Par Talk

[DavidSauls]

Summary of my opinion (this time, without assumptions about anyone else's, I hope):

Par on a given hole is the expected score---the score we would expect an expert to get.
* This matches the PDGA definition (other than the "close range" clutter, which has been argued is no exception at all).
* This matches the PGA definition.
* This matches the dictionary definition, in general.
* Most determinations of "expert" are just quibbling; they make little difference. It's not "best players in the world", though.
* If a hole produces a lot of scores below par, or few, or none, par is still the expected score.
* If a hole produces a lot of scores above par, or few, or none, par is still the expected score.
* If this means that the accumulation of scores in a round is different than the total of pars, it doesn't matter. Each hole was correct---the expected score.
* If the hole design is bad, it doesn't matter. (Or, it's another issue). Par is still the expected score.
* "Expected" can be arrived at a number of ways, but they're mostly quibbling. The results are generally the same.
* When par is the expected score, any score below it is a gain, any score above it is a loss, compared to the overall field. If there aren't any on a given hole, there will be on other holes.
* Golf is a different sport.
* Golf is a similar sport, and an ancestor sport, and we should look at it for what we can borrow. But not worship it.
* I don't care what non-disc-golfers may think. Few of them are watching, anyway. If they do, they can learn that we're a different sport, and some aspects in disc golf are different than golf.

 

[DavidSauls]

Apologies, "worship" was a poor choice of words there. ".....take it as the final authority on a subject." would be been much better.

 

[DavidSauls]

----supplement---
* It is impractical to apply this to every course. At this time, applying it to the top-level pro events would suffice.

 

[Karl]

This.

Also, it has to do with a lot of forced distances.

I'm really comfortable, for example, at 105 - 125 yards. 95 yards I'm extremely uncomfortable.

If I'm on a par 4 and can hit a driver to 100 yards or closer to the pin, I won't hit driver to make sure I'm more than 100 yards out.

However if I'm on a 95 yard par 3, not much I can do.

This is a personal example, but can be applied to basically every club. Golfers have "perfect numbers" and that basically means a distance with a club that they are extremely comfortable with.

I have perfect numbers in disc golf, as well. In a field, 220, 280, 320 and 360 are really comfortable distances for me.

The difference is even a 390 foot hole, I can throw my comfortable 360 shot and get a 30 foot putt. Missing by 30 feet isn't a big deal. In golf, that's at best case a lengthy birdie putt.

I hear what you're saying about "forced distances", but - at least with the PGA Tour over that last few decades - the numbers are (give or take several hundredths of a shot per) 3pars = 3.0, 4pars = 4.1, and 5pars = 4.7. Thus 'the boys' try to play the par 3s even, par the par 4s knowing they'll goof a tough 1 or 2 per round, and try to birdie (hitting in 2 or wedging close) the par 5s.

 

[lyleoross]

So you're the one that has me eating straw.

Give me your address and I will replace your straw with a straw hat!

 

[lyleoross]

This discussion seems to parallel creationism versus evolution. The creationists here revere the ball golf god that decrees a reasonable chance for birdie is a commandment. The evolutionists here use statistics to determine the real par which sometimes may make birdies rare.

I don't know about anyone else, but that post was a religious experience for me. I should also point out that Darwin was very religious. He assumed God didn't put evolution in the bible for the same reasons he didn't put other things in the bible. Things like steam trains, or in a more modern sense, cars and airplanes.

On a more serious note. My definition of reasonable chance is different than the creationists. Expected /= reasonable chance.

 

[Steve West]

ok.

So we are to take errorless as not errorless but whatever was required to get par, errorless as given by the director in your opinion is not a literal description of the throws taken but whatever the data says is the most common low score from ~1000 rated players (ish) Because 98% of ball golf professionals get par on a par 4 their play is errorless despite potentiall making real world errors they have made better than error to make up for an error to equal errorless.

You got it.

For ball golf, the pars were a given, so it's really just the percentage of throws that were good enough to get par (or better). I used "errorless" as the analogy to the level of play expected to get par.

For disc golf, I started with the idea that errorless play would get a player a round rating near (or usually above) their rating. Most players have a few more mistakes than miracles, on average, which is what round ratings are based on. So, an errorless round by a 1000-rated player should be rated 1000 or more, right?

I defined "level of play" as the scores that result from the top X% of throws by all 1000-rated players. I then solved for the cutoff of the percent of throws that were to be labeled errorless which produced round ratings about where I wanted.

There is no way to tell which particular throws were actually errors and which ones were great recoveries. But, given the original idea about total scores, this method should produce the same pars as actually watching players and throwing out any scores where the player made an error or a miraculous throw (or both).

Errorless is also probably the most common way to play for 1000-rated players, so just looking at the most common score works, too.

As it turns out, on some courses errorless play can be rated slightly less than 1000. But they are the exception.

