PDGA TD School | Episode 12A | Preparing the Course for Tournament Play

Video Transcript

As the dates for your event approach, it's time to prepare your course for tournament play. As the Tournament Director, you are responsible for providing players with a challenging, competitive, fun, and safe tournament experience. Today's topic is all about getting your course ready for tournament play. Providing a safe playing environment for your players, spectators, and other park users should be a top priority. It's important to review your course layout, recognizing that you may have a full course with all holes being played simultaneously by players who may not be familiar with the layout and its unique challenges. Try to limit crossing fairways or places where tees and targets are close together by using alternate tees or targets that create separation. Volunteer spotters can also help by being traffic cops where there are blind spots. Identify areas that may be a safety concern, such as unsafe slopes, barbed wire or poisonous plants, and consider roping these areas and providing players with free relief. Signage can be a big help, whether it's pointing players towards a safer path, alerting other park users to flying discs, or letting everyone know there are bees or poison oak nearby. Setting up your course for competitive play should be all about challenges that are meaningful and fair for all competitors. Evaluate your course design keeping in mind all of the divisions that will be playing. Using multiple layouts with shorter tees or baskets for some divisions can create more interesting competition for low-rated divisions and increase speed of play. An important way to maximize fairness is to clearly mark things like OB lines, hazard relief areas, and mandatories so they are easy to see and interpret. Sidewalks and roads with curves can create clear, distinct lines for out of bounds, but sometimes you'll want to use paint lines or string to mark lines that don't have a natural clear boundary. Remember, the time spent painting or running string and adding marking flags will save time during play when competitors can make easier calls. Also, less frustration over unclear course markings means more fun. This carries over to your hole notes. Adding hole descriptions to your course layouts in Tournament Manager that will display in PDGA... Live Scoring saves lots of confusion and speeds up play. Make sure to include mentions of OB hazards, relief areas, and any safety issues. Players will see this...