is pdga ratings crap?

[myroomisajunkyard]

I threw my first disc exactly a year ago, and been playing the sport as often as i can play..
Signed up for PDGA around end of june, played my first single tournament and got 807/845 round rating (first tournament) got choked a lot, learned the ropes with the tournament itself, I've been playing 10 tournaments so far.. the last 4 tournaments has been over 900's such as 919/921/940/941/920/935/915/940. and the total of my rating is 881 because they've added the 807 and the first few tournament 840-885ish of blundering, learning the ropes and such. I'm a fast learner and i expect to do better next year.
But How long do i have to carry that bad round ratings that keeps dragging my ratings down. I wanna see how high i can go with the rating, it keeps me motivated, but learning that my rating is basically pulled back by rookie mistakes from the first few tournaments.

How do i pull it up to where i'm averaged supposedly 925ish?
How does the rating works because if they average it in 2 year span, i'd have a long way to get to 900's?

I know i'm a new player, but i love the game and see something out of myself, and i'm just ranting, since the ratings is basically a source of instristic motivation of mine. :wall:

 

[jenb]

It's a one year span since your last rated round played. So those round ratings will drop off after you play a tournament a year later. Your last 10 rated rounds get weighted double. Rounds rated more than a certain amount below your average (2 standard deviations below iirc) also get dropped, even if they are not more than a year old. Most of the time, that equates to about 100 points below the average. So if your average is about 925, then you should probably expect that 807 rated round to get dropped early.

Personally, I don't think ratings should average a whole year, especially if there have been a lot of rounds played during that time. I'd rather see them take the higher of either the average of the last ten rounds, or the average over the past year. That would get ratings up more quickly to where they reflect the actual skill level of the player, without making it easy for people to bag their ratings.

 

[renoob]

From the PDGA FAQ:

All rated rounds you have played and have been reported to the PDGA within 12 months of your most recently rated round will be included in the calculation. However, if any one of those ratings is either more than 100 points below your average rating or more than 2.5 standard deviations below your rating – whichever number is smaller – that round will not be included. That works out to about 1 in 50 rounds getting dropped. Rounds where you DNF (Do Not Finish) are never counted in your rating. The most recent 25% of your rounds get double weighted which slightly boosts your rating if you have been steadily improving. If a player has fewer than 8 rounds in the past 12 months, since their most recent round, then we'll go back up to another 12 months until we find up to 8 rounds but never go back any farther than a total of 24 months.

So next June those first rounds will go away, or sooner if you can pull your average way up.

 

[urwatuh8]

Ratings only go back one year (from the most recently rated round). They only go back two years if you have less than eight rated rounds in the last year.

Also, your most recent rounds are doubled. So I think you're worrying way too much about those earlier rounds.

Anyway, ratings are a pretty inexact system. There really isn't enough data to make any system too precise.

 

[Gdragon04]

I used to be in your shoes but I pretty much stopped caring what my rating is this year. The system is so varied and inexact, this sport will never grow or be taken seriously until something better can happen to make it more exact. I have more fun playing local leagues and fundraiser tournaments than nerve-racking State Championships and A-tier events anyway.

 

[grodney]

I think you meant "Are pdga ratings crap?".

 

[ESPNEWS]

LOL @grodney & @JAKE_master

 

[Johnny_Crunch]

Patience Grasshoppah!

 

[DavidSauls]

this sport will never grow or be taken seriously until something better can happen to make it more exact.

Never grow? It's only, what, doubled, tripled in size since the rating systems came out?

 

[Cgkdisc]

The handicap system in ball golf has several flaws producing inaccurate numbers yet never seemed to hold back their growth (at one time).

 

[mfcastillo17]

The ratings system is very accurate IMO. I applaud Chuck and co. for designing a system that evaluates quality of play over time. Look at any tournament with a decent pro field. The "cream" always rises to the top. Every now and then someone sub 1000 rated will put together a couple of good rounds and have a high finish, but by and large the players who have shown consistency over time are rightly rated high. To the OP, only one year in the game is not enough of a sample size to be griping about a poor round not being dropped. You may be improving quickly and eventually your rating will reflect that.

