Disc Golf Daily

Disc Golf Daily - Can we talk about the basket in the room?

Summary In this episode of Disc Golf Daily, the host discusses various news stories related to disc golf, including the coverage of the Finnish Championships by DGN, the release of the Foundation Disc Golf app, the Portland Open being televised on CBS Sports Network, and tips for playing disc golf in the heat. The host also addresses the topic of disc golf baskets and suggests a process for determining the quality of baskets used in professional tournaments. The episode concludes with a call for the disc golf community to mature and standardize equipment. Keywords disc golf, news, Finnish Championships, DGN, Foundation Disc Golf, app, Portland Open, CBS Sports Network, tips, heat, baskets, equipment Takeaways DGN will be covering the Finnish Championships, providing dual coverage with the Des Moines Challenge. Foundation Disc Golf has released an app that allows users to shop for discs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos. The Portland Open will be televised on CBS Sports Network, providing an opportunity to showcase disc golf to a wider audience. Tips for playing disc golf in the heat include staying hydrated, dressing appropriately, and playing early or late in the day. The host suggests a process for determining the quality of disc golf baskets used in professional tournaments. The disc golf community should strive for standardization and maturity in order to be taken seriously as a sport.

Chapters 00:00 Introduction and News Stories 03:19 Foundation Disc Golf App 06:37 Basket Talk 09:48 Improving the Quality of Disc Golf Baskets 12:44 Maturity and Standardization in Disc Golf Music: Strange Bop by contreloup

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 27 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

DGN will be covering the Finnish Championships, providing dual coverage with the Des Moines Challenge.
Foundation Disc Golf has released an app that allows users to shop for discs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos.
The Portland Open will be televised on CBS Sports Network, providing an opportunity to showcase disc golf to a wider audience.
Tips for playing disc golf in the heat include staying hydrated, dressing appropriately, and playing early or late in the day.
The host suggests a process for determining the quality of disc golf baskets used in professional tournaments.
The disc golf community should strive for standardization and maturity in order to be taken seriously as a sport.

