This happened at Rockford this weekend at IOS #4. Group tees off on hole 11 in the wrong direction. The sign is facing the correct direction in the same manner as all the other signs on the course. Flags mark the front of the dirt tee pad near the front of the dirt. They play this "180 hole 11" and hole out into 13's basket which is right by tournament central. One of the tournament volunteers asks the group what hole they started on and they answer (volunteer is trying to determine how many holes are left in the tourney) and he responds "so you just finished 13, so you have 10 more to play?" And they respond with "We just finished hole 11." They at first thought that they skipped two holes but then Brett and I walked with the group down to the last tee that they played from and determined that they had in fact just all holed out on the wrong target.

Highlight to read our call:

<font color="white"> 801.04 B(3): Wrong Target: If a player holes out on the wrong target for a given hole, he or she will continue play from a lie directly beneath that target, without penalty. If the player holes out at the wrong target, and believes the hole is completed, and proceeds to play the next hole, a two-throw penalty will be added to that player�s score for misplaying the course.
They all marked their lies at the wrong target and proceeded to hole out to the correct target "without penalty". That was a harsh "no penalty" penalty. They all were now about 700 feet from the real target and all were lying 3 except for one guy who was lying 2. Ouch! </font>

Not to be overly punitive, but can you call a stance violation for their tee shot at that point since none of them threw from the teeing area?

In this case (assuming the TDs hadn't seen you), you'd be better off "not noticing" that you holed out on the wrong basket, playing the next hole correclty, and then "notcing" the mistake and taking the two stroke penalty. Seems an unintended consequence of the rule. Not that you should, but the rule almost seems to encourage this unintentionally.

In this case (assuming the TDs hadn't seen you), you'd be better off "not noticing" that you holed out on the wrong basket, playing the next hole correclty, and then "notcing" the mistake and taking the two stroke penalty. Seems an unintended consequence of the rule. Not that you should, but the rule almost seems to encourage this unintentionally.



That is what one of the players suggested, except it was too late. Brett and I had to tell him that now that he knows the rule (and we were aware of the situation) if he doesn't follow it we would DQ him for cheating.

If the TD hadn't said something, the players would have compounded the problem by playing hole 14 out of order. Or, if they noticed that they went the wrong way on their own, they might have done just what the TD told them to do. Or, if they discovered the mistake when they walked to the hole 14 tee, they might have looked suspicious walking 700 feet to the hole 12 tee, if they even knew how to find it without asking someone who might wonder what they were doing.

Not to be overly punitive, but can you call a stance violation for their tee shot at that point since none of them threw from the teeing area?



A stance violation has to be called within three seconds of the violation. You can't assume that they violated the stance rules. It would be physically possible that all four of them had violated the stance rule on the tee off of the unintentionally made-up hole which would have made their throws legal on the real hole. Not likely, but even as an official and TD I couldn't call it since I wasn't there.

I really felt pretty bad for this group. They were on the 2nd card. Hole #11is a tough 2 to get with most netting 3's but also bogey 4 potential. After throwing in the wrong direction to #13's basket it becomes a brutal par 4. I belive the best on that card was a 6. They 2'd the hole they played wrong then 4'd it coming back.So they were penalized 3 strokes at a minimum and the others 4 or more. Jon has the cards at home and can give us the details.

The one concern I have is it says to mark the lie directly beneath the target. Is that fair :eek:?

Not to be overly punitive, but can you call a stance violation for their tee shot at that point since none of them threw from the teeing area?



A stance violation has to be called within three seconds of the violation. You can't assume that they violated the stance rules. It would be physically possible that all four of them had violated the stance rule on the tee off of the unintentionally made-up hole which would have made their throws legal on the real hole. Not likely, but even as an official and TD I couldn't call it since I wasn't there.



Didn't all of them tee off from the correct teeing area, just 180 degrees in the wrong direction? Remember, the teeing area is the area bounded by the edges of a tee pad (if provided); otherwise, the area extending three meters perpendicularly behind the designated tee line. So they likely all threw from the correct teeing area, just 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

I agree with Bruce's ruling. (3) Wrong Target: If a player holes out on the wrong target for a given hole, he or she will continue play from a lie directly beneath that target, without penalty.

Not to be overly punitive, but can you call a stance violation for their tee shot at that point since none of them threw from the teeing area?