So coming back to how to set par for a new course, how do we do it before a tournament including a reasonable amount of 1000 rated players play there?

However you want. CRP, PDGA chart, borrow an expert. As long as it's your opinion of what an expert would expect, it's legit.

 

[Steve West]

I would argue against this for the definition of par, though. As I said in the last post on page 116, I would say that professional golfers are beyond experts, supreme if you will.

You would need a way to find how many errors expert golfers make.

All PGA players? The numbers I had were for the whole field.

If they're all supreme, then their definition of par for that field ought to be based on the supreme player. If it's not, then why aren't they all (even the last place pro golfer) scoring way under par all the time?

Or, is there less difference between expert and supreme in ball golf than in disc golf?

 

[Putt for D'oh]

This discussion seems to parallel creationism versus evolution. The creationists here revere the ball golf god that decrees a reasonable chance for birdie is a commandment. The evolutionists here use statistics to determine the real par which sometimes may make birdies rare.

I thought you meant 2 sides restating the same thing over and over to another side that wasn't even listening to what the first side had to say to begin with. I swear I check in to this thread about every 2 weeks wondering if has drifted off topic so at least something new would be discussed.

meh...



Par is always 3 btw...

 

[TimSyl]

I thought you meant 2 sides restating the same thing over and over to another side that wasn't even listening to what the first side had to say to begin with. I swear I check in to this thread about every 2 weeks wondering if has drifted off topic so at least something new would be discussed.

meh...



[SIZE="1"]Par is always 3 btw...[/SIZE]

This is, and will always be silly. My home course, first hole is 255' with minimal obstacles...hole 14 is 620' with an uphill tee shot, then an uphill dogleg approach guarded by trees. To say these holes should both be par 3s is ridiculous.

 

[Disczealot]

All PGA players? The numbers I had were for the whole field.

If they're all supreme, then their definition of par for that field ought to be based on the supreme player. If it's not, then why aren't they all (even the last place pro golfer) scoring way under par all the time?

Or, is there less difference between expert and supreme in ball golf than in disc golf?

In 2016, according to the data on pgatour.com, 91% of all pga players had a positive birdie/bogey(birdie or better/bogey or worse) ratio. You could say that in relation to disc golf, 91% of pga golfers are rated higher than 1,000, or did better than an expert would expect.

If 91% of disc golfers on the tour were rated 1,000 or greater, you would have a solid comparison for scoring.

In your instance, you would need about a 50/50 ratio under/over par for the PGA players sampled, since you are comparing them to your numbers for 1,000 rated disc golfers.

My original point was that so many more people play golf, and the talent level is so much higher. You can't compare how many or how far PGA players are under par vs disc golf scores to par.

In, golf I think there are thousands of experts that aren't good enough to compete on the pro tour. In disc golf 1,000 rated(or expert) will compete. Don't get me wrong, I think 1,000 is a good number for an expert, though.

If disc golf had the same number of players and same talent as the PGA, the average rating for a disc golf pro might be 1050, or higher.

 

[lyleoross]

In 2016, according to the data on pgatour.com, 91% of all pga players had a positive birdie/bogey(birdie or better/bogey or worse) ratio. You could say that in relation to disc golf, 91% of pga golfers are rated higher than 1,000, or did better than an expert would expect.

If 91% of disc golfers on the tour were rated 1,000 or greater, you would have a solid comparison for scoring.

In your instance, you would need about a 50/50 ratio under/over par for the PGA players sampled, since you are comparing them to your numbers for 1,000 rated disc golfers.

My original point was that so many more people play golf, and the talent level is so much higher. You can't compare how many or how far PGA players are under par vs disc golf scores to par.

In, golf I think there are thousands of experts that aren't good enough to compete on the pro tour. In disc golf 1,000 rated(or expert) will compete. Don't get me wrong, I think 1,000 is a good number for an expert, though.

If disc golf had the same number of players and same talent as the PGA, the average rating for a disc golf pro might be 1050, or higher.

Pardon me if i miss the point of your post. But you made me think of some things that id like to cover.


As a thought, the traveling pros in our sport are probably closer to 1,000 and above than the pool of players playing pro. It strikes me that the populations are probably different.


You can compare anything you like. Yep, BG has more quality players than we do. So what? I could take a subset of golfers, build a standard based on their play, then cross apply it to DG. I can compare all Pro golfers to 1,000 rated players and even ask the question, is the comparison valid, statistically?

It isn't a matter of what you can do, it's a matter of whether what you've done has value or meaning.

Yes, some day we are likely to have a big pool of 1050 or higher rated players. They will make even courses like DeLa look silly. Given that, shouldn't we examine the bar we've set and wonder if it's high enough?

The rapid growth of our sport means we are likely to get that pool sooner, rather than later. Staying on top of that is the difference between credibility and putt putt golf.

 

[Disczealot]

I agree with most of what you said.

...I can compare all Pro golfers to 1,000 rated players and even ask the question, is the comparison valid, statistically?

