Par for the Course -> Rating

[EricW]

This is probably old hat, but it was new to me. Was originally just looking to see how well I'd have to shoot for this mouse to get some cheese this year.

Took last years King of the Lake AM scores and plotted them vs their rating. 5 courses, same field, 3 days, ideal conditions. Pretty nice setup for comparing courses.

The ratings plot in a nice line and excel spits out a slope equation.

• Y Intercept is the theoretical perfect rating if you shot a 0
• Slope is how many rating points are lost for each stroke

What's interesting to this forum is the Rating for a Par Round.

Par is 950 or higher on Zephyr, Vista, Sierra. They're all tough. Bijou is similar when the long holes are played as 3's. It takes a mere -4 under to get to 1000 rating at Zephyr. Truckee is certainly easiest, and this shows where par is a 912 rating.

Does this mean we can say... Zephyr, Vista, Sierra, and Bijou (as 3's) are blue to gold rated courses, and that Truckee is a white to blue? Is that fair to say?

(note that DGCR SSE is misses a bit on Truckee and Sierra)

 

[EricW]

Thought I attached these to the original post, must have missed upload

 

[Steve West]

This is probably old hat, but it was new to me. Was originally just looking to see how well I'd have to shoot for this mouse to get some cheese this year.
...

Does this mean we can say... Zephyr, Vista, Sierra, and Bijou (as 3's) are blue to gold rated courses, and that Truckee is a white to blue? Is that fair to say?

(note that DGCR SSE is misses a bit on Truckee and Sierra)

I'd say it means par was not set at the ideal level to answer your question of what it takes to get your cheese. Based on last year's results, the ideal level of par for Advanced would have been Zephyr=53, Vista=57, Sierra=57, Bijou=79, and Truckee=49 (unless I got the rounds and courses mixed up).

These pars are at the level where the difference between par and actual scores is minimized for the top 40%.

 

[Steve West]

... all but Truckee are probably close enough.

 

[EricW]

Thanks Steve. I bumped into your analysis of the 2014 AM Worlds. Didn't realize how deep this sort of thing had been delved. I liked the mode (most common score on a hole) and the check of its chance vs below or above. Linking that to subjective player feedback like "17 is a must birdie" or seeing a diverse casual card all pull the same score certainly has me thinking.

I've a few tournaments worth of hole by hole scores for our new local course. Looks like I'll have to clean it a bit and bring it together.

For local unsanctioned tourney data where a player didn't have a rating (maybe 20-30% of the available hole by hole scores), would you...

• drop the round from analyzed data
• assign a rating based on the round score
• or subjectively assign a player rating if you had a good idea what it would be?

 

[Steve West]

Thanks Steve. I bumped into your analysis of the 2014 AM Worlds. Didn't realize how deep this sort of thing had been delved. I liked the mode (most common score on a hole) and the check of its chance vs below or above. Linking that to subjective player feedback like "17 is a must birdie" or seeing a diverse casual card all pull the same score certainly has me thinking.

I've a few tournaments worth of hole by hole scores for our new local course. Looks like I'll have to clean it a bit and bring it together.

For local unsanctioned tourney data where a player didn't have a rating (maybe 20-30% of the available hole by hole scores), would you...

• drop the round from analyzed data
• assign a rating based on the round score
• or subjectively assign a player rating if you had a good idea what it would be?

I wouldn't drop the round. You could use just the players that have a rating and ignore the rest.

I think it's alright to assign a few approximate ratings based on the total tournament score, or your idea of what the rating should be. I've done that when there are just a few players in a large field that are lacking a rating - just to avoid reformatting the data. I don't think it captures any more good information.

I don't think I'd be comfortable doing it for that large a portion of a small field. You wouldn't be able to study things like correlation of scores to ratings.

Or, depending on what you are trying to accomplish, you don't need ratings. If you have many of the same players from tournament to tournament, you can optimize for that field, using final score instead of rating.