Par Talk

[Steve West]

2019 United States Disc Golf Championship Winthrop University Gold

A player who gets a birdie has made one throw that took the place of two good-enough-to-get-par throws.

A player who gets an eagle has made one throw that took the place of three good-enough-to-get-par throws. That might happen once a tournament for any particular hole.

A player who gets an albatross has made one throw that took the place of four good-enough-to-get-par throws. A 400-foot throw-in certainly did not take the place of four regular throws.

But, look at the publicity that comes from over-parring a hole! How can we resist?

 

[biscoe]

A player who gets a birdie has made one throw that took the place of two good-enough-to-get-par throws.

A player who gets an eagle has made one throw that took the place of three good-enough-to-get-par throws. That might happen once a tournament for any particular hole.

A player who gets an albatross has made one throw that took the place of four good-enough-to-get-par throws. A 400-foot throw-in certainly did not take the place of four regular throws.

But, look at the publicity that comes from over-parring a hole! How can we resist?

While I tend to agree that 888 is a par 4 I disagree with your phrasing on these items.

IMO a player who gets a birdie has made (par-1) throws that took the place of (par) throws.
In all likelihood the number of strokes gained vs par is fractional per shot rather than all rolled into one shot. In Nikko's case for instance his first shot was exceptional enough to allow him the chance to make the second.

 

[Steve West]

While I tend to agree that 888 is a par 4 I disagree with your phrasing on these items.

IMO a player who gets a birdie has made (par-1) throws that took the place of (par) throws.
In all likelihood the number of strokes gained vs par is fractional per shot rather than all rolled into one shot. In Nikko's case for instance his first shot was exceptional enough to allow him the chance to make the second.

Yes, that's true. In real life, it's a combination of things that usually fall in-between the integers. I stayed with the integer examples for simplicity. (Staying within the integers, I could have also added that an eagle can result from two throws that saved two throws each.)

It didn't feel that merely saying "someone made 2 throws that only took the place of 4 throws rather than 5" would have shown just how rare and incredible an albatross should be.

 

[Steve West]

The Ed Headrick Disc Golf Hall of Fame Classic presented by REC TEC Grills - National Tour Finale, WR Jackson Memorial Disc Golf Course

For Gold, #18 as a par 4 is no surprise. Interesting that #12 came in as a par 4, but barely, and maybe only because there were few rounds of data.

For Pink, #8 played as a par 5, but it was really close to par 4. #13 seems unbirdieable. I'd look for a place for a shorter tee on that one.

 

[Steve West]

2019 DGPT Tour Championship, Hornets Nest Park

Par for MPO came in right at 1000, which I would guess was the target. There weren't enough near-1000-rated players to be fully confident in the results, but I would suggest that holes #4 and #11 should have had lower pars. Par of 61 would have been rated 1012, which would include less than two errors per round. Since there was almost one OB per round, it's not hard to imagine that one of those fairway misses resulted in a higher score each round.

Par of 65 for FPO was rated 979, which seems about right. A lot of holes were tough to par. It indicates an average of more than 6 errors per round for 930-rated players. Interestingly, it looks like hole #17 was more par fivey than hole #13. The comment that "nothing can happen on 18" seems to be confirmed.

 

[Steve West]

Calvin's Birdies

I saw the post about Calvin birdieing 180 out of 393 holes on the National Tour. Yes, that's incredible, no doubt. However, I wondered just how too-incredible it was. Or, what was the credible amount of greatness? So, I calculated how many birdies he would have gotten based on my method of setting par.

Turns out, his scores should have been called birdies on 149 of 390 holes (I didn't include playoff holes), for a birdie rate of 38%. Or, I think his scores should have resulted in about 6.8 birdies per 18 holes, rather than 8.2.

Of the 186 unique holes he played, 26 (14%, or 2.5 per 18 holes) were over-parred. (One was under-parred, but he got what should have been eagles anyway so that didn't increase his count.) The Las Vegas Challenge had 12 over-parred holes, Beaver State Fling = 7, Santa Cruz Masters Cup and Ed Headrick HOFC has 2 each, and Delaware DGC and Glass Blown Open 1 each. GBO had the only under-parred hole and that one is iffy.

