27 May 02

This is from friend Mark Moritz. It's a great idea I wish I'd thought of. It ought to become standard procedure:

"Have you ever tried Best, Worst scoring? I invented it for exactly that reason. Run a match with short stages, and give each shooter several runs. Then use his WORST run for the final score on that stage.

As it is now, shooters tend to put a 'safe' score in the bag, and then spray and pray the last run in pursuit of a spectacular score. The winner is therefore the luckiest, and everybody develops bad habits. When shooters are informed that their WORST score will be the one that counts, they suddenly shoot as if every shot counts, which is exactly the point.

And, as a practical matter, if a match is supposed to determine the 'best shooter,' there is a good argument that the best shooter is the one whose worst performances are better than everybody else's."

Amen!

/John