A player has made his approach shot that landed just underneath the basket. The player marks his lie and in the process of picking up the disk, drops the disk and it rolls twenty feet away from the basket.

Is this considered a stroke? What rule covers this incident?

803.13B

also check out the definition of throw in the definition section.

Throw: The propulsion of a disc that causes it to change its position from the teeing area or the lie.

Though, if you ever find yourself in this situation (and feel like dealing with the ensuing arguments), you should immediately check your feet and make sure you have a legal stance. If you aren't behind your mini, you could call it a practice throw or a stance violation, i'm not actually sure which is most appropriate, since both could be the case. Which would result in retaking the shot from under the basket with a 1 stroke penalty (unless its the first stance violation, which is a freebie)

803.13B



The rule says the disc must be thrown. In the above situation the disc was merely dropped, and the laws of physics simply carried it. The situation is totally different because the player isnt purposefully throwing the disc. Are we now expected to stroke people because they dont have a grip like everyone else?

no they have little white rooms and medication for people that dont have a grip like everyone else, however dropping a disc is just another way to throw it. i drop my disc in the basket on tap in putts, does that mean those putts dont count and i haven't holed out?

: ) :

I don't think its too much to ask that someone be able to "place" their disc in the basket without dropping it. You don't have to "throw" a disc to hole out so the argument about disc being thrown doesn't really hold water. If he was behind his lie and the disc dropped and rolled - play it where it rolled to.

According to the post, the player dropped the disc while picking it up, not making the throw. The practice throw is only incurred if the amount the disc was projected is more than 2m (in the air) or any amount toward the basket. Doesn't sound like a practice throw here. Retrieve the disc and hole out. No practice throw or penalty here.

According to the post, the player dropped the disc while picking it up, not making the throw. The practice throw is only incurred if the amount the disc was projected is more than 2m<font color="red"> (in the air) </font> or any amount toward the basket. Doesn't sound like a practice throw here. Retrieve the disc and hole out. No practice throw or penalty here.



totally serious here... so does this mean that if you want you can throw a roller away from the basket and it not count as a practice throw?!

"2m (in the air)" do you have a citation for this Chuck or is this your interpretation?

It seems if you land a roller on the ground within 2 meters you could keep throwing them until you got one you liked.


Players could avoid this situation if they were mindful not to set up behind their mini until they were ready to throw.

This is similar to ball golfers who are not allowed to ground their club until they are ready to strike the ball - even if they ground their club too early and the wind moves the ball they receive a stroke. Not saying we need to mimic ball golf, just saying that its not too much to ask that players don't drop their discs while they are in a stance to make a legal throw (this assumes the player above was behind their mini marker at the time).

it would, if you can manage to make the roller hit the ground within 2 meters.

Also, I see absolutely no mention of the disc having to be in the air in the rules. Unless you interpret the word projection to mean flight through the air, which I think few people would do. Am I mistaken on my interpretation of that word?

It seems if you land a roller on the ground within 2 meters you could keep throwing them until you got one you liked.






Any throw (air or roller) towards the hole counts.

I've seen people who are parked under the basket doink the disc on the bottom of the basket and drop it. I have NEVER thought that it was a throw and that it was a stroke.

Agreed on the first point - any throw of 2meters or more, not just air unless the rules say otherwise.

On the other point, I have seen the basket doink happen several times and in all cases a stroke was assessed. It shouldn't matter how close you are, there are no "gimmies" in tournament play ;)

You're missing a key part of the practice throw definition and that is whether the shot is projected toward the basket. So even if you got down on your knees, and started with the disc on edge on the ground and rolled it toward the basket, it would be a practice throw. In the case we're discussing, the drop was less than 2m and the roll was away from the basket.

Dropping and projecting are different. One is an active motion to throw the disc which has been disallowed with the practice throw rule to prevent players from gaining an advantage by testing the wind. A disc slipping out of your grip is not projecting the disc. In addition, what the disc does due to the ground doesn't matter similar to the rule that doesn't allow your disc to float to a new position due to the motion of the water (803.03F). From a practical standpoint, even if the player was standing on a bridge and the disc slipped out of their hand and dropped more than 2m, I don't believe the Rules Committee would consider that a practice throw.

