes of golf on tour while the people who finished 2nd and 3rd played 237 holes of golf.

2) 3 seasons ago, we had a situation where the woman A won the Women's division at 4 of the events on tour - there were 7 events that year. Woman B won one of the events. Neither of them played the other 2 events. When woman B won the one event, she had an 'out of my mind' day and played really, really good. At the other 4 events she played her 'normal' level and finished in second closely behind woman A. Because we are all lumped together for determination of points, when woman B had the insanely good day, she grabbed a lot of points - enough to give her the Swisstour win even though she had finshed behind woman A 4 times and had only beaten her once. That's not fair.

OK, I've got a little time this morning, so I decided just to put my idea out there and see what you think. Criticisms are most definitely welcome!

1) There will be NO dropped results. All tournaments will count. ( I think it's important that we: a) reward the players who support the tour by coming to more events; and b) encourage people to participate more if they want to place well.)

2) Each player gets one point for playing in a tournament.

3) For every player in your division that you beat or tie, you get 1 point.

4) These points are multiplied by the number of holes in the tournament that all players played. (i.e. finals don't count) This number is the player's point total for that Swisstour event. For example, if all players played 54 holes, all player points would be multiplied by 54 to give the tournament totals. (The idea here is that our tournaments have different numbers of holes - I have seen tournaments on the Swisstour with 30, 36, 39, 42, 45, 54, and 72 holes for everybody. These should rewarded differently.)

For example: Let's say a tournament has 39 holes and 9 people are in a division. The winner of the division would get 351 points. ((1 for himself + 8 for the people in his division that he beat) times 39 holes in the tournament.) Assuming no ties, the points breakdown would be:

1st - 351
2nd - 312
3rd - 273
4th - 234
5th - 195
6th - 156
7th - 117
8th - 78
9th - 39

If the tournament had either more people or more holes, the points would be higher.

What do you think?

In general, I believe our Minnesota tour participation has been higher and more fair when fewer results count. For example in your proposed system where all count, if a player misses one of the first few events, they may feel they are out of contention which reduces their incentive to try as hard to make all of the remaining events. Likewise, if you are recruiting new players during the season, they don't have a chance to contend if they already missed the first several events.

However, if you set it up so the best X out of Y events count, where X is 50% or one event LESS than 50%, more players not only have a chance to win but they have an incentive to keep playing to either improve their "best" event points and/or enter more events to defend against someone else improving their points.

I also believe points need to be calculated and tracked separately by division, not the way you described it where everyone is ranked regardless of division and points awarded based on overall score. Your system means that the standings for players in one division are impacted by the strength of players in other divisions who attend the event which should have no bearing on your performance against others in your division.

The Minnesota tour system has been used for over 25 years and has been automated with spreadsheet calculations. The NEFA group (New England) borrowed our software and has been using the system successfully for about 5 years now also. The system can handle the inconsistencies of events with different numbers of holes also. For example, events with more than X number of holes can be double weighted compared with those with fewer than X.

Hi Chuck,

Thanks for the email. I have a couple of quick questions about the spreadsheet. Can it be set up to do more than two values for tournaments depending on the number of holes? If we decided to use three values for tournaments based on hole totals - for example: 72 holes, 54-71 holes, and under 54 holes, could the spreadsheet do that as well?

For next year, our tournaments look like this:

#1: 2 days 72 holes
#2: 2 days 54 holes
#3: 1 day 39 holes
#4: 1 day 45 holes
#5: 1 day 36-42 holes (it's not yet exactly clear)
#6: 1 day 48 holes
#7: 2 days 54 holes

It might be nice to have three categories here because of the variety of holes played. (If the spreadsheet can only do two numbers, we can easily do <54 and >53).

I see the point about having only a set number of tournaments count. My thinking was that if all tournaments counted, more players might be encouraged to try and participate in all events. The one problem I see (for us) is that there is one player here (our only 1000 rated player) who wins about 90% of the events. With us only having 7 events and using the top 4 or 5 scores, by the time the last two events happen, he's already won the Swisstour. Is there a way to keep some excitement in this or should the players in his division just learn to play better? :D

Also, you offered to send the spreadsheet. Could you please do that? I'm sure I could set it up myself, but if there is already one there that I could look at, it would be helpful.

