Why Join the PDGA?

[scoot_er]

I knew this would rile the troops on here but the truth is that people like to credit their local clubs when the club had little to do with a course installation any more than the PDGA. I realize that's the reality and it's too foreign a concept for some to get their brain around.

Let's say the people I have helping install a local course are all PDGA members and local club members. But throughout the project, we just call ourselves the "branch office" of the PDGA because we don't really like the local club. In the future, local players will give credit to the club and the club likely take credit because, after all, their members did the work. But from our installation team's perspective, we were representing the PDGA as outreach volunteers and grudgingly had to join the local club to compete for local tour points.

My point isn't to grab undeserved credit for the PDGA. But poke a hole in the regular argument made that local clubs do everything locally and the PDGA nothing. I'm saying in many cases it's simply people doing the work that happen to pay dues to both orgs. But it's easier for local clubs to grab the credit whether deserved or not.

What does the PDGA do locally? I'm sure the local members give more money to the PDGA then ever comes back to their town.

Local clubs are the ones doing the work and would continue to do so even without the PDGA.

10,000 members isn't much when you look at the total amount of players in the country so in most cases the PDGA members are FAR outnumbered by more local players who are the ones who actually get the courses in.

I don't want the PDGA to have credit for something they didn't even know about....did they buy me some shovels or something? If anything the Manufacturers do more for the sport than the PDGA.

[scoot_er]

As previously pointed out by multiple posters, your argument stinks. The pdga did squat to install our courses and as such gets zero credit.

When Chuck thinks he is right he will never stop....................which is 99% of the time.

[DaPats]

NASCAR has the Nextel "chase for the cup". Before that was the Winston Cup series. Before that was a bunch of hill billies racing cars.

PGA has the FED EX Cup, Nike Series, and so on...

The PDGA needs someone to keep knocking on doors every year even if they get rejected. Knock on the same door again and again. Whats the worst thing that can happen, you get rejected. Time to find a full-time sponsor for the NT tour. A few examples would be the Mobile Cup, Capital One Series, The Yahoo Series, The Google Cup, The race for the Pabst Blue Ribbon, etc.. Some money is better than no money. Then we look at the Vibram Open. A new door has opened up. I hope Steve Dodge can bring this company in for a long time to this sport.

The PDGA has built the fondation with AM's already. Time to put a roof over its head and market the pros. Market the pros? Why do that? Because that is what sponsors want. Not AM's. Wait if we sell the pros won't that be making money to sell the AM's?

[SkaBob]

Hey Chuck,

put up or shut up.

Detail for us what the PDGA has done both in financial terms and in terms of manpower and resources to improve disc golf in the Detroit area. This should be easy with as many major tournaments as have gone on here, right? Let's make this useful...nothing newer than 2000, and nothing that isn't a permanent fixture.

Surely if the PDGA is so involved and so great, you'll be able to provide something other than more bullshit scenarios about how people should represent you instead of the people they're ACTUALLY helping out.

On a side note, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the people that help out the Motor City Chain Gang with course installs and maintenance aren't paying members.

[Working Stiff]

The PDGA is like our church. It provides us with spiritual leadership, which cannot be measured in dollars and man hours. Without the greater good to believe in, we at the local level would not be inspired to do our good works. So it's our church. We pay tithe a one year membership and plop a daily donation in the plate when we attend "services" so that the church will stay there to inspire us to do good works. When we do our good works, we have to look into the camera and say "I owe it all to the PDGA."

That's the idea, anyway. To a certain extent it is true. Having the PDGA linking the sport together nationally helped us back in the early 90's convince the St. Louis County Parks system that disc golf was more than a North County fad sport. So even though it did nothing to get Jefferson Barracks and Sioux Passage installed, the very fact that it was there helped get the deals done. How much of the credit they deserve is debatable, but they do deserve some credit.

[Pat]

The PDGA is like our church. It provides us with spiritual leadership, which cannot be measured in dollars and man hours. Without the greater good to believe in, we at the local level would not be inspired to do our good works. So it's our church. We pay tithe a one year membership and plop a daily donation in the plate when we attend "services" so that the church will stay there to inspire us to do good works. When we do our good works, we have to look into the camera and say "I owe it all to the PDGA."

That's the idea, anyway. To a certain extent it is true. Having the PDGA linking the sport together nationally helped us back in the early 90's convince the St. Louis County Parks system that disc golf was more than a North County fad sport. So even though it did nothing to get Jefferson Barracks and Sioux Passage installed, the very fact that it was there helped get the deals done. How much of the credit they deserve is debatable, but they do deserve some credit.

Its like music artists thanking God when they get their awards.

[J-Man]

The PDGA is like our church. It provides us with spiritual leadership, which cannot be measured in dollars and man hours.

This is a scary thought, I mean psycho dream scary. When the pdga got started a large contingent, including yours truly, said, "OH F**K, the lawyers and accountants started to play!" Anyway, everyone knows that people join the pdga for the cool disc they send ya...

[krusen]

Working Stiff has a good point. While I agree with a lot of what Scooter and the others are saying, and am not really on the same page as Chuck, the reality is somewhere in between. Without the PDGA, there probably would be a lot fewer courses out there.

Four years ago I put together a presentation to urge my city Park Board to consider a course. In that presentation, I used a lot of stats that I found using the PDGA, DGA, and Innova websites. Chuck wrote a great article around that time talking about how park boards will be behind the times if they do not start looking at disc golf as an activity. This article was in the national park and rec magazine. The head of the board mentioned this article when I talked to him.

My presentation was a hit and the city was on board a course. The MFA was really only a place for advice, and a sounding board. I did all the planning, had a certified designer give me the thumbs up, and the city took care of the installation. Should the PDGA get all the credit? Absolutely not. But they prove some legitimacy of disc golf to otherwise skeptical public servants.

Now do I feel that is worth $50/year? Probably not.
For the last several years I have shot pool in a local 8-ball league. We pay $3 every night above the cost of a game. If I win every game, I get all that money back. In essence, the loser of each game is paying a bit towards everything that goes with the awards banquet at the end of the year. I understand that with an organization the size of the PDGA, there are salaries and overhead, but some kind of visible return based on performance could only help the players' perception of the governing body.

[KaosDiscgolf]

Hell, I would just like the members pack that I paid for 5 years ago! Thats why I havent renewed my membership

[chukar]

i just now tried to join; filled out the forms online and there was no way to pay via paypal on the last page....the first page says they take paypal but only way to pay is to give them your card number which i would rather not do.....after reading this thread glad i was not able to join anyway.

[iacas]

Hell, I would just like the members pack that I paid for 5 years ago! Thats why I havent renewed my membership

Now that you mention it, I'm waiting on my 2013 stuff, including my metal mini marker and whatnot.

[JHern]

PDGA makes it easier to organize tournaments (in some ways). The ways it helps you organize is by providing a one-stop shop for all your typical tournament needs, such as a public online listing in the tour schedule, insurance coverage, rules and standards, score processing, player ratings to sort divisions, and even an online sign-up service (which has recently improved a lot). If you step back and look at it, PDGA is pretty useful.

Many players like to have a rating, to track their progress relative to other players in the sport, and in spite of any criticisms that could be levelled against it, the PDGA ratings system is one of the best things out there.

Still, PDGA is mostly a great thing for TDs, and you should probably be sympathetic to making their lives as simple as possible because they're volunteering their time to put on a tourney for you jerks to play, so just join the friggin PDGA.