Weighing Discs

[Frank Delicious]

That would probably bring the CE price down since most of my CE discs weight 2-3 grams more than they are marked so all my "max weight" ones would be overweight.

Also I bet the Tourney Line discs you are suggesting would cost $3+ more per disc as the manufacturer would have say it is added labor and blah blah blah to produce and inspect those discs.

[discspeed]

Also I bet the Tourney Line discs you are suggesting would cost $3+ more per disc as the manufacturer would have say it is added labor and blah blah blah to produce and inspect those discs.

Of course this will happen...and I do think something like this is likely in the fairly near future. I just see the rec market and competitive market diverging in terms of the kinds of new discs that are released.

[JR]

The PDGA requires the term PDGA approved to be on discs IIRC and was it mandatory in the future to have raised lettering on the disc telling that? I think we are in the transition period where discs can have only stamped PDGA approved on them. I read this last winter i don't recall the specifics. It was in the PDGA document detailing disc testing and measuring stuff to be be done and submitted to the PDGA for approval i think.

How do you plan in advance to not mess up close to max weight discs by not putting raised lettering on it? Sanding away the raised lettering is added cost if the disc wound up to be overweight by accident.

[JR]

Iacas made a great point showing how disc golf rules are not as mature as they could be. Another boo boo is self officiating. Consider betting. Fixed events have occurred in many sports with referees. In disc golf a player can "take a dive" by giving themselves all sorts of extra strokes to their score. And yes there was scores bets on a large British site about disc golf European Open 2011 so that action can get larger but making things more unpredictable for the bet organizer is a business hazard. Why add to their risks? Not to mention in sport and the spirit of the sport risks of self officiating. Would i like to see referees? Err no. Dilemma. In Holland a referee was mugged to death by a soccer team a few days ago. That is bad but it is the general sentiment i have about sports with referees. When somebody else than the athlete decides the result. Shoot 10-0 in soccer and lose playing by the rules when a wank off referee says so? No thanks. I don't have a resolution to this complex matter.

Spirit of sportsmanship is an issue to would be sponsors so there is a need to resolve the theoretical chance of rules issues. Uli giving himself a penalty stroke for conduct IIRC divided opinions. Some lauded it some hated it. It is good sportsmanship in the eyes of a sponsor interested in that. It is moronic in the view of a sponsor that only cares about being able to claim our sponsored player placed as high as possible for the marketing input turned into revenue on whatever they want to pay. If the company thinks that only top placing counts for the sales and marketing value of a player. Many are that black and white about the value of the sponsored pro i'm afraid.

Rules. A never ending bog that never satisfies everyone or covers every possible situation. How large are the official rules of golf these days? A friend of a friend order that and it is a thick book. Rules for events that might have happened centuries ago but could still happen any day. My friend took a look at it and said there's a rule stating what to do if the ball gets stuck in the coat of a sheep that walks away...

The French legal system adds 1500 pages of law text annually on average because they want to write down everything to give the judges clear base on what to rule on. According to a teacher of mine that teaches law for living. No i'm not a lawyer but had to take some law classes. Didn't a guy 2000 years ago say that you can't write everything possible into a law book? I guess the French weren't and aren't listening.

[iacas]

Rules. A never ending bog that never satisfies everyone or covers every possible situation. How large are the official rules of golf these days? A friend of a friend order that and it is a thick book. Rules for events that might have happened centuries ago but could still happen any day. My friend took a look at it and said there's a rule stating what to do if the ball gets stuck in the coat of a sheep that walks away...

I think this is pretty far off topic, but I want to clarify some things about the Rules of Golf.

Rule 19-1 covers "ball in motion deflected or stopped by outside agency" and is fairly straightforward. I don't believe there is any mention of sheep in the Rules of Golf. The RoG are not terribly complex nor are they particularly long. They're about as long as most other larger sports (not darts or something), and considerably shorter than someone might think when they consider the lack of uniformity of the playing field. Additionally, 99% of the situations are covered by only a few basic rules.

In an attempt to bring this back on topic... there are strict equipment regulations, but the market has historically frowned upon and even outright belittled and ridiculed non-conforming equipment, even when made by big-name companies (Callaway tried, even with Arnold Palmer as a spokesman, several years ago) introduce the equipment. As such golfers do not have to worry about whether their golf balls are within spec or not - there would be hell to pay for a company that produced non-conforming equipment and they'd suffer several million dollars in backlash, losses, etc. There's more money in golf - golf balls by Titleist alone probably generate more revenue than all of disc golf revenue internationally any given year - so companies spend the money to have super-tight quality control tolerances, etc.

I've weighed golf balls as a curiosity and they're all dead on weight (to the accuracy of my scale, which is about +/- 0.1 grams... or 0.0035 ounces.

I'm curious too, and perhaps someone at Discraft could say - I wonder if they use stickers that say "172-174" as a way of denoting that they aren't specifying exactly what the weight is? You could argue that this puts the responsibility on the player to verify the weight (if they care and have the means to do so).

[Frank Delicious]

I think discraft does that to account for things like scale differences and the water absorption. They realize disc weights aren't static.

[discspeed]

I'm curious too, and perhaps someone at Discraft could say - I wonder if they use stickers that say "172-174" as a way of denoting that they aren't specifying exactly what the weight is? You could argue that this puts the responsibility on the player to verify the weight (if they care and have the means to do so).

I think this is just so they can approximate the weight of a run of discs without having to weight each one individually.

[iacas]

I think this is just so they can approximate the weight of a run of discs without having to weight each one individually.

Yeah I'm more inclined to go with the "they're lazy" answer than the "they care about discs absorbing water." Still, the stickers having a small range mean they weren't weighed super accurately at the factory.

[Leopard]

DC can't hit the broad side of a barn with weights... they need wider ranges for those stickers.

[keltik]

DC can't hit the broad side of a barn with weights... they need wider ranges for those stickers.

traurig aber wahr