Thanks again!

The way to do it would be to have single, double and triple weighted events based on those hole ranges. So you would have one 3X, two 2X and four 1X events for the equivalent of eleven 1X events. However, I think that makes the 3X event too important.

My suggestion would be to simply make the first event 2X and the remainder 1X. That gives you the equivalent of eight 1X events. Players would get their best four 1X events counted or it might be the first 2X event plus two 1X events. That means a player could still start playing with event 4 and be in contention if they play the rest.

The North Carolina series is currently having this very discussion, if you want insight into what players are saying as well as organizers. http://discussion.pdga.com/msgboard/show...ge=0#Post903582 (http://discussion.pdga.com/msgboard/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=903582&an=0&page=0#Post9 03582)
We currently count ALL events, and this has not transferred into growing the participation for the majority of our events. We have anywhere from 2 to 4 players that play most events, then the numbers drop off significantly.
In Open, Brian Schweberger dominates, so regardless of how many events we count, I don't see that outcome changing.
So, the "trend" in the current discussion is to limit the number of counted events, yet that has met resistance, naturally, by some.
Chuck, your input will be shared with our group, so thanks.

What we are working out is to provide end of year financial bonus to the top 5 or so competitors in each division (Open, Masters, Adv) funded by a $2 take per event per division. the goal is to get more people involved in trying to earn points, as bragging rights seem, well, uninspiring.
We are attempting to use the carrot rather then the stick, by offering incentives to earn points, yet are not set what those incentives should be, besides $ at the end. We do have KILLER trophies for # 1, but are also considering making a NC series "card" with registration advantages (and other perks as we think of them) for the top 50 to 60% point-earners, but this is a year or so away.
Chuck, do you have any suggestions based on what you have seen up there in the great white north?

Thanks,
Mike G

I think I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

One more question.

Let's say that we decided to simply double weight the 2-day events and leave the others as single weight. This would give us a factor of ten to work with. And, let's say that we decided to use the best 6 of these. (50% + 1)

Let's say a person has gotten the following point totals from our Swisstour this year:

#1: 102.10 points (2x)
#2: 98.33 points (2x)
#3: 96.29 points (1x)
#4: 94.33 points (1x)
#5: 96.78 points (1x)
#6: 101.4 points (1x)
#7: 97.34 points (2x)

Would the person use 1/2 of tournament 7 as their 6th point total? Would their total be:

102.1 + 102.1 + 101.4 + 98.33 + 98.33 + 97.34?

For 20 events, 8 is the largest number we would ever use in MN and we're down to using best 6 out of 23 or 24 MN Series events. Using less than half of the events has never resulted in fluke winners because the top people still earn the most wins out of their best 6 used. This method boosts participation because players who start out with good scores want to continue to come and keep down others from getting "easier" points. Since many new players don't jump into the PDGA tournament scene right away in spring, they can still contend for prizes even if they don't join until halfway thru the season.

With regard to MTL's regional idea, maybe having points in at least four of the five regions would have to be part of your best 8. I know some are concerned that some people will get "easy" wins at lesser attended events or ones where the weather kept down attendance. What we've found is that the interest in the system helps boost attendance at the events players think fewer will go to. So they go figuring they'll get the points and then more show up than expected. That's good for the tour and the TDs running those events.

Would the person use 1/2 of tournament 7 as their 6th point total? Would their total be:

102.1 + 102.1 + 101.4 + 98.33 + 98.33 + 97.34?



Yes. However, I would still only suggest using 5 best with your revised approach. Otherwise, a player who misses the first two is forced to play the remaining five events. Our formula is 50% or less. I know you've done half plus one but that defeats the purpose of getting more participation and tighter competition.

So Cal Series holds 12-15 events each year, but only the best of five events for pros and the best of four for Ams count. We also collect $2.00 per event and have a very special trophy for first and pay the top finishers (cash to pros, prizes to ams). We award bonus points at the So Cal Championships. This helps break ties and also "forces" players to play this event. A player is not likely to win the top spot if they do not play in the Championships.

