That ratings nightmare again

[Beezy]

I have a problem that I believe a few might have. I played in a tournament recently which featured two courses. I played intermediate and got a rating for my round. The advanced and open players played the same course later on that day and got higher ratings. Fair enough conditions were a bit different.

A year ago I had the same situation however the conditions I faced were tougher than the advanced players and got lower ratings for the same course, same tees. What gives? Is anyone ever going to come up with a fair ratings system for this sport.

Granted some of you will say your rating should not matter but it does if you know you are a way better player than the rating suggests and you are a rec rated player yet you play like an intermediate borderline advanced player.

Side note the pdga app seems to do a better job in ratings than that confusing propagator system maybe that would be the way to go. It might alleviate the large number of players that are in the intermediate ranking that really should be advanced rated players.

 

[krupicka]

A similar issue was just discussed here:
http://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87956
This happen, but usually when official ratings come out the two will be averaged together so that the ratings for both will be the same.

 

[chrishysell]

I have a problem that I believe a few might have. I played in a tournament recently which featured two courses. I played intermediate and got a rating for my round. The advanced and open players played the same course later on that day and got higher ratings. Fair enough conditions were a bit different.

A year ago I had the same situation however the conditions I faced were tougher than the advanced players and got lower ratings for the same course, same tees. What gives? Is anyone ever going to come up with a fair ratings system for this sport.

Granted some of you will say your rating should not matter but it does if you know you are a way better player than the rating suggests and you are a rec rated player yet you play like an intermediate borderline advanced player.

Side note the pdga app seems to do a better job in ratings than that confusing propagator system maybe that would be the way to go. It might alleviate the large number of players that are in the intermediate ranking that really should be advanced rated players.

would you play better if you played advanced?

 

[DavidSauls]

Perhaps you're expecting too much for the ratings to be precise for a single round. The point of ratings is to be a fair judge of ability when averaged over many rounds on many courses, which tends to even out the single-round fluctuations.

If these are unofficial ratings you're dealing with, they should be taken with several grains of salt.

 

[Beezy]

I believe I will play advanced from now on. I must reiterate the pdga app does a better job with ratings in my eyes.

 

[bradharris]

I believe I will play advanced from now on. I must reiterate the pdga app does a better job with ratings in my eyes.

Define better....

The PDGA app simply uses distance as an approximation of SSA. The "true" ratings system rates how you played against others with established ratings. This allows it to take into account all conditions including course difficulty, weather, and even special rules.

But if you think it can be done better, please elaborate on your plan to improve the system...

opcorn:

 

[JC17393]

Define better....

The PDGA app simply uses distance as an approximation of SSA. The "true" ratings system rates how you played against others with established ratings. This allows it to take into account all conditions including course difficulty, weather, and even special rules.

But if you think it can be done better, please elaborate on your plan to improve the system...

opcorn:

My impression is that "better" in a lot of people's minds is simply "constant". As in, a 53 is rated the same on Monday as it is on Saturday as it is in the rain as it is in the snow as it is at noon as it is at midnight. I think a lot of people have a hard time accepting (or wrapping their head around) the concept of ratings being dynamic. The PDGA app gives someone the same rating for a 53 every time they play, therefore it's "better".

 

[DavidSauls]

That wouldn't be better in my mind. A 53 in a windy, driving rainstorm is a lot better than a 53 on a calm dry day.

When I look at courses that use the same layout year after year, the ratings for a given score are pretty consistent. At Stoney Hill the SSA has varied by about half a stroke over those rare periods that we didn't tinker with the layout.

Remember that the whole point of ratings is to group players of similar abilities into divisions. Any system that was constant, regardless of weather, ground conditions, changes in O.B., or changes in layout (other than distance), would fail in this regard.

 

[Dave242]

I have a problem that I believe a few might have. I played in a tournament recently which featured two courses. I played intermediate and got a rating for my round. The advanced and open players played the same course later on that day and got higher ratings. Fair enough conditions were a bit different.

A year ago I had the same situation however the conditions I faced were tougher than the advanced players and got lower ratings for the same course, same tees. What gives? Is anyone ever going to come up with a fair ratings system for this sport.

Would you mind listing a link to the PDGA results of the all the events you mention? Without that, all of us geeks who like to look at ratings/numbers.....are not looking at ratings/numbers.

 

[grodney]

Remember that the whole point of ratings is to group players of similar abilities into divisions. Any system that was constant, regardless of weather, ground conditions, changes in O.B., or changes in layout (other than distance), would fail in this regard.

I agree on what "the point" is. But I don't fully agree with the 2nd sentence. I think you could still accomplish "the point" using a fixed SSA, regardless of weather and season and ground conditions. It might not be as accurate as a variable SSA, but I think it would still accomplish the goal -- with the added benefits of making a lot more sense to the world and being a lot easier to calculate.

The big problem, however, is 2-fold: 1) How do you set the static SSA to begin with, given that length-only has shown to be an "okay" but not "great" indicator of SSA, and 2) Varying layouts (changes in pins/tees/OB/etc) make almost any solution for #1 nearly impossible.

 

[DavidSauls]

I agree on what "the point" is. But I don't fully agree with the 2nd sentence. I think you could still accomplish "the point" using a fixed SSA, regardless of weather and season and ground conditions. It might not be as accurate as a variable SSA, but I think it would still accomplish the goal -- with the added benefits of making a lot more sense to the world and being a lot easier to calculate.