[Music] Hello, race fans, and welcome to Disc Golf Daily. We are the podcast that gets you caught up with Disc Golf News and Growth in about 10 minutes, saving you time and effort. If you want to dive deeper into any story, links are in the show notes. Should we address the basket in the room? Our thoughts on that in a minute. But first, the news. Our number one news story today. DGN will be covering the Finnish Championships. In a good effort to increase the value to DGN Pro Subscriptions this month, DGN will broadcast the 2024 Finnish National Disc Golf Championships from Sibid Disc Golf Course July 4th to 7th. Yes, this broadcast will run concurrent with the Des Moines Challenge. I'll be at a little earlier. Thank you, Europe. And making this the only dual coverage weekend of the 2024 season. Fireworks in America and Europe over the holiday weekend. The Finnish National Championship is open exclusively to qualified Finnish players. It is not a Pro Tour points event. This year, three-time and defending MPO Finnish National Champ, Nicholas Antela, leads a field of over 40,000 rated players. In FPO, Evelina Salomon, Henna Blomruse, and Silva Sarnen are top-comparing, our top contenders, and Holy Cow Finland is stacked. As a gentle reminder from the Pro Tour and DGN, the European Open will be broadcast exclusively on DGN Pro two weeks later. All and all subscribers can look forward to five top-level tournaments by the end of July, including the Swedish Open, the Crook All Open where Kristin Tatar should be making her return, and the European Disc Golf Festival. DGN Pro subscribers, who pay an extra seven dollars for a full month of coverage, get to watch it all. That quick and all, DGPT Marketing Director said, "We're ecstatic to offer this bonus coverage as added value for DGN Pro subscribers. While not planned as part of our Pro content offerings at the beginning of the season, we jumped at the chance to provide Pro subscribers with full live coverage of one of the most unique European tournaments of the year. This event highlights the flourishing Finnish Disc Golf scene." Our number two news story of the day, Foundation Disc Golf has an app. Link in the show notes. From their description of the app, quote, "Easily shop our constantly updated inventory of discs, apparel, accessories, and more. Listen to weekly podcasts covering the professional side of disc golf, building your bag, and the latest news about the sport. Watch our weekly videos that highlight the fun and competitive side of disc golf between friends as you join us for our weekly rounds. Build your game alongside the Foundation Nation with the home of Foundation Disc Golf in your pocket." So I love that disc golf businesses are getting their own apps. Congrats to Foundation for putting it all together in one place. I will note, sadly, there is no disc golf daily in the app, so who knows if it's even worth downloading. Our number three news story of the day. This is just a public service announcement. The Portland Open is on the CBS Sports Network this Sunday, June 30th, 6 p.m. Watch with your friends who wonder if disc golf is legit. After this show, they will know that it is. Tell your friends, get more people watching than ever before. Let's get the networks coming to us to cover disc golf. And our final news story of the day, we cool off with nine and a half tips to play disc golf in the heat. This comes to us from the end of a disc golf blog. Number one, make sure you hydrate. Number two, bring plenty to drink. It's going to be hot. Number three, dress appropriately. Number four, use sun protection. Number five, play early or late. Avoid high noon. Number six, use a chalk bag. You're going to be sweating and your hands will get wet. Number seven, use cooling towels or misting fans. Like, I can't imagine bringing a misting fan, but hey, if you got room, if you've got a Zuka cart, put the misting fan in there. Number eight, adjust your pace. Feel free to play slower. Number nine, play shade golf. Go to the woods and play in there. And then number nine and a half, if you don't throw your disc in the water, dive in there and try to get it. Not at Maple Hill though. All right. And now it's time for some basket talk, basket talk. And with the exception of right now, I'm not going to mention the idea of making baskets smaller. We already did this on the podcast. We'll do it again in a few months. For today, let's talk about making the baskets that we currently have as good as they can be. It is time to talk about the baskets. While a couple of poorly timed spit outs at critical moments to players in the hunt for the win is the reason this discussion has raised its head again, it is time to knock this out. We should probably talk about teapads also, but let's tackle these one at a time. First off, I want to say that seeing a putt spit out or cut through does not a bad basket make. Throwing a thousand putts at the same spot with the same nose angle and speed and measuring how many putts are caught or cut through or spit out though, that information can be used to determine if a basket is good enough to be used on the elite series. Here is one way this could be done without calling out any manufacturers or hurting any feelings. Step one, define what the goal is, what putts should always be caught, what putts should be caught sometimes, what putts, it's okay for those to bounce out. Step two, test, test, test. There needs to be high quality data behind any discussion and decision. Step three, open communication, and I don't mean public conversation. I mean open and honest communication with the manufacturers about their baskets with quality test results. Step four, phase out unacceptable baskets. Step five, sit back and enjoy because there are probably no other issues to be resolved. Easy, easy. So, I have talked with multiple pros about disc golf baskets. There are a few baskets that are praised that are some, there are some that get worrisome reviews. What I have heard from pros, they actually will adjust their putt based on the type of basket. For them, this is the right thing to do because different baskets catch differently. Some baskets accept blazer putts, some baskets catch high right, some baskets hate putts right in the center with a little rise. The pros need to adjust their putt. Every avoided spit out is like one more fairway hit. You are literally gaining a stroke every time you putt and it doesn't spit out. However, asking the players to adjust their putt based on the equipment is not professional. We want players to be their very best. If they have to worry about how they are going to adjust their putt and as opposed to analyzing which side of the fairway they want to land on, then they are not performing their very best. And that's what I want to watch. Players, like us, only have a limited amount of time to prepare for a course. Adding basket prep and putting adjustment to their regimen is asking too much. We need to be more professional. So let's go through these steps in more detail and see how this could be done. Step one, define what the goal is, what putts should always be caught, how fast, how high, what angles, what areas of the chains, and what putts should not be caught. This is the perfect place for the input of the touring card pros. Have a conversation likely over the course of several months and get as much input as possible for as many pros as possible. Bind a consensus. Match this with reality and develop a specific goal that everyone can sign off on. Step two, test, test, test. There needs to be high quality data behind any discussion and decisions. We've got over 50 touring cardholders during the off-season, invite them to a closed location, tell them that it is their job to throw putts at specific spots at specific baskets. Invite manufacturers to submit their baskets for a sizable fee to be included in the testing program. They will get complete data and either an approval or reasons for not being approved back. Bearing in mind the variables, there would likely be thousands of putts into each basket. Step three, open communication. Open and honest communication with the manufacturers about their baskets with data. Show them data about where their baskets succeeded and where they did not. Give them a time frame in which they can improve and never lose their status as an approved pro tour basket manufacturer. Step four, phase out unacceptable baskets. If a basket fails, I don't think it can be kicked off the tour immediately. It feels like it should, but these are relationships that have been fostered over the past decade. The baskets were approved. If they're suddenly not approved, the manufacturer should be given time to improve. In my opinion, this would be one year. The pro tour would need to map out basket testing times. They could potentially do this at tour stops and literally hire touring pros to throw a thousand putts at a basket in defined ways and see how it does. They would need to be paid for their time and the manufacturers would need to pay a fee for this testing. But once they passed, they would have the highest seal of approval in the game. Once we find the sweet spot and approve a basket for the elite series, baskets cannot be changed. Chains need to say the same, the numbers of links needs to say the same, the size of the cage, everything or else it has to be completely retested. There's a lot of dynamics involved in catching a disk. Data is the key and it can't be anecdotal. We can't just watch Isaac Robinson putt at the preserve and say that the T2 basket spit out. We need scientifically significant data. Growing up is tough. Ask any 13 year old. Growing up as a sport might be even tougher. There are a lot of people and companies that have been doing things the same way for a long time. And the sport has been growing at 10 to 15 percent for half a century. Why mess with success? The answer? Because it's time to put on our big boy pants and become a real sport. We are not the panochio of sports. We cannot keep lying to ourselves and say everything is okay. Name a major sport without standardized equipment. Hockey and baseball have different size playing surfaces. Other than that, especially the thing you score on pro sports equipment is always the same. Usually the specs are defined and then the manufacturers just build to those specs. I don't know if we're ready for that quite yet, but we do have to grow up sometime. Let us know your thoughts. Let us know if you have any news, your opinions. Shoot us an email. Disc Golf Daily at AOL.com. Have fun. Throw them straight and hit the thin gap.