Does the Barela incident merit a rule change?
Photo credit: DGPT
By now most disc golf fans are aware of what happened with Anthony Barela on hole 16 of the final round of the European Open. After missing the island green from the fairway of the par 4, it then took Barela 6 throws to make the island due to the hole’s unique rules. As opposed to moving to a drop zone or moving to where the shot was last in bounds after missing the island, players had to re-throw from their current lie until they made the island. This mistake, and the several mistakes that followed it, cost Barela the tournament. But should it have? I am here to argue that it should not have.
My main argument here is that the rules on this hole are not really in the spirit of the game of disc golf. A good disc golf hole punishes bad play, and rewards good play. One could certainly argue that hole 16 at The Beast does that, but incidents like Barela’s expose the flaw of this setup. As Scott Stokely points out in his video on the subject, most of the time missing an island ends up being a 2 stroke penalty. Generally, the island is missed, the player throws from the drop zone, and gets away with a bogey. Occasionally they can drain it from the DZ, but that’s rare. So it is almost a guaranteed 2 stroke penalty. Stokely’s point here, which I agree with, is that 2 strokes is a lot. Especially at the professional level. 2 strokes is plenty of punishment for missing an island. And in the spirit of the game, if you throw a bad shot, you should take your punishment, and then move on and try to do better the next hole. It’s not supposed to be the end of the world (or the tournament). With hole 16’s unusual format, the punishment is allowed to snowball. For his initial shot onto the island, Barela undoubtedly used the disc that he was most confident he could execute the shot with. His next attempt, he surely used his second choice of disc. His third attempt, his third choice of disc, and so on. So by the last few of his attempts, he was most likely using discs that he had very little confidence in for this shot, which makes each subsequent attempt less likely to succeed than the one before. I think this is just wrong. The game is not about trying to execute shots with discs that you would never actually choose in an attempt to stop yourself from hemorrhaging strokes. It is about making your single best effort to execute a shot. Once that shot is thrown, it should be over, and you reap the consequences of that one attempt.
My argument will inevitably be met with the one that goes, “Well, he’s a professional, he should have just made it on the second try. Or the third, or the…” And if I am being honest, I can’t really deny the straightforward truth of this argument. He could have just stuck the second shot and it all could have gone differently. But for all intents and purposes, Barela outplayed the rest of the field for 98% of the tournament and I hate that one small mistake was allowed to completely take him out of the running. If he had gone to a drop zone and taken a bogey, maybe Ellis still would have pulled ahead and won, who knows? I just can’t help but come away feeling like Barela lost on a technicality. I would love to see the rules for this hole changed for next year.
In opposition to myself and Mr. Stokely, IcebergTV argues in support of hole 16’s format in this video, saying it makes for exciting viewing. Some people may agree with this, but I absolutely do not think that the rules of disc golf at the highest competitive level should be influenced by what is deemed most entertaining. I think that fairness and consistency about what it takes to put up a good score is far more important than what is entertaining. Also, watching Barela’s tournament run down the drain was anything but entertaining (Stokely alludes to this as well.) I cannot imagine watching the ordeal and then saying “Wow, what an exciting and fun disc golf thrill ride.” Pretty much everyone I have talked to has described the incident as “hard to watch” and I would completely agree. And I want to be clear, my intention is not to bash IcebergTV, I have never met the guy and he makes good content, I just thought that this opinion was bizarre. There has been a trend in the disc golf world ever since the COVID boom of disc golfers pushing for the game to be changed to be “more entertaining”, whatever that means. I think pro disc golf is incredibly entertaining the way it is, because I love the game. If you find yourself watching pro disc golf and wishing you enjoyed it more, maybe watch something else? Or maybe you just don’t like disc golf that much. Some would say this take is gatekeep-y, but hey, it’s my article.
