You are right. It's 7. Even shorter at 479, all the other questions still apply.
OK, then.
Here is the scoring distribution for 1000-rated players on hole #7.
Using the Par by Average Score method, this falls just under the cutoff of 4.95 so par of 4 would be indicated.
Using the Par by Scoring Distribution method would indicate a par 5. Barely. However, because of statistical fluctuation, there is more than a 10% chance this result would have been seen even if the underlying actual distribution was that of a difficult par 4.
Independent of the two measures above, the scores of 3 bring up an issue. If a 3 is possible, shouldn't players be able to play for 4 quite often? There are hints that by going for the birdie, the better players are getting stung by 5s. If so, then those scores of 5 were not the result of errorless play. Thus, no matter how many happened they shouldn't be included in determining par.
Another way to look at it is: What throws would be required to get a 4? Even if there are a lot of trouble around the target so experts expected two putts, that just leaves two 240 foot (73 meter) throws to get there. I think a 1000-rated player should be expected to be able to do that, even in the woods. Where is the other errorless throw which would be needed to call this a par 5?
Either par 4 or par 5 would be defensible. (Sometimes things hang on the edge between the buckets instead of falling neatly into one or the other.)
I personally think this is a nasty par 4 which tricks players into making too many errors. Obviously, experts can
get a 4 with errorless play; but not enough of them are doing it to
prove it should be
expected.
Calling it a par 4 might be the cause of those errors: highly skilled players feel they must go for birdie even though the risk is too great on this hole.
The hole does a good job of measuring skill, so I wouldn't want to mess with it too much. (For players rated 970 and up, the scoring spread width was very large: 3.97, with a good correlation to ratings.)
