I don’t have time to watch every minute of every Pro Tour event. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are busy for my family. So as to keep tabs on what’s happening, here’s what I do:
- I search for “PDGA Live” on Google.
- I click on the No. one result – it’s this link.
- I select the first Pro Tour tournament at the top.
Do as I do.
Congrats: You’re now following along with live-scoring.
It’s “watching” without actually watching. When you review the Disc Golf Network highlights later on when the kids are in bed and things are winding down for the day, already knowing the basic gist of what’s taken place, the unfolding of the tournament makes much more sense.
I can get through it quicker, too.
This understanding is further improved by checking out the stats on the same webpage. From the live-scoring page, for any given tournament, click on “Full MPO Scores” or “Full FPO Scores,” depending on what you’re looking for. Then, select “Stats’ and voilà – you’re a numbers nerd.
Today, of all the stats with which you’ll be presented, I want to focus on one …
Circle in regulation.
What the heck does that even mean?
‘Circle in regulation” refers to a player having reached one of disc golf’s two putting circles with a look for birdie. Or, in other words, from circles one or two, a golfer has two shots to card a par.
On the PDGA’s live-stats page, you’ll see a column for “C1 Reg” and “C2 Reg,” along with a percentage. This percentage indicates to a user how frequently, whether from the tee or the fairway, a Pro Tour disc golfer puts themselves in position for a bonafide look at birdie.
This is pretty simple stuff: “C1 Reg” means they made it to circle one, and “C2 Reg” means they made it to circle two. However, reaching circle one in regulation with two shots left for a par also means that circle two in regulation was satisfied – the shot counts towards both metrics.
Furthermore, if a player is “Parked” (within 3.3 meters or 11 feet of the basket) for birdie, both circle one in regulation (C1 Reg) and circle two in regulation (C2 Reg) are checked. And while I’ve got you here, an eagle or albatross counts for all three: parked, circle one in regulation and circle two in regulation. Talk about a trifecta powerful enough to have Billy Bean drooling.
Ultimately, the purpose of circle-in-regulation stats is to demonstrate how accurate a player’s drives and upshots are during a specific round or over the course of an entire tournament. Again, for people like you and me who can’t park their butts in front of a television for six solid hours.
Thanks, Circle In Regulation.
It’s nice to be in the know.
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