Players could avoid this situation if they were mindful not to set up behind their mini until they were ready to throw.



The poster did not say the player was in a legal stance when the disc dropped. They were just marking the lie. You'd have to specifically try to place your foot behind your disc on the ground to even have a chance to be within 30cm behind your mini. It's unlikely anyone is ever in a legal stance while picking up their disc from the ground.

Ah...I didn't catch that part of the practice throw rule:

"Practice Throw: During a round, the projection of a disc of a distance greater than two meters, or of any distance toward a target, intentional or not, which does not change the player�s lie, either because it did not occur from the teeing area or the lie, or because the player had already thrown competitively from the teeing area or the lie."

However, I still see no reference to air distance vs. total distance. Additionally, "intentional or not" seems to run contradictory to your statements - discs "falling" out of your hand are unintentional (in other words not intentional) - total distance &gt;2meters = practice stroke (if not behind your mini marker).

I also agree that the player was most likely not in a legal stance when this happened and agree that in practical terms this rule should distinguish between accidental dropping of discs vs. practicing but the current rules don't seem to do that.

For fun and for the record, you don't have to project a disc to make a teeshot. In an Icebowl in Milwaukee there was a super icy downhill hole with a slight left turn at the end. After practicing the hole we found that simply laying the disc upside down got us closer to the hole on average than trying to navigate the fairly tight fairway.

It was fun to see the look on the cardmates faces when I just set my disc down in front of the tee and let it slide down the hill. It made the turn and gave me an easy 25ft deuce putt :) Would this be an illegal shot since it was not projected (I didn't need to push it or give it any propulsion)?

The "intentional" is connected with toward the basket or not, not whether the disc was intentionally projected or dropped.

With regard to the disc being laid on the ice and not projected, no throw was actually made. If you read 803.03F, you would have to at least push the disc to get it started before a "throw" would have been made. It also occurs to me that in the winter, if your disc lands on a hillside, stops momentarily, then starts to slide down the hill, a case could be made that the lie returns to where it first started sliding based on 803.03F.

After rereading the original post, I realized that I think I was considering a different circumstance than may have happened. I had assumed that the player in question did the following: marked his disc, picked disc up, was on his way to put it in the basic, and dropped the disc before he made it to the basket. (all in one motion).

However, with a more careful reading, it seems that the player was simply marking his disc and picking up the other with the intention of placing it somewhere other than in the basket.

I think that these are 2 different circumstances, which would be ruled differently. My original interpretation would be a stroke, while the new one would not.

It seems if you land a roller on the ground within 2 meters you could keep throwing them until you got one you liked.






Any throw (air or roller) towards the hole counts.

I've seen people who are parked under the basket doink the disc on the bottom of the basket and drop it. I have NEVER thought that it was a throw and that it was a stroke.



The one voice of reason in this thread.

If we spend this much time trying to figure out if someone should be penalized for mistakenly bumping into a basket and dropping a disc as a result, then this sport is going to be underground for some time.

or maybe we need a rulebook comprehensive enough to cover common situations

: ) :

2006 Amature Worlds, Tulsa Oklahoma. My disc rolled OB 6ft beyond the basket, down a 18ft dropoff into a creek bed. I marked my lie, and proceeded 60ft away to a spot where I could climb down the embankment to retrieve my disc. It was a 2 handed climb back out, a player in my group walked over to offer assistance. I threw my disc to him to free my hands, "stroke". :mad:. I appealed it, lost, didn;t argue. Did I help him change his flat tire NO. Not in the direction one bit. Someplayers are just like that.

Mini Thumber ;)

That bites.

I dont know exactly where it states it in the rule book or if it does anymore BUT , this is evidence where giving the player the benifit of the doubt is MORE involved then I have ever seen . Yes rules whacos will run up and down about he did what he did and should be stroked BUT the intention was not for him to gain an advantage to get closer with a shot . HE HAD already marked his lie .
Rules are rules for a reason but there is another one . COMMON bleeping sense .

