When teeing off if a players body weight is being supported on his front foot (leaning into the drive) can the back foot be touching the ground off the pad? This back foot is bearing no weight per say, just dragging the ground or touching the ground off of the teepad.

There is a hole on a local course where it is advantageous to come from the side of the pad and throw around some trees, but most people let their back foot drag or touch the ground and claim their supporting foot (front foot on the pad) is "supporting" them and therefore the shot is legal.

I was under the impression that no other parts of your body could be touching off the pad at all. I can see someones arguement the way the rulebook reads seems vague to me because it talks about "supporting foot."

I simply want to know can another foot be touching the ground if it isnt supporting the throw, per say (whether is is actually supporting the throw or not is a different argument, lets say for the sake of my question that is isnt supporting the throw, just dragging or touching the ground off of the pad).

thanks for the feedback

When throwing off the tee pad, you can not be touching the playing surface anywhere other than the tee pad. You can approach the tee pad at an angle, and as long as your back foot is off the ground before you release, and your front foot is on the tee pad, and throw a legal throw.

If you have a rule book, turn to the front in section 800 definitions and look up "Supporting Point".

Supporting Point: Any part of a player's body that is in contact with the playing surface or some other object capable of providing support, at the time of release.

Notice the phrase "capable of providing support" applies to the object, not the body part. Any contact of any body part with anything capable of supporting any weight, counts as a supporting point.

Good use of the definitions. A lot of times, even when you know the rule, you don't know what it means until you look up the keywords in the definitions.

Take a look at the teeing off rule, 803.02. If the players foot is touching the ground outside of the teeing area when the disc is released, it is not a legal throw.

August is right. This is on the Official's test, which I just took.

Well, of course he is right, since it agreed with my previous post :)