The big problem, however, is 2-fold: 1) How do you set the static SSA to begin with, given that length-only has shown to be an "okay" but not "great" indicator of SSA, and 2) Varying layouts (changes in pins/tees/OB/etc) make almost any solution for #1 nearly impossible.

I think the best solution works in the opposite direction. Keep the variable SSA for PDGA ratings. But allow knowledgeable users to enter the average SSA for a given layout in places such as this website, apps, etc.

For example, I could do this for any course in which I've played tournaments, know what layouts were used in those tournaments, and that the layouts are the same as the casual layout.

As you've described, one course near me changes layouts so much, seemingly from week to week, that the only useful ratings are the variable SSA.

 

[grodney]

I think the best solution works in the opposite direction. Keep the variable SSA for PDGA ratings. But allow knowledgeable users to enter the average SSA for a given layout in places such as this website, apps, etc.

Absolutely. I completely agree that is the best solution.

The best numbers *feasible* come out of the current ratings system. Reasonable and easily calculated and understood numbers come out of a static SSA. The public misunderstandings (and complaints) will continue to be a way of life.

 

[Beezy]

My impression is that "better" in a lot of people's minds is simply "constant". As in, a 53 is rated the same on Monday as it is on Saturday as it is in the rain as it is in the snow as it is at noon as it is at midnight. I think a lot of people have a hard time accepting (or wrapping their head around) the concept of ratings being dynamic. The PDGA app gives someone the same rating for a 53 every time they play, therefore it's "better".

Something consistent is what I believe I am looking for. Now I can stomach my rating being lower based on playing different tees however if I play the same tees but at a different time of the day I believe there shouldn't be much of a difference
this time around it wasn't such a big problem but when I played a few years back and I played with stronger winds I felt that the tougher conditions should have received a higher rating. Problem solved playing advanced from now on

 

[Beezy]

Define better....

The PDGA app simply uses distance as an approximation of SSA. The "true" ratings system rates how you played against others with established ratings. This allows it to take into account all conditions including course difficulty, weather, and even special rules.

But if you think it can be done better, please elaborate on your plan to improve the system...

opcorn:

Thinking about it as I type and I will elaborate in a future post

 

[DavidSauls]

Another thing to keep in mind is that the ratings system measures a course by how players actually score on it---and a broad range of player skills, at that.

Any static or constant system would have to start with a way to establish a particular course's SSA. If not by the scores of players, based on their skill levels in previous events, what? Like the near-infinite "par" debates, it would be dependent on a universally agreed and applied system, somehow objectively measuring things like elevation changes, foliage, O.B., etc.

While there are faults in the ratings system, and no doubt improvements to come over time, the basic idea of evaluating courses by the scores they produce in a tournament round seems reasonable to me.

 

[Dave242]

Would you mind listing a link to the PDGA results of the all the events you mention? Without that, all of us geeks who like to look at ratings/numbers.....are not looking at ratings/numbers.

Still interested in looking at the actual numbers of this nightmare

 

[jeverett]

I have a problem that I believe a few might have. I played in a tournament recently which featured two courses. I played intermediate and got a rating for my round. The advanced and open players played the same course later on that day and got higher ratings. Fair enough conditions were a bit different.

Hi Beezy,

Others have mentioned it already, but the 'official' ratings for your event should fix that particular problem. As Chuck has mentioned on a few occasions, in between the 'unofficial' and 'official' ratings the PDGA examines how similarly the SSA and scoring spread was between rounds/flights played on the same course and layout, and if they're close enough, the rounds/flights get combined for purposes of computing SSA and round ratings. i.e. the same round score between different rounds/flights will have the same round rating.

Remember that the whole point of ratings is to group players of similar abilities into divisions. Any system that was constant, regardless of weather, ground conditions, changes in O.B., or changes in layout (other than distance), would fail in this regard.

This is realistically true, given the PDGA ratings implementation, however personally I'd rather the 'whole point' of the rating system to be the same as the basic function of rating systems in other activities: to be predictive of how players will score, relative to their respective ratings. In Chess, for example, hidden behind player ratings is a predictive win/loss ratio: if your rating is x, and your opponent's rating is y, the Chess rating system is able to accurately benchmark your odds of winning vs that opponent (to within a very small margin of error). In sports, being 'predictive' is tougher (just look at the BCS), certainly, however the PDGA method could, in my opinion, be significantly improved on (although at some point that would mean scrapping the existing system and implementing a new one, as the change would be so radical as to invalidate all existing ratings).

 

[DavidSauls]

I'll profess to ignorance; I haven't been involved in other sports or competitions that used such ratings. My background is in team sports.

I would imagine you could take the PDGA ratings and have some kind of predictive factor. A player with a 900 rating will shoot 50 points over or under his rating xx% of the time. Or, a player with a 900 rating will beat a player with a 930 rating on a particular SSA course xx% of the time in a given round, and xx% of the time over 4 rounds. Something like that.

Just as it can be converted to handicaps, if desired.

 

[New013]

Its not very accurate, but it works for now. Just gotta live with it until something better comes along.

 

[Cgkdisc]

As an example, the starting ratings ranking of Open players at Worlds has had a 91-95% correlation to their finishing rank. I'd say that's pretty predictive.