When we researched changing how points were awarded last year, we looked at "100 points for first" system that Nor Cal uses. The biggest flaw in this system is that players can "pick" events with few players in their division and then get 100 points for beating only a handful of players. This diminished wins for players at 100+ player events like Master's Cup or St. Patrick's. Joe Blow could get 100 points for only beating 5 people at a small event while Joe Pro only got 100 points for beating 120 people at a huge event.

So Cal players get points for every round they play and for every player they beat. This automatically places a premium on larger events and events with more rounds without artificially "weighting" events. Also players can only earn points in the division they play in. This means Super Pro Grandmaster Steve Wisecup can't earn 140 Grandmaster points by playing well in the Open division at Golden State while all the other Grandmasters are competing for minimum points in a 10 player division.

I agree that its a bad idea to have one tournament valued higher than the next. They should all be worth the same amount of points, no matter what. If one event is worth triple points then anyone can come and win and not have to play the rest of the events. While the guy who couldnt make the bigger tourny (due to work or family or something) played in all the smaller events and won them all, but still lost because of the one he couldnt make it to. In my state we also do Bag Tags with numbers on them. Pay 20 bucks to get your tag, then u challenge others to try to get the lowest tag u can. The lowest so many tags then have the opportunity to win prizes at the Finale. The finale would be free to those who have been to 4 or more events. if u made it to 3 then it costs $5, 2 events $10 and so on. Last year we tried the weighing bigger tournies higher and it didnt work. u could finish in the cash if u played at the A tier and did well, where those that were at 5 C tiers and did well were struggling to catch up. And all those who purchased the bag tags have the chance for a special CTP at every tour stop, that the non tour players dont get to try for

First, I don't think there is anything unfair about what happened in the Women's division on your tour a couple years ago. The points system was set up in advance and the one woman did what she needed to do to win it. The other woman didn't. It is a lot like the PDGA obelisk system where Tom McManus, my daughters and myself have all won obelisks by NOT playing our age and gender divisions. The PDGA system rewards old guys and girls for playing in the large rating-based divisions, so that's what we all did. Your system rewarded the woman who crushed a lot of rec and intermediate rated men, and that's what she did. Our situation may have been calculated and her's fortuitous, but still, she won fair and square under the system that was in place.

The system you had was division-choice neutral. I kind of like that. The woman stood to gain as many points regardless of whether she played in a women's division or a men's division. This way a player can test the waters in a higher division and not lose out on points. That would matter more if you had amateur divisions. The PDGA system is hostile to points competitors playing in the age and gender divisions or playing up to pro. I kept having to choose between playing for points in the big am division, or supporting the pro payout playing up, or going for the win in Am Master. Your proposed system encorages bagging. It rewards good players who hide out in the lowest allowed by the PDGA. It gives them an excuse: oh, I'm playing for the season points.

So you really have to think about what you want to accomplish. Are you for or against age and gender protected divisions? Are you for or against Master and GrandMaster bagging? Are you for or against juniors playing up and supporting the pro purse?

There are other things you can accomplish too. If you want everyone to play the A-tier or the Finals, you can give those greater weight. If you want everyone to play the tournament on the really cool course that is kind of out of the way, or the tournament at the course that charges a lot for a flat rate course use fee, you could weight that one heavier.

When we researched changing how points were awarded last year, we looked at "100 points for first" system that Nor Cal uses. The biggest flaw in this system is that players can "pick" events with few players in their division and then get 100 points for beating only a handful of players. This diminished wins for players at 100+ player events like Master's Cup or St. Patrick's. Joe Blow could get 100 points for only beating 5 people at a small event while Joe Pro only got 100 points for beating 120 people at a huge event.





I'm not sure but the Central Valley Series might use that above mentioned system but the NorCal Series has not used this method. We did change our method for 2008 and based our points on PDGA points and score them all as B-tiers with the finals being an A-tier.

Sorry for the confusion, this was the information I received from the committee that drew up our new points system for 2009. They must have been referring to Central Valley, which is still North for most of us in So Cal. :p ;)