A stance violation has to be called within three seconds of the violation. You can't assume that they violated the stance rules. It would be physically possible that all four of them had violated the stance rule on the tee off of the unintentionally made-up hole which would have made their throws legal on the real hole. Not likely, but even as an official and TD I couldn't call it since I wasn't there.



Didn't all of them tee off from the correct teeing area, just 180 degrees in the wrong direction? Remember, the teeing area is the area bounded by the edges of a tee pad (if provided); otherwise, the area extending three meters perpendicularly behind the designated tee line. So they likely all threw from the correct teeing area, just 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

I agree with Bruce's ruling. (3) Wrong Target: If a player holes out on the wrong target for a given hole, he or she will continue play from a lie directly beneath that target, without penalty.



Dirt tees with flags in the front to mark the front line. If they used the flags as the front of their 180 degree hole then they were teeing off on the wrong side of the flags.

Bruce didn't make the call, Brett and I did.

The one concern I have is it says to mark the lie directly beneath the target. Is that fair :eek:?



That kind of favors the sidearm thrower doesn't it.

The one concern I have is it says to mark the lie directly beneath the target. Is that fair :eek:?



That kind of favors the sidearm thrower doesn't it.


Then they shouldn't have thrown at the wrong target. It's not like its hard to follow rules.

I was glad to be left out of it. I was a little heat strokey and getting all confused just listening to their story.

They thought they had skipped two holes and I was ready to tell them to take two strokes. I was trying to figure out when they should go back and play the two holes when Jon and Brett took over.

On the topic of fairness, the rule is clear in the book. It does not deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without a hearing. What could be more fair?

But I agree that it is weird that their best option at the point of their confusion is to quickly throw drives on the next hole and THEN try to sort it out instead of sorting it out right away. The score for doing the right thing after doing the wrong thing is harsher than if they had compounded their error.

sounds like it was handled correctly.

Sounds like they need better tee signs.

Or, here's a crazy thought... paint an arrow on THAT tee pad. It's not against the rules and will make it more simple for casual players to navigate the course.

Sounds like they need better tee signs.

Or, here's a crazy thought... paint an arrow on THAT tee pad. It's not against the rules and will make it more simple for casual players to navigate the course.



Too much accommodation for stupidity. Besides, who wants a big ugly arrow painted on the ground? Better effort would be to hold a seminar and teach people how to find tee signs and determine which way the hole is supposed to go. Then they won't be as stupid as they were when they played the hole backwards.

Education over accommodation. :D

Dirt tees with flags in the front to mark the front line. If they used the flags as the front of their 180 degree hole then they were teeing off on the wrong side of the flags.




i would say they never teed off and call them practice throws since they never threw from an actual tee area.

The heat must have been getting to them as they were practically driving right at the picnic table that most players sit at waiting to play the hole in the correct direction. The sign was clear. There was really nothing else the TD needed to do.

The sign was clear. There was really nothing else the TD needed to do.



...except maybe have that seminar on tee sign identification and interpretation /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

OK, so there's a basket in each direction, visible from the tee, each basket seems to be about 350 ft away. While I understand your points about people knowing better, it seems a flaw in the design that there would be any question which direction the next hole goes. I've had holes where you weren't sure which target to throw to when multiple targets are visible in the distance, but it seems a can of Krylon and a small cardboard arrow cutout OR a strip of paint on the front edge of the tee would be useful for defining the direction towards the basket.

While it's great to think everyone is a genius, it's often better to create signage for those who don't even know how to read. Arrows and colors do a lot for logical flow and remove doubt from those who are navigating the course the first time.

It's also potentially dangerous to assume players know which target to throw to, as players may have been walking toward hole 13's basket while the group in question was teeing. So it's not just an idiot thing, it's a safety concern.

With cement tees, we paint a 4" color stripe on the front edge indicating the skill level of the tee which especially helps on our courses with more than one set of cement tees so players playing the Red tees can tell if they accidentally went to a Blue tee.

That's a fair enough assessment. I wasn't there and haven't seen the tee box in question, so I don't really know how confusing it was. On the other hand, there are plenty of things one can do before putting up a cardboard arrow. How about a course map on the flip side of the scorecard? That's what we did in Williamsburg. Seems to work well. No reported backwards play.

