10th Downriver Open - Apr. 9 & 10

[General Scales]

Originally Posted by gmason1

General- Im not clear on the rules for false start but Seems to me that shouldnt have been your fault? if the start horn was blasted and you threw it shouldnt count against you or constitute a re-throw? i would be really upset if the horn blew, I threw and ace and then had to re-throw at my expense when it wasnt my bad? I even heard of one person complaining they had to take an extra stroke on throw 1 because of the early horn? if throws are early in a situation like this cant you just play the discs where they landed once the official horn is blown? Seems like the TD should be the ones ruling on this particular event and it seemed like it was being handled group by group rather than being addressed by the TD as a whole what the penalites would be..

-G

The issue as I understand with a false (or early) start is that everyone on the course is to proceed to their starting hole and re-throw. It'd be a bigger nuisance on an ace run for sure. The good thing was that it wouldn't of had any effect on my score for the tournament. I took myself out with out of bounds and lost discs. I do think that this a rule that needs to be looked over by the PDGA. This could ruin a brilliant set of throws on a difficult hole. Good example of this would be starting out on Farragut D.B.D hole 18. Get a birdie on it (which would be monumental considering the distance and difficulty of the hole). Then find out you have to walk back to the pad and start over because of a false start. Thats a hole where I would argue with the person controlling the horn because the chances of birding that hole back to back are small at best.

All in all however, I had a great time at the tournament.

[Sean Johnson]

Then you have to look at the flip side; what would happen if you went from going ob on 2, then had to re-tee because of a restart, and turned around and parked it? I use this example because Jon V had a birdie look with a huge lefty flex shot that came within a foot of going ob and it could have easily gone the other way.

Also, what happens if half the group throws and the horn blows before the other half tees off? I'm only playing devils advocate here, and pointing out how hard it would be to uniformly enforce any solution. My group completed an entire hole before we heard that we were supposed to stop and even we were not told to re-tee, we were told to stop playing and wait for the horn.

Solution? Keep to the schedule. Players get 4 strokes for being late, and neither the rules or public opinion seem to give any leeway for getting a start time wrong (especially when the reason is that they didn't double check the flier). It's only fair that everone involved in the tournament should be held to the same standard.

PS- Didn't we also start early on day 2?

[Wobbly Bob]

Quote by gmason1 - General- Im not clear on the rules for false start but Seems to me that shouldnt have been your fault? if the start horn was blasted and you threw it shouldnt count against you or constitute a re-throw? i would be really upset if the horn blew, I threw and ace and then had to re-throw at my expense when it wasnt my bad? I even heard of one person complaining they had to take an extra stroke on throw 1 because of the early horn? if throws are early in a situation like this cant you just play the discs where they landed once the official horn is blown? Seems like the TD should be the ones ruling on this particular event and it seemed like it was being handled group by group rather than being addressed by the TD as a whole what the penalites would be..

Just so all concerned know, I did include the delayed start incident to the PDGA in the TD report.

Greg, I take full responsibility for the second round early start at the DRO. When I blew the horn to stop after the second round had started, I yelled STOP as loud as I could and heard people yell stop back to me.

Stopping play and marking one's lie was what was supposed to have happened.

General, your score the first time you threw the hole was the score you were supposed to use. This is one of those situations where if it was unclear how to proceed the provisional throw rule should have been used and at the end of the round you should have come to the TD for a ruling.

No one received any penalty strokes from the mistake that I made that I know of. After six years as a TD I am still learning about how to properly run a tournament and I will remember this incident every time I start a tournament round.