I know there are some questions that need to be answered, so here are a few of those answers, and then tomorrow I hope to have the rules page up at the beginning of the thread (you'll notice the second post says "reserved").
-The pools have been slightly reworked for a couple of reasons, which include but are not limited to: a couple A pool people withdrawing, others withdrawing and 4 new entries added, and re-classification of players based on recency bias, such as guys from the Rookie Design Contest who clearly put out high-level courses. These pools are never going to be perfect, and we could debate for hours names that could be switched from one side to the other, but at some point, we just have to draw a line and have half on one side and half on the other.
-Yes, that's right, I said half... there are now just two pools that we will do the re-draw from, rather than having 8 people in A, 8 in B, and 16 in C. Quite honestly, I think the quality of designers in this whole contest is hard to segment that directly, so doing a re-draw from two large groups will add some intrigue and balance.
-We aren't sure if we will use the same "wheel of death", or if we will be using a different randomizer, but the way the re-draw will take place is that 8 people will be randomly chosen from Pool A to start the 8 groups, then 8 people will be randomly chosen from Pool B to be in the second slot in those groups, then back to randomly drawing the remaining from Pool A, and finalizing with randomly selecting the final 8 from Pool B. Again, this should add good balance to the groups, while at the same time making for an entertaining selection show.
-The rules of the contest will be nearly identical to what they were before, so you won't see any crazy 'VctryLnSprts' twists in this contest. In fact, the goal of this contest and future contests will be to have an official place on an annual design contest schedule within the TGC Tours, and as such, it's not about me or Andre or whomever is running it in the future. This should be seen as a TGCT function of the community now, and definitely not as "Eric's contest" or "Andre's contest." More on that in the future, stay tuned.
-Andre and I will not be judges in this contest, we are administrating the event, and we have selected a Judging Coordinator who has already begun taking the reigns of that process and building the panel. It will be a large judging panel using traditional criteria developed by Griff and others that has proven to work well in the past. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel or throw anything crazy into this competition. The members of the judging panel will not be revealed until after the contest is over.
-I will handle much of the administration and communications associated with the 2019 TGC Tours World Cup of Design, in communication with Tim, Scott, and Jeff, to ensure that the goals of the new TGCT-endorsed design contests align with the mission of community development and betterment of the competitive tours. Andre will coordinate the multimedia portions of the contest, and will be responsible for the streaming of WCD related information, critiques, and results.
-Unfortunately, the streaming rules for this particular contest still need to apply because we are in the middle of action. The contestants all started with the same set of rules last month, but some of you are much further along in your designs than others, and so it would not be fair to alter this stipulation at this point. We may change this rule for future competitions, but for the remainder of the World Cup of Design you should not stream your design sessions, as it may influence judges, other contestants, or leave open the possibility of receiving advice.
If you have any questions about the contest, feel free to post them below or to PM them directly to me and Andre. I know this contest will produce amazing designs that will benefit the TGC Tours community and schedulers greatly.
International Record: 7-0-0