This is what Steve did, and answering that question was the point of my post.

 

[lyleoross]

I agree with most of what you said.



This is what Steve did, and answering that question was the point of my post.

But you seem to think there's a problem with that, and I don't see it.

 

[Steve West]

In 2016, according to the data on pgatour.com, 91% of all pga players had a positive birdie/bogey(birdie or better/bogey or worse) ratio. You could say that in relation to disc golf, 91% of pga golfers are rated higher than 1,000, or did better than an expert would expect.

All I would be interested in is what % of the time they got par.

 

[NegaSnapples]

All I would be interested in is what % of the time they got par.

That would be course dependent though.

 

[lyleoross]

That would be course dependent though.

You can do it hole by hole course by course year by year etc. Each value would tell you something different and something interesting.

 

[Sorne]

Since we are discussing how to define "par," I have done a short bit of cursory digging into the etymology of some terms to see how they came to mean what they do now, and I found the results interesting enough to share.

First, let's look at "golf." The earliest mention of people playing a game like golf dates all the way back to the 11th century. Most references are to something called "kolf" (or "colf") which essentially means "stick," "club," or "bat." These references indicate using a stick of some sort to hit a ball towards a target, but they are very unspecific. The modern game of golf is an invention of the Scots. The earliest Scottish reference to gowf is from the 15th century, but the oldest rules we have are from 1744.

I could not find the history of using the term "scratch." It probably comes about by defining a starting line (a metaphoric scratch-in-the-ground to define a baseline of play), or maybe it refers to a tee-line (a "scratch golfer" would be able to reach the hole from the scratch-line.)

The term "par" is a derivate from the Latin "par, paris" (meaning "equal" or "like"); even after the fall of the Latins, "par" was still used colloquially. It was not used to describe golf scores until the end of the 19th century. Around the same time, there was another term being used to describe "scratch" play: bogey. A bogey score was the score of a phantom-player (a bogeyman, you might say.) The abstract goal of golf was to beat the bogeyman.

In the end, though, "par" became the term to describe playing scratch. I found no evidence, but I suspect the reason for this is that scoring under-par was very hard. People did not like losing over and over to the bogeyman, so they made him play one stroke worse.

A recurring point in this thread has been the idea that people only want every hole to be birdie-able to stroke their own egos. If my above theory has some truth to it, then it means (funnily enough) that that the modern definition of par and bogey, which some want to hold on so fast to, is the result of ego. This is not verifiable, of course, but remains amusing to consider.

Using the term "birdie" to describe scoring under-par did not seem to start happening until the mid-20th century. I could not find where it came from (apart from a couple legends,) but I think I can make a reasonable guess. As has been stated, birdies in golf are hard. I suspect that in the past they were even harder, but they started to become somewhat more commonplace as the tools we used evolved: better clubs, better balls, more manicured courses, more shared techniques. As under-pars started to become more and more common, people in different areas started to call them different things. Someone decided to call theirs a birdie, and other people liked it so much that the name spread (let's be honest, "birdie" is a really fun name.)

There are many things you can infer from all this information. The most important conclusion to me, though, is that words can change meaning. Disc golf involves zero clubs (except for the ones I throw into trees to get my discs down because I suck,) yet we still call it golf.

Trying to strictly follow the meaning of words is a bit of fool's errand. The proper course of action is to determine the best, most reasonable, most practically useful way to track scoring and go from there.

To me, I don't care about how the bogey-man/par-man is doing. I care about what the best possible score is on a hole and how close I was to it. My struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the trees, against the rocks, against the whims of this windy world and against the physical forces of gravity in the disc golf realms.

 

[DavidSauls]

Very nice. Thanks.

For the record, I don't subscribe to the argument that people only want every hole to be birdie-able to stroke their own egos. Just as I don't buy that all people who want par to be the "expected score" think pros posting far-under-par scores are an embarrassment, or a harm to the game. I view both arguments as presumptuous.

 

[Lazerface]

I'm not conflating it with difficulty. BUT.....

If there are par-5 golf holes where players are more likely to get a 4 than 5, I thank you for the information. I wasn't aware. But as I stated at the start, I don't follow golf closely.

If it's not too much trouble, does anyone have a link to scoring spreads (or even averages, which isn't the same) on those holes, and all holes at a PGA event? I'd be quite interested to look at them. I see stats when I'm casually watching, but don't pay attention to them.

Naples is right and I have thought about that with this discussion. Maybe it has not always been that way (people hit farther now). but there are a good amount of PAR 5s on the PGA tour where the expected score is 4 - by the touring players, who knows what the members of the golf course expect to get. I just don't know if that's the expected score of a PGA pro, or an "expert". When we say 1000 rated player we are not talking about the top players in the game. Was the definition of PAR invented in golf with the understanding that an "expert" is really like a local pro (100 rated guy), or a PGA tour player?