Season 2

[fuzion]

Hi all, this is a thread to discuss what Season 2 of speed golf is going to look like. We've had a reduction in numbers of people who play speed golf, despite it being literally the quickest tournament all week!
I would appreciate your thoughts on how we can increase this number, and to make sure you're all having fun when you play this tour.

Some things to think about...

Championship structure
I am planning on doing a 12 week season, with week 13 being the grand finale. I'm not sure what this week 13 could be, be it a triple points week; or a winner-takes-all with each point collected over the course of a season giving you a head start on your time for the final week. 

Points structure
I assume you've seen the points that I've been awarding, going from 40 points for 1st to 2 points to 20th, and 1 point for everyone else who has played. What do people think about this? Increase the gap between first place and everyone else? To be honest, I've been surprised about how dominant some people have been, I thought we'd almost have a different winner each week. I want to make sure that everyone is having fun, not just right at the top.

General rules
Currently, I've changed it from 20 seconds a stroke to 24 seconds, I think it's been working fine. I don't have any plans to change this at the moment, but I'm open to feedback.

Start day
It seems like a lot of people forget to play speed golf each week, what would be the best way to counter this? I can move the start day to a Saturday to run alongside the main tours, would that be better? I can also make it longer, so that it lasts 8 days instead of 6 days.

Number of rounds
Right now, we have one round. What would people think about having two rounds a week? Is this something people would like to see? If so, I might have to get some help in picking two courses each week. Also, would you award points for each round separately, or for aggregate totals?

Integration with TGCTours
This is something that is definitely on the cards, although I think it will take a back burner to the country clubs coding that we are currently doing. Hopefully for Season 3 though.

People who don't play speed golf
Why not? What's stopping you?! I'd be interested to hear reasons. I know for some people it's not their cup of tea, and that's fair enough.

Any feedback is most welcome.

[Deleted]

I'm considering not playing Speed Golf at all. I have just lost interest to be honest.

Good luck with the future.

[SweetTeeBag]

I haven't played much at all but with standings will keep me motivated to play as have something to keep track of. Looking forward to it fuzion!

[dh-nufc]

I would make the start and end the same as the normal tour and try to choose courses where holes don't catch people out. The beauty of speed golf is the speed and I don't want to have to practice.
Having a season leaderboard should hopefully encourage more people.
The points you have suggested are fine and the length of season is good.

[Deleted]

I need to concentrate on my normal game so i think that is a good reason.

[Lowenberger]

I don't mind speed golf, mostly for being able to get done quickly, but I'd say my biggest issue with speed golf is that it seems to take any sort of strategy/thinking out of the game. I like the idea of having to play fast, but it would be nice if it wasn't quite so focused on playing fast.

My idea is pretty radical and probably wouldn't fly... instead of having the rules being your time plus score, each course would have a "Par" time for the whole round (say 18min for the sake of discussion). Then you get penalty strokes for every 30 seconds your over. Would still encourage fast play to make sure you are under the "par" time, but would place more emphasis on playing well and give people a little bit of extra time on each shot.

Other ideas is to use an adjusted stableford scoring instead of normal scoring? One problem I have is really screwing up a hole since I'm not really getting a chance to preview the shot ahead of time. Would be nice if bogeys/double's didn't hurt as much, since I usually just rage quit when I take a bad score. The leaderboards might help.

[MrSourNinja]

I like the way speed golf is currently. I see no reason to change anything in relation to how the mod is scored. Everything above looks good Fuzion and if one day I got a speed golf trophy card randomly added to my profile lets just say i wouldn't complain.

[coruler2]

I think changing the starting/ending time to the weekends is good. There's been a few Wednesdays I go to play and the event expired. Monday and Tuesday I'm always too busy with work to play.

[Crazycanuck1985]

I think once we start keeping track of points/etc, I'll be more interested

[jruckles]

I like the current setup, and I don't have much time in a week so this tour is perfect for me. My vote would be to keep it at 1 round per week..

[t0ad462]

I suck at this, but miss it.

[Hyphy]

I only played in the last event that didnt even count and im looking forward to S2 ... I think the lengthening of the week and coinciding with the other tours is a great idea. Keep up the good work!

[canthitstraight]

I had the idea other day that kind of relates to to speed golf in the type of information that can be pulled from API. If we can pull time played per round for speed golf, we can certainly do that for regular tournament rounds as well, correct? I'd like to be able to see how much time people are spending on their tournament rounds. Do they play it mostly speed golfing like Daniel Waring? Or do they watch every single ghost play through before calculating their own shot? Maybe it can show up as a time on the scorecard so as not to interfere with the clean interface the scoreboards currently have.

[fuzion]

I had thought about that, but it wouldn't work for players like me. I always hit my tee shot for the next round before quitting (used to help with bugs, don't know if it matters anymore), and so I would just have ridiculously large round times as we only have time of first shot and time of last shot per round.

Maybe with an updated API this could happen, shot by shot timestamps is something I did request.

[fuzion]

In other speed golf news, I'll start the new season of speed golf this Saturday!