How many is too many?

My cousin and I played Yulga DGC yesterday. It's a pretty nice course, so if you haven't played it, you should. As I expected (what with spring break in effect and the beautiful weather we've been having), it was pretty busy out there. Most people were in pairs or groups of four. Seems adequate to me. Sure, we had to wait a few minutes for the group/s ahead of us to hole out, but that's disc golf.

We meandered our way through the course, and as we came around the corner leading to the tee on hole 10, I saw at least 15 people standing around the tee pad. Turns out that 8 of these guys were in a group, and the remainder of the party were just other groups waiting their turn. Now from what I've gathered about disc golf etiquette, they should have let some of the smaller groups play through. They would not. To make matters worse, each member of this 8-man group was throwing from the tee-pad twice, and then just playing their best lie (a practice that I find counter-productive, but that's another story).

Let me clarify here. I do not have an issue with large groups. I think everyone has a right to play. I DO have an issue with large groups completely abandoning any sort of disc golf etiquette. I don't know why they do this. Perhaps they feel strengthened by their numbers and therfore they think they can just do whatever they want. I guess my speculation here doesnt matter.

What do you think? How many in a group is too many?

[Mikey]

I have always said no more than 5, but thats just me. I have gone with a group of 6 before but 2 of them were not playing, just walking for the excersize.

[Senior]

We try to make it 6. If we have 6 we usually play doubles.

[jd]

Clearly very poor golf etiquette, being a 'free' sport, this is one of the unfortunate side effects. You won't find a lot of this behavior on ball golf courses, it simply is not tolerated.

Over time, I have become less and less tolerant of playing in a large group -- too much standing around for my tastes.

I occasionally do gang golf -- it's strictly a social thing. The rest of the time, my preferences are 4 max for singles and up to 6 for doubles. And don't play the longs if many of the people/teams in the group are eating bogies and above on most of the holes.

[Fat Tire Flier]

i think 6 is pushing it, but if theyre fine with letting people play through its fine for me

[Mark Janssen]

Typically this only is an issue on busy courses, like it sounds this one is. The problem with the large group letting everyone play through is that they would take 4 hours to finish thier round. With a busy course there would consistently be another smaller group coming up behind them expecting to play through. At what point do they just get to play. I think you need to have a little patience with these groups as the are typically rec and beginner players. They most likely do not understand all the rules let alone any etiquitte. So I would suggest skipping a hole, or do what I like to do, join them for a hole and quickly finish staying out of thier way and then tee off on the next hole. That way you get to play through, don't miss a hole and everyone is typicaly happy. Especially when you step up to the pad and crush a drive 150 feet past thier best player. Hect then you put a gracious foot forward and they want to play more to be able to throw like you!

[The Monster]

This is the one I tend to go with. There is a course here and it sits between like 8 schools. You sometimes have to park in the second area or in a neighborhood that is behind it. For the most part everyone is cool. But people are the same everywhere you go and you will have a few tools in there