Been a little busy and I also have been pondering on this a little bit. I fear we may just be talking in circles at this point, but the ancient Greeks thought of circles as the perfect shape, so we've got that going for us.
Is it though? I think everyone knows how far they can throw. If they know the hole length, they don't need par to figure out whether they can get their drive to the target.
Once we have played a hole the first time, we really don't need the tee sign information about it. We know the lines, the length, etc. The more times we throw it, the less we need it. Par becomes merely a convenient means by which to keep score.
However, when we step up to a hole the first time and see that the a wooded hole is listed as 341 feet from the white tees, the par helps us understand whether there is a line that the designer believes a typical 875 rated player can throw to the basket. Frequently we need to figure out the lines and the basket location in order to understand how we should play the hole, and the par helps us understand what we are looking at.
- A target somewhere way short of the player's drive length means they will be essentially laying up from the tee.
- A target somewhere around the drive length is a distance where they'll hope to make the first putt, but will quite likely will have to make a come-back putt.
- A target somewhere out beyond drive length is a distance where they are laying up their second throw.
The reason the course design guidelines recommend designing holes at integral throw lengths is because only one of those zones I mentioned gives the best chance of creating two different scores.
Frankly, I'm surprise to see you saying this. There are many, many holes where players are playing to intended landing zones far short of their max drive length. The specifics of the layout of the various obstacles is what determines the precise shot a player wants to throw. We see fairway drivers, mids and putters being thrown off the tee all the time on holes that need two shots to reach the green, even at the highest level. Even at my level, I'm frequently thinking about the best way to reach certain landing areas, and whether other lines that require more distance will pay off. This does not make the holes bad. On the contrary these can be very good holes that offer good risk/reward payoffs.
Sure, perfect throws that go as far as the target would result in one putt, but extra challenges besides pure distance are always part of a good design. Therefore, players often land farther from the target than one-putt range, even if they didn't hit a tree or go OB. For example, they may have been forced to throw something other than that 320 foot hyzer which is the only throw they have perfected.
So, designing for an integral number of perfect throws - but adding all sorts of ways to make the throw less than perfect along the way - happens to result in pars that meet the definition. Count the perfect throws and a one-putt, plus one for the challenges which prevent perfect throws without actually creating errors.
This is something of a circular definition. "Par requires errorless play. And you know what errorless play is by seeing what scores people make, which defines par." It essentially removes all actual meaning from the phrase "errorless play".
I note that you aren't really engaging with the specific examples I'm making. Jones Supreme Hole #1. Should a pro be able to hit that green if they do not make an error? Make that putt if they hit the green. They are all perfectly capable of throwing a shot that hits that green. Anyone in contention out there will feel they didn't execute a shot to the best of their abilities if they miss the green.
(and, the hypothetical of a pro who can't throw anything other than 320 hyzer? C'mon man.)
That hole is basically a 2 or a 4. It creates tremendous scoring separation. And before you start talking about laying up before the creek, that hole came close to being designed with everything being OB except the tee, the drop zone and the green. We have to decide par for a hole like that.
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For the 33% of holes on tour that were not designed as integral perfect throws plus challenge, par is needed to tell players what score would be good, whether they are gaining on the field, etc. All the useful aspects of par derive from par being the expected good score.
Players and spectators would not be served by adding one to the expected score on those holes, nor by calling every low score which happens less than 10% of the time an eagle.
(Side note: When you say "integral", I think you are meaning the definition of it that is "of or denoted by an integer"? If so, the word I would use is "whole", i.e. a whole number of throws, which I think is more common. Otherwise, I'm not sure what an "integral number of perfect throws" is.)
Putting that quibble aside, I'm going to say this more clearly than I did last time. I do not believe it is possible to
prospectively set a number that tells you what a hole will average, or what percentage of the field will make a specific low score. You might be able to do it retrospectively for the pro-tour, once a particular hole set up has been played by the field a number of times, but this is only because the skill level of the pro-tour is highly quantified.
However, even for the pro-tour, the task is still essentially Sisyphean. Hole designs change every year. Limbs fall. Trees droop. Whole new courses are designed. Conditions change. A hole that was a "must birdie" hole last year can be a challenging par this year simply because what played in a tail wind is now playing in a head wind.
Par has to have meaning in all of these situations. Par
will be set to something in all of these situations.
But we still have the issue that a whole number par still doesn't do what you want it to.
Another specific example. At Cornwallis Road Park from the Red tees, as I said before, a -5 will get you an 884, so where you need to be to keep up with the hypothetical recreational field. Every single hole on that course can be birdied about as easily as any other. There are perhaps 3 or 4 holes where birdie is less likely than some other hole. The par on the holes won't be able to tell you that you will need a -5 to keep up with the field, as they all will generate "birdies" at about the same rate and thus par will under or over estimate what you need. What you really need to know is net you are targeting to know whether you are keeping up with the field.
Even if we were to, say, use a decimal par, say assigning 15 of the holes a 2.67 par this still wouldn't get where you want to be (and that is a
truly terrible idea that, among other things, simply renders unusable any of the names for scoring on holes, such as birdie, bogey, and, even, par, and means that all scoring will need to be relayed as total, rather than net). You don't need to know what the field will do, you need to know what the TOP of the field will do (if your goal is to win the tournament). What you really need to know is what percentage of the field takes what score, and whether that holes score correlates well with the lowest net score. Those are the holes you have to "birdie".
And what if non-rec players are also playing that course? What are the pars then? Do the pars change for every different tier playing the tournament? Will there be a chart at each tee box listing the 20 or so different pars?
What pars would we set for DGPT MPO courses? The par for 970 rated players (i.e. the gold tees that MPO is supposed to target)? How does that help the 1050 level players? How does that help the spectators?
And how are we going to set pars on recreational course that go in the ground in a city park that may never see a tournament at all? When do they get tee signs? What happens when (as at Cornwallis recently) 20+ dead trees get taken down? Will the city pop for new tee signs? Hole 15 lost it's tee sign over ten years ago and it still hasn't even been replaced.
So what happens when the par that is set at the courses the spectators play every day are set using a completely different rubric than the pro-tour? How will that help spectators understand what is going on?
This idea that you are going to change the definition of par for DGPT level play and that it's going to slowly trickle down to 800 and 900 level players, who don't hold a rating, and have never even played in a tournament outside of Tuesday random doubles, that doesn't hold any water in my opinion.