Exactly, I had to go ahead and beat him 12 strokes instead of just 6. As a player, we sometime overlook moral's. I once had a player mark my disc instead of his. His was closer, much closer. I in tern marked his, and thanked him for marking mine.

Mini Thumber

...and sometimes we need to overlook grammar and spelling mistakes.

Although some of us never do.

What do you mean
I can spell . The word cat is spelled D O G right ???

Had to twype fast, LOL

Mini Thumber ;)

Chuck,

Thanks for the interpretation. What actually happened is that the player walked to the new lie and putted from there. Made the putt, but it cost him the extra stroke. Lost the tournament by one. It was unfortunate.

So even the way it was played was incorrect if a practice throw was assessed. When a practice throw is called, it doesn't change the player's lie. The player should have gotten an additional 2-shot penalty for not playing from his lie. If a foot fault was called and seconded within 3 seconds since he wasn't at his lie, then he would rethrow from the lie under the basket with just a warning and no penalty or practice throw counted. There's no way playing from where the disc rolled would be a correct lie unless he had a supporting point within 30cm behind the mini at the time the disc dropped from his hand and the group called it his actual throw.

The player did have a valid stance behind his marker disc and the group did actually call it a throw.

That must have been an interesting contortion to reach down under a basket, mark with your mini and have your plant foot already in place while trying to pick up the disc and accidentally drop it? Or did it not really happen that way?

Looked that way and there was really no questions about the "throw". The player took the stroke and nobody said anything one way or another. The entire group may have missed this one.

Ok, next stupid iteration that has happened to me in casual play:

I reach my lie on a sidehill. My bag has a fairly large opening in the top that allows easy access to the discs. I put my bag down, it immediately rolls onto its side and 18 discs each roll more than 2 meters away.

What's your call?

What if I have the bag on my back, bend over to tie my shoe and have 18 discs roll up my back and 7 of them end up more than 2 meters away?

Lots of really interesting GUESSES so far.

The Rules committee gets plenty of grief on this board but they actually do lots of good things

.Why don't you look in the Rules Q&amp;A??? Definitely NOT a throw.

Rule Question: Is a drop a throw?
Question
I was playing a casual round with some friends and had a shot wind up deep in some Evergreen trees. I tried to throw a forehand shot as my out shot, and when I brought the disc backward, it hit a tree branch and bounced forward out of my hand. My arm motion did not go forward at the time I lost grip of the disc, but the disc did bounce forward as a result of hitting the branch. The disc then rolled forward about three feet in front of me.

I counted it as a throw, even though my arm motion was not going forward at the time I lost my disc. I am curious if this is indeed how I should have scored the shot for future reference.

Response
Applicable Rules:


800 Definitions ("Throw")

The ruling here hinges on what constitutes a throw, or to put it another way, when a throw begins. A strict construal would have the throw begin once the player has taken a stance. One problem with that is that it is not obvious when a player has taken the stance they will throw from. Also, any release of the disc after that point (even setting the disc on the ground) could be interpreted as a throw. Such a strict interpretation raises other problems.

An alternative is to consider that the throw begins when movement of the disc in the intended direction begins. Under that interpretation, a disc dropped or knocked out before or during a backswing does not count as a throw. The rules committee prefers this more forgiving interpretation.

It is analogous to the requirement in football that the quarterback's arm must be moving forward for a pass to have occurred. At the point of time under consideration, the disc is still held, so forward arm movement equates to forward disc movement. After the release, direction of intent no longer matters. The disc may go sideways or backwards, but the important thing is that the arm moved in the direction of intent after a stance was taken and the disc was released, hence a throw occurred.

The PDGA Rules Committee

Carlton Howard, Chair
John Chapman
Conrad Damon
Harold Duvall
Joe Garcia
Jim Garnett
Rick Voakes

After I stopped laughing, I would assist you and ask you Which one you gonna mark...LOL. No, I play with commen sense, and am understanding. Next. I 2nd that the pdga rules committe does a great job, actually, the entire pdga is a great organization.

