Scoring in Disc Golf

[Steve West]

I'm not confusing upside down holes with holes that have no scoring spread.....I'm combing them into a category of holes that are wasted with regard to the purpose of the course: to crown a champion based on skillful play.

They should not be combined.

What the evidence suggests is that for the entire field an important aspect of "skillful play" is the ability (or wisdom) to not score higher than most players on each hole.

Only the top third of the field is able to score better than most players consistently enough to make a difference in their rankings.

If you take away holes where there is only an opportunity to mess up, you will not get as good a spread among the top third, nor among the rest of the field.

Of course, holes that offer both opportunities are best. But, for separating players in the top third by skill, holes that offer no chance to mess up are no better or worse than holes that offer no opportunity to do better than most.

 

[Dave242]

They should not be combined.

What the evidence suggests is that for the entire field an important aspect of "skillful play" is the ability (or wisdom) to not score higher than most players on each hole.

My point is that while they are different, they are both better replaced by holes with decent percentages of birdies, pars and bogeys. And if not possible to get the land and obstacles for that, par-bogey holes should be replaced by birdie-par holes.

The course management you are alluding to should come in the form of risk/reward decisions. This is preferable to "risk/punishment".....so hard to score on that it is a "conservative versus more conservative" decision.

IMO, hard par-3's are fine as long as their is some heroic/idiotic yet skill-based route to get a birdie....as that adds at least some reward to the risk/reward calculation/decision.

Only the top third of the field is able to score better than most players consistently enough to make a difference in their rankings.

I do not understand what you are saying. I looked at the Worlds results extensively and the lower rated players in a division had just as many players playing over their ratings as the top players in the division did.

If you take away holes where there is only an opportunity to mess up, you will not get as good a spread among the top third, nor among the rest of the field.

ALL holes give the player the opportunity to mess up.....or better stated, players' inconsistencies give that opportunity regardless of the hole design. You sort of allude to that in your last paragraph, but then backtrack. I don't get it.

Of course, holes that offer both opportunities are best. But, for separating players in the top third by skill, holes that offer no chance to mess up are no better or worse than holes that offer no opportunity to do better than most.

 

[Steve West]

...par-bogey holes should be replaced by birdie-par holes..

Perhaps. But not because one is better than the other at sorting out the top players. They're equally good at doing that. Actually, for separating players by skill, it would be best to have a balance of both.

Further, for those three-or-more score holes you want, it would be best (for scoring separation) to have as many holes heavy on scores above the mode as there are holes heavy on scores below the mode.

I'm not saying it would be fun or popular. Just effective.

I do not understand what you are saying. I looked at the Worlds results extensively and the lower rated players in a division had just as many players playing over their ratings as the top players in the division did.

Yes, you do not understand. It's not about scoring above or below a player's rating, it's whether the course ranks players well by skill as exhibited that day. Which is almost the same as whether the course is good at sorting players by their rating. If you take away holes where there are more scores above the mode than below the mode, the final scores would not correlate as well with ratings.

 

[Dave242]

Perhaps. But not because one is better than the other at sorting out the top players. They're equally good at doing that. Actually, for separating players by skill, it would be best to have a balance of both.

I am not convinced the "upside down" interesting holes are good at separating the top players any moreso than wide-open boring holes where player inconsistency does the spreading on its own. One really needs to watch the holes to understand that I think.

But, to get good correlation between skill and scores across the entire field, you are probably correct that upside down holes are good. But, who cares about sorting out the 25th place from the 30th place player?

Well....having asked that, I guess that since we play multiple skill levels on the same courses/holes this is all unavoidable anyways and just a rhetorical discussion.

Yes, you do not understand. It's not about scoring above or below a player's rating, it's whether the course ranks players well by skill as exhibited that day. Which is almost the same as whether the course is good at sorting players by their rating. If you take away holes where there are more scores above the mode than below the mode, the final scores would not correlate as well with ratings.

Oh - OK. You said ranking the players and I thought you meant ranking them by score. Thanks for clarifying.

But, like I said above, who cares if the correlation of the bottom half of the field is off at the expense of the top half of the field being correlated more accurately?

 

[Central Scrutinizer]

The male world champion won by 5 strokes. If the runner-up had made 6 better shots, he would've been the victor.

I do not care if it was -90 to -85, -5 to even, or 100,005 to 100,000. This is my sport. I love it just the way it is, and it does not need to mirror ball golf any more than just counting the number of times the projectile moves. Please do not make baskets smaller so that our elite event scores more closely resemble ball golf. For crying out loud.

 

[vslaugh]

Moraine State Park as a Model Course

I think the solution is in better course design, and there are a couple shining examples of courses that both provide an appropriate challenge and still can be enjoyed by beginners. Moraine State Park is one example, and will actually be used for Worlds in 2015.

There are three sets of tees (white, blue, gold) and each hole has three pin anchors (A,B,C) in which to position the basket. The three pin positions are usually within 100 feet of each other and provide minor variations in difficulty (the hardest is about ~0.3 strokes harder than the easiest on average, I would guess). With a mix of pins, each of the three tees has a par of 66 and matches with a rating (white=900,blue=950,gold=1000).