OK, so there's a basket in each direction, visible from the tee, each basket seems to be about 350 ft away. While I understand your points about people knowing better, it seems a flaw in the design that there would be any question which direction the next hole goes.



Each hole has a sign. As you are looking at the sign you are looking in the direction of the hole. It is like that for all 18 permanent holes. This hole was no different. The tee pads are dirt with flags at the FRONT of the tee for every hole including this one. Spray painting them would accomplish nothing. It would be gone after the first group tees off. Our course setup volunteers did paint arrows to help with course routing for the temp holes but I'm not going to waste that much temp help when this group could have just looked at the tee sign. Besides the tee sign pointing in the correct direction the picture on the tee sign was obviously not for the direction they were throwing. It had to be a heat and exhaustion related mistake and one that probably at least 3 of the 4 players involved will not make again.

I totally agree with the idea of signs not necessarily being foolproof. I've seen signs placed at all sorts of angles on the same course, some facing forward, some facing backwards, some on the right side, some on the left. That's lousy amenity design, IMO.

I totally agree with the idea of signs not necessarily being foolproof. I've seen signs placed at all sorts of angles on the same course, some facing forward, some facing backwards, some on the right side, some on the left. That's lousy amenity design, IMO.



I've seen that also. Not really relevant in this instance though since every sign was correctly positioned.

A picture is worth 1000 words. Got one of the teepad available, Jon?

This would go a long way to making your point. In my experience, people unintentionally get tunnel vision because they've seen something a hundred times and may take it for granted. What may have seemed obvious to you and your staff may be ambiguous to others. I deal with this all the time with the local courses I frequent and the ones in the general vicinity that I travel to. The locals at these courses often fail to see the need for "Nex-T" and directional signs because they know the layout intimately. In fact, they've flat out ignored my requests for such. It may be that many of these golfers may not travel much to other courses which they are not familiar with. Unless you've wandered around aimlessly on a strange course or one with a new layout, it's difficult to understand the troubles others can experience. Combined with the fact that this was a course with natural tees and flags instead of concrete teepads, and I could easily understand the confusion. As a co-tournament director, in the past I've often recommended that the first round of the tournament get broken up into groups with at least one person familiar with the course in each group. Instead of the usual, where locals and friends may all request being put in the same group.

Further up thread, someone said this group was the on the "second card". This would imply they had already played one round. Were there two different courses or layouts being played? If not, they should have known better.

It sucks when people mis-play holes during events. Sometimes it is partially the fault of the TD. Most often, it is the fault of the players for not paying attention during the round or during the player's meeting beforehand.



There are two kinds of players in Disc Golf: those who have misplayed a hole, and those who are going to.

Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt!!

The first time I played this course I had problems finding my way around. However, by using the tee signs, I was able to play every hole correctly except one. There are a couple of holes where you might throw to the wrong basket even if you looked at the sign. The hole these guys played was not one of them. It was 95 degrees and they were heat exhausted. The guy who had honors wasn't familiar with the course. He made an assumption about the hole without considering that every tee sign before that one had pointed to the basket. The other guys followed him without thinking. It wasn't a blind basket. The tee sign had an accurate picture of the hole that was completely unrelated to how you'd draw a picture of the hole they played.

The x's are the shrubs and trees on the sign. You have a tee sign that looks something like this and the hole does also:

xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxx o xxxxx
xx xxx

xxxx
xxx


[_]

They played a hole that looks something like this:

X X X
X o X
X x X
X X
X X
X X
x X X
X X X
X X
X X

[_]

I don't even know how the one guy managed to throw through all that and park the basket. I didn't see a likely way to throw back to the tee in one throw through all those trees.

So give up with the blame-the-td or blame-the-signage tangent. It just isn't there.

As if by divine intervention, I read a newspaper article today by a guy who really isn't a disc golfer. Rather than paraphrase, I thought I'd just cut 'n' paste.


From the Lake County News Sun (I'd assume that's Illinois, ironically.)

EXTRA POINT Fore? Score more like four ... teen

The object is to throw the disc into a steel basket, which serves as the "hole."

As a player advances down the fairway, he/she must make each consecutive throw from the spot where the previous throw landed. Trees, shrubs, water and terrain changes provide the challenging obstacles.

Or at least they provide SOME of the challenging obstacles. Here are some others:

n 1) If you haven't seen the course before, you can't go by yourself. You can play by yourself, mind you, just make sure you go when someone else is on the course for you to follow.