Mini Thumbe ;)r

Why is it that disc golf can have unusual scenarios that cause much debate, but golf seems to have a rule for anything? Maybe because golf has rules officials standing by who can make a ruling, but we have to rely on each other and the rule book to get it right. I like the current rule book the way it is, including the provisional and rule of fairness and wouldn't want to see the book get too much bigger.

As far as the issue of dropping your disc when it hits the basket as you are standing up, I don't think we need to be overly punitive, it just doesn't seem right. Similarly it didn't seem right that Brandt Snedeker should be stroked at the U.S. Open for dropping his marker coin onto his golf ball causing the ball to move slightly. Couldn't he just be allowed to move his ball back to its approximate lie, no penalty?

I refer the honourable gentleman to my 'Spirit of the Game' thread...

Golf has been around for hundreds of years and has developed a tight set of rules addressing numerous situations that have come up during that time.

Disc golf has been around for maybe 40 years if you count playing with beach frisbees and object targets. Give it another 400 years or so and the rule book will hopefully be much tighter. :eek:

Golf has been around for hundreds of years and has developed a tight set of rules addressing numerous situations that have come up during that time.

Disc golf has been around for maybe 40 years if you count playing with beach frisbees and object targets. Give it another 400 years or so and the rule book will hopefully be much tighter. :eek:



But one of the things that appeals about DG, and also Ultimate, is the lack of up-it's-own-backsideness that can be involved in other sports. Disc sports were borne out of a spirit of fair play and inclusiveness that I think it's essential we retain.

Not saying that we shouldn't look at the rules, and clarify/revise where needed, but some of the debates on here are pretty pointless

Aha! There it is, I always forget about the Q&amp;A and instead rely soley on the rulebook. I don't care how bulky the rule book gets, Q&amp;A's are important to have in there.

My main concern with the rules is that they are applied to everybody, its not about being overly punitive its about everyone having the same opportunity. IMO "spirit of the game" is going to lead to two problems: 1. almost always giving the player benefit of every doubt in order to be "friendly" and 2. those who don't possess the "spirit" are going to scam like mad and the rest of us will be left behind.

Like a previous poster said, we're young and working through the rules still - until then I'm going to try my best to follow the posted rules AND Q&amp;A's!!!

Golf has been around for hundreds of years and has developed a tight set of rules addressing numerous situations that have come up during that time.

Disc golf has been around for maybe 40 years if you count playing with beach frisbees and object targets. Give it another 400 years or so and the rule book will hopefully be much tighter. :eek:



But one of the things that appeals about DG, and also Ultimate, is the lack of up-it's-own-backsideness that can be involved in other sports. Disc sports were borne out of a spirit of fair play and inclusiveness that I think it's essential we retain.

Not saying that we shouldn't look at the rules, and clarify/revise where needed, but some of the debates on here are pretty pointless



I was only replying to the question of why ball golf seems to have a rule for everything and disc golf seems to be struggling with developing a comprehensive set of rules that perform the same function, which in my opinion has nothing to do with appeal or origins of the game. Nonetheless, I agree that a big part of the appeal of disc golf is its inclusiveness as opposed to the exclusivity of ball golf country clubs. Even so, I don't see how that inclusive philosophy relates to the fact that we don't have as extensive a rule book as does ball golf, unless you are saying that the spirit of inclusiveness and "everybody's cool" attitude goes hand in hand with not being attentive to the level of detail required for generating an effective rule book.

Also, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with our rule book. I'm merely pointing out that, like our ball golf Momma, it will take quite some time before our rule book is developed to the point of adequately addressing all situations. It's not for a lack of talent or desire (we seem to have good talent and intentions on the Rules Committee); it's just not possible to cram several centuries of development into a 40-year time frame. Considering how fast things move in today's world, I predict that it will not take 400 years, but rather that it will be accomplished well within our first hundred years. That leaves us with 60 to go. Good luck - I won't live to see it!

BTW Pete, I would still interpret the "doink" putt as a legal stroke because the intent and forward motion were both there and that it was a throw.

Dropped disc = no penalty
Doink = play it where it lies after the doink
Bag o'disc rolls away :) = no penalty

Is this correct or am I missing something else?

Not sure what exactly you mean by Doinked shot.