This is a fantastic system that I wish more courses would emulate. The course serves both first-time players and touring pros, although for Worlds it might be a good idea to temporarily put all pins in harder positions to try to push up the par rating for the gold tees. I don't know whether that will happen, but it's at least feasible to have a course where the winner averages a more reasonable -3 or -4 per round.

 

[Steve West]

But, to get good correlation between skill and scores across the entire field, you are probably correct that upside down holes are good. But, who cares about sorting out the 25th place from the 30th place player?

But, like I said above, who cares if the correlation of the bottom half of the field is off at the expense of the top half of the field being correlated more accurately?

When I say "across the entire field" I mean the effect is just as strong in the top players as it is for the rest of the field. Also, for the top third of the players, including first and second place, the effect of the upside down holes is as powerful a sorter as the right-side up holes.

If you take away the holes where some players score lower than the mode, then the ranking of the bottom two thirds are hardly affected, but there will be more ties for first, second, third, etc, down to 24th place (out of 72).

If you take away the holes where some players score higher than the mode, then there will be more ties for first, second, third, etc. all the way to last place.

 

[sion]

I wonder what the top 100 players in the world think of this discussion

 

[Dave242]

If you take away the holes where some players score lower than the mode, then the ranking of the bottom two thirds are hardly affected, but there will be more ties for first, second, third, etc, down to 24th place (out of 72).

If you take away the holes where some players score higher than the mode, then there will be more ties for first, second, third, etc. all the way to last place.

That is very interesting. My concepts are influenced/informed mostly from watching closely to how people I play with (or watch during tournaments) screw things up....and how their risk/reward decisions pay of. I suppose it is more perception-based than the sort of analysis you are talking about doing here.

I have input the scores of a few decent-sized tournaments (30-ish in open), but have never done this sort of analysis. I never felt like my data set was large enough to draw any real conclusions anyhow.

I certainly see how "upside down" holes (par-bogey) provide a different sort of separation.....separation based on different reasons than what the birdie-par holes provide.

 

[Dave242]

URL="http://www.dgcoursereview.com/course.php?id=126#"]Moraine State Park[/URL] is one example, and will actually be used for Worlds in 2015.

There are three sets of tees (white, blue, gold) and each hole has three pin anchors (A,B,C) in which to position the basket. The three pin positions are usually within 100 feet of each other and provide minor variations in difficulty (the hardest is about ~0.3 strokes harder than the easiest on average, I would guess). With a mix of pins, each of the three tees has a par of 66 and matches with a rating (white=900,blue=950,gold=1000).

This is a fantastic system that I wish more courses would emulate. The course serves both first-time players and touring pros, although for Worlds it might be a good idea to temporarily put all pins in harder positions to try to push up the par rating for the gold tees. I don't know whether that will happen, but it's at least feasible to have a course where the winner averages a more reasonable -3 or -4 per round.

A few things:

It is awesome to have course with tee pads properly tuned to different playing levels! Kudos to you if you were involved in this...and to all who were. I played Moraine on New Years Day at 7am this year and loved it!

I have noticed that lots of tournaments ignore the best/most appropriate tees for each division for a few reasons: Having enough propagators on each layout to generate ratings, players want to compare themselves to the best and want to play the same layout as MPO, ease of event administration, etc.

For Worlds, 1000-rated/Gold is not the layout that is ideal to showcase the 1030+ rated "SuperGold" players (as Chuck calls them). The best will average around 5-7 throws per round under par per round on Par-66 courses. That will result in around -50 for the tournament for the winner.

 

[vslaugh]

A few things:

It is awesome to have course with tee pads properly tuned to different playing levels! Kudos to you if you were involved in this...and to all who were. I played Moraine on New Years Day at 7am this year and loved it!

I have noticed that lots of tournaments ignore the best/most appropriate tees for each division for a few reasons: Having enough propagators on each layout to generate ratings, players want to compare themselves to the best and want to play the same layout as MPO, ease of event administration, etc.

For Worlds, 1000-rated/Gold is not the layout that is ideal to showcase the 1030+ rated "SuperGold" players (as Chuck calls them). The best will average around 5-7 throws per round under par per round on Par-66 courses. That will result in around -50 for the tournament for the winner.

Moraine was installed before I came to Pittsburgh, and it's a little far for me to routinely help with anyway. The credit belongs to guys like J. Gary Dropcho and Chris Deitzel and a bunch of others with the Pittsburgh Flying Disc Society.

I'm not sure how long it's been happening in Pittsburgh, but proper tees are for the most part observed in tournaments, and I have heard very little complaining. I guess the keys to this are respect given in the design and construction of each of the tees, and the sheer brutality of putting 850-rated players on a 1000-rated layout.

I agree with what you're saying about the SuperGold layout...that's what I was trying to get at when mentioning about taking advantage of the flexibility of the A/B/C pin system. I think with all C-pins at Moraine, a 1000-rated layout could turn into a 1025-rated layout with a couple quick switches of baskets (and maybe a new "D"-pin here or there). Not sure if this is the plan for 2015 Worlds, though.