 

[sloppydisc]

Sounds to me like the OP is blaming the ratings system for his 'choke' job during his first round. Suck it up. You played a bad round. It happens. Take some responsibility for your performance. The price you pay is a slightly lower rating for a year. Lesson learned. Don't choke next time.

Next PDGA bitch session...:wall:

 

[mfcastillo17]

Sounds to me like the OP is blaming the ratings system for his 'choke' job during his first round. Suck it up. You played a bad round. It happens. Take some responsibility for your performance. The price you pay is a slightly lower rating for a year. Lesson learned. Don't choke next time.

Next PDGA bitch session...:wall:

:clap::thmbup:

 

[Cgkdisc]

Note that the OP is not necessarily questioning the accuracy of the round ratings, just how how far back we go to average the rounds for a player's rating. Our 12-month logic on that choice, like most sports, is stats are done one season/year at a time. Many established athletes start out their seasons hot or cold and it goes the opposite way later in the season. Their seasonal QB ratings, batting averages, shooting percentages include stats for all games in those numbers. They don't even double weight their most recent performances.

 

[_MTL_]

No matter what Chuck tells you, I can point to at least 10 instances of where ratings have been down right laughable.

 

[Monkeypaws]

If I ever get this serious about disc golf, someone needs to take my discs away from me.

 

[Cgkdisc]

No matter what Chuck tells you, I can point to at least 10 instances of where ratings have been down right laughable.

Yep, as laughable as the scores that produced them...

 

[iacas]

The handicap system in ball golf has several flaws producing inaccurate numbers yet never seemed to hold back their growth (at one time).

Such as...? Because I've never seen a legitimate claim for why it's "inaccurate" or has "several flaws." By and large - there will always be unusual exceptions - it's held up pretty damn well for quite awhile. FWIW I'm on the local rating committee so I also get to see how ratings are determined.

As it applies here, your handicap index in golf speaks more to your "potential" and takes your best 10 differentials of your last 20 (then multiplies that by 0.96). The farther you are from scratch the more the "slope rating" of the course matters.

Disc golf could pretty easily co-opt the golf method of handicapping to account for things. Where disc golf is hampered is that there's no real way for two players to handicap themselves in a casual match (I've seen threads about various ways to approximate handicapping people) nor do you even get a rating if you're like me and haven't played in a tournament yet - while golfers are getting a differential and updating their handicap every time they play.

 

[krupicka]

The only flaw is that ratings are typically depressed for events that do not have enough higher level players as there is a ratings lag for rapidly improving players. Higher level players tend to have more stable ratings.

 

[Cgkdisc]

First, the ball golf handicap system uses self reported scores which negates any validity right there versus only using tournament scores in the DG system. BTW, I visited the USGA HQ in Far Hills back when we developed the DG ratings system and the reps on the Handicap Committee I met with admitted as much. They had even tried to do calculations similar to how we do DG ratings and failed due to the weakness in using self reported scores. By their estimates, about 45-50% of players report only good scores to get low handicaps for bragging rights because they never play handicap events. About 45-50% report mostly poor scores to get a high handicap because they play in handicap events. Roughly 5% actually report scores properly.

I also communicated with the Pope of Slope, Dean Knuth, creator of the slope factor in their formula. He indicated that the last scoring data used to "validate" the ball golf system was the US Amateur in 1970. The course ratings in ball golf are static values that are literally made up with no validation against actual scores because they have no way to do it. The slope system is essentially a fudge factor to theoretically make the numbers work better. There's no adjustment for weather factors in the system.

Handicapping is a sucker bet in ball golf because when you only use your best 10 of the last 20 rounds, if your handicap was done properly, you can only beat your handicap 1 in 4 rounds. That's why they usually flight players in handicap events into handicap ranges rather than one big pool. If you're going to do that, might as well use ratings ranges and let people play straight up against those in the same range like we do in competitive disc golf.

The ball golf system seems decent despite these flaws for a couple reasons. Effective course length plus the fixed factor of 40.4 for shots around the green are such overwhelming elements impacting course ratings that all of the mumbo jumbo of the clipboard raters doesn't impact the rating that much, perhaps +/- 1 shot or so out of 70 or so. The same wind speed doesn't affect the scoring as much as it does in disc golf at least on open holes.