Without a guide, so to speak, someone to follow, you're as dead as next year's cicadas.

On the course that was being played, there's a map on each tee showing the layout of the hole.

However, there is no indication of which way a player is supposed to throw the disc from the tee.

Which is how the darn Frisbee got lost.

After securing a coveted "7" on the easy, par-5, second hole at the area course -- the first-hole score was somewhere near triple figures ... too many trees -- basically the "tee shot" on the third hole was thrown in the wrong direction.

There was sort of a path going from the tee to the left, and so that's the way the disc was thrown. Three throws later, it appeared that the next throw would be over a giant line of bushes, presumably toward a hidden target on the other side.

Not so.

After clearing the bushes, the path that led down to them stopped about 10 feet into the brush ... and that was that.

No way to get through the bushes to the other side to even attempt to retrieve the lost disc.

All that remained was to retrace the steps back to the distant parking lot and hit the "Land of Sliders" for a sack on the grounds that things couldn't get any worse.

You just cannot design a world that works well for every two-digit i.q. sports writer.

I agree, not the sharpest tool in the nest.

When you play ball golf, they always have a course map, usually on the scorecard.

When you play disc golf at New Quarter Park in Williamsburg, you get a scorecard with a course map on the back. I hope more future courses will provide that. I think it's the wave of the future. It will also reduce instances of playing a course backwards.

When you play ball golf, they always have a course map, usually on the scorecard.


You also always have to go through a pro shop and pay to play, where they provide you with your scorecard. It's tough to keep scorecards protected and in-stock at random local disc golf courses, from my experience. And on top of that, who's to say if the two-digit IQ sports writer will notice the little box that says "Score Cards/Course Maps"?

There are two courses at this park so this may have been the first time anyone from the group played that hole even though it was the second round.

I only go to this park once or twice per year since it is over an hour and a half from home so I don't take the course or course routing for granted. Although I am "familiar" with the course routing I in no way have it memorized.

I'd like to add maps to the back of the score card for all of the courses in the IOS along with special course instructions, OB, special conditions, etc. Right now I don't have any maps to work with except for one course that needs to be updated for changes.

I did not take a pictures and I can't find any on the web. I found a couple of pictures of the East course but this happened on the West course and they have different signs and tee pads.

At least one of those players played the course at the tournament last year.

When you play ball golf, they always have a course map, usually on the scorecard.


You also always have to go through a pro shop and pay to play, where they provide you with your scorecard.



That's what you have to do at New Quarter too. Even season pass holders have to check in at the prop shop before playing. I realize though that New Quarter is an exception to the norm and that most courses don't provide the same amenities. But I hope that will change over time. It's little things like quality signs and maps that will help earn respect for our sport as well as prevent people from playing the course backwards.

New Quarter is quality all the way, I wish more courses would follow this example...all of our new cards at Indiantown Park on the Eastern Shore of VA have maps on the back of the cards

New Quarter is quality all the way, I wish more courses would follow this example...all of our new cards at Indiantown Park on the Eastern Shore of VA have maps on the back of the cards



See! I've begun a trend!!!

Dirt tees with flags in the front to mark the front line. If they used the flags as the front of their 180 degree hole then they were teeing off on the wrong side of the flags.




i would say they never teed off and call them practice throws since they never threw from an actual tee area.


Agreed. The "lie" was on the other side of the flags, so the tee shots were thrown from "not the lie" and are therefore practice throws. Count all the throws made for the wrong target and then proceed back to the proper side of the flags and tee-off throwing "number of throws plus one".

Dirt tees with flags in the front to mark the front line. If they used the flags as the front of their 180 degree hole then they were teeing off on the wrong side of the flags.




i would say they never teed off and call them practice throws since they never threw from an actual tee area.


Agreed. The "lie" was on the other side of the flags, so the tee shots were thrown from "not the lie" and are therefore practice throws. Count all the throws made for the wrong target and then proceed back to the proper side of the flags and tee-off throwing "number of throws plus one".



Look up the rule. Foot faults need to be called within 3 seconds. No one called it.

Look up the rule. Foot faults need to be called within 3 seconds. No one called it.


I say it's a practice throw, not a foot fault. :)

The important thing is that the TD made a ruling and stuck to it. :D