If you mean he reached forward to place the disc in the basket but hit the edge of the basket and the disc was knocked out of his hand and fell to the ground then I would agree he was going towards the basket and it would be a stroke.

In the example that started this thread he was picking up his disc and hit the basket and dropped his disc...no stroke.

ok senerio i taking some "practice throws" not letting go of the disc just swinging my arm im not even up to throw at the pad and my disc slips out of my hand at the end of my swing and goes backwards (away from the pin)

this acutually happened to me just not during a tournament

A cold hearted player whom wants to enforce the rules because your ahead of him by a stroke could call you on it after the 2 minute warning. I wouldn't drink tea with this type of player either.

Mini Thumber

i agree w/ Rock (mini thumb)... sucks but they could call you on it. Best to use a towel for practice throws.

i agree w/ Rock (mini thumb)... sucks but they could call you on it. Best to use a towel for practice throws.



To be fair to every other player in your division, they should call it on you (and every other player that it happens to) but less than half of the cards I've seen would. This is the problem, the rules are not equally enforced by all players.

I don't really care which way the call goes, but it should always go the same way for the same thing.

Back to original post. Why even mark your lie under the basket. If I'm within 5 feet I always hole out with another disc. Leave it as it lies and hole out. That way you don't have to worry about marking, picking-up, and possibly dropping.

One reason to mark even close to the basket is to make sure you don't play from behind another player's disc and take a 2-throw penalty. I've taken the penalty myself and as a TD have seen it happen often enough to others to pay attention to this small detail.

It also occurs to me that in the winter, if your disc lands on a hillside, stops momentarily, then starts to slide down the hill, a case could be made that the lie returns to where it first started sliding based on 803.03F.



Boy, A LOT of players would have loved this interpretation at the Idlewild Ice Bowl last year. About 2 inches of snow with about a half inch Ice crust over it on a hilly course made for the most unique round I have ever played. Saw people tossing 150 ft shots to within 15 feet only to watch the disc come back to them(or wander off to an even lovelier location). In some cases I started aiming for the brush to prevent the slide. Hole #5 caused many 8+ scores to be carded.

Last year at Glass Blown, I throw a put and it lands under the basket. While holing out, I tried to mark my disc best I could, picked up the putter and hit it on the bottom of the basket while lifting it and knocked the putter straight out of my hand to the ground.

My card told me that it was cool, but I insisted on taking the extra stroke. Was that right? Now I just use another disc and don't mark the disc under the basket...

No penalty. Read Rules Q&amp;A on this.

how about this... and i think it would/should have the same result.

I wasnt on the card but saw this happen from a distance... Player @ Am Crosstown (wicked windy that day)... addresses his mark and starts to putt... while holding his putter out to get ready to putt the wind literally rips it out of his hand and blows it away.

He had to take the 'throw' and play it from where it landed.

I think that's like the Q&amp;A example. No penalty.

When there is no intent to throw made and it is obvious in that manner, it definitely doesn't count as anything other than a disc randomly being affected by the elements. Its like your bag ripping and discs falling out and rolling 15 feet. No practice throw assessed.

OK, I just played a tournament and was playing on the TD's card when another guy walk over from another hole and ask what he was to do about this situation. He had thrown his drive ob and asked his card whether to play from where it went ob or play from the short tee as a drop zone( all of this was went over in the players meeting and everyone was given a rule sheet in their players pack) The rest of his card told him wrong and he played from the short tee and proceeded to take a circle 5. The TD didnt want to make a call and let it alone. I told the TD it was a rule violation and it needed to be addressed and if he didnt know what to do then he needed to get with another official and make a ruling. He did nothing. I would like to know what needed to be done and how many strokes this guy needed to take. Also, what do you do about a TD that doesnt want to enforce the rules at a PDGA sanctioned event, whether or not it is one of his friends. I for one have taken penalty stroke and hold no grudge or think that it was the TDs fault, but it is not fare to lose to someone that gets special treatment when they are not even a pdga member.

Two shot penalty added to the 5 to make a 7 when playing from the wrong lie and not completing the hole properly 803.13A(2).

That's what I thought, but what about a TD that won't enforce the rules?

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