The good news is we seem to be converging on the same level of par at the top events; nobody is going way too low. However, we're not quite there yet, with a few holes per course that I think should be brought into standard. It would be nice if we could just say he got 149 birdies, without wondering whether that number had been inflated by playing on courses where par would be more appropriate for Intermediate or Advanced players.

 

[Steve West]

Mixed report card for 2019 Ontario Provincial Disc Golf Championships driven by Innova

One course had good pars, the other had pars for 910-rated players.

(No CIs are shown because there weren't quite enough 1000+rated players, so these are extrapolated.)

 

[Steve West]

2019 The Harvest Presented by Kings Valley Wine and Spirits

OK, so at first glance you think: "This is pretty good, right? A forgivable mislabeling of a couple of par 2s and the old stand-by of setting the longest hole to par 4 just to say we have a par 4."

The thing is, the difference between par of 64 and 61 is the difference between par that is based on the play of 925-rated players and 1000-rated players. We'd never tolerate that kind of sloppiness in round ratings, hole lengths, or recorded scores; we shouldn't tolerate this much sloppiness in pars either.

Here again the par is good for 925-rated players. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the TD and ATD are rated 937 and 919, could it?

When you take a par that is good for 925-rated players, add one 80%-of-full-power drive to the total length of the course but increase par by 3, you get a par that is good for 890-rated players.

 

[Steve West]

2019 The Warwick Disc Golf Championships presented by Dicks Sporting Goods.

For both layouts, total pars are good for Blue level 950-rated players, though I would switch pars for Blue to Blue #5 vs. #9, and Silver to Blue #3 vs. #17. I wonder if the higher pars were just given to the longer holes.

For Gold/Open/1000-rated a couple of par 4s could be called par 3 on each layout.

 

[Steve West]

2019 New World Championship

 

[Steve West]

Oops, 20 holes.

 

[Steve West]

2019 14th Annual Phoenix Ladies Open

Nice to see the FPO and FP40 field get to tear up a course and have some par 2s. Of course, as we all know the longest hole (no matter how easy) MUST be called a par 4, right?

 

[Whiskey_Jim]

Great thread. Really takes pedantry to levels I didn't know existed.

 

[Steve West]

Great thread. Really takes pedantry to levels I didn't know existed.

Maybe we can take it further.

I'd like everyone's feedback on the pros and cons of generating a message like:

"For 2019 15th Annual Pumpkin Shootout sponsored by Sunday Crew and Driven by Innova/Mesker Woods/Meadows Long Tees; 5892 Feet: Consider reducing par for #2 #7 #9 #14 #17. "

which would go into the tournament feedback.

 

[Whiskey_Jim]

Could it be solved with a distance metric? A 5892 foot 18 hole par 54 course is 327 feet per hole, 109 feet per stroke. If we used 80 feet per stroke that would make it a par 73 averaging 4 strokes a hole. The distance per stroke could be played with but you would at least have a system that would assign the total par for courses.

 

[Steve West]

Could it be solved with a distance metric? A 5892 foot 18 hole par 54 course is 327 feet per hole, 109 feet per stroke. If we used 80 feet per stroke that would make it a par 73 averaging 4 strokes a hole. The distance per stroke could be played with but you would at least have a system that would assign the total par for courses.

No. (For details, see about half the posts here.)

But, let's say it could. What would be the pros and cons of actually telling TDs after the fact what the pars should have been?

 

[Whiskey_Jim]

It would just be a metric for moving forward with some semblance of standardization.

 

[biscoe]

The PDGA already has distance based metrics in their design recommendations. These for the most part yield similar results to Steve's.

 

[Steve West]

Now that the season is kind of over, I gathered info on all the Open rounds at A-tiers and above (plus Euro Tour) from 11/1/18 to 10/31/19.

No matter what method is applied, if the TD is setting par for 1000-rated players, the round rating will almost always come out to be somewhere between 990 to 1030.

So, if a round rating comes out less than 990, it is a very good bet that the TD did not set par for 1000-rated players. About one out of seven rounds played by Open players in A-tiers and above are using par set for 1000-rated players.

 

[DavidSauls]

Might a lower rating also indicate that most holes yielded more birdies than bogeys, even if par were set correctly?