The Rumble 2019 presented by Discraft and Clint's Draft House

[BionicRib]

If it were me i would thin out the woods in the bailout area on 19. Or cut out a slot in the woods to put the basket so its not right next to the water.

Without knowing the history of what that property was like before installation, its kind of hard to knock the design.....for all we know the parks department may have told them they couldnt cut anything down when installing the course in the first place.

 

[DanJon]

I think it looks like a fun, challenging, but fair course.

Everyone has to deal with the wind and the same tight landing areas.

How about McBeth setting another course record though?

 

[davetherocketguy]

How about McBeth setting another course record though?

McBeth = alien

 

[Steve West]

I think it looks like a fun, challenging, but fair course.

Everyone has to deal with the wind and the same tight landing areas.
...

Fair? Sure.

Playing Roulette is fair, but not a test of skill.

On this course, 14 of the 24 holes actually created more ties than they resolved. That happens when a hole gives out a lot of different scores without much consistency.

 

[IHearChains]

14 of the 24 holes actually created more ties than they resolved

Curious, how do you do this type of analysis? And do you have results from other types of courses that could be compared to this?

 

[lyleoross]

Curious, how do you do this type of analysis? And do you have results from other types of courses that could be compared to this?

Check out the Par thread that Steve drives. He gives his analysis and how he determines such things.

 

[lyleoross]

McBeth = alien

Now if I can just get him to lay an egg, that spawns an embryo, that will attach to my face, burrow down my throat, and lay 1,000 rated skills in my belly... that doesn't burst out of my sternum and escape into the woods.

 

[AHagglund]

Fair? Sure.

Playing Roulette is fair, but not a test of skill.

On this course, 14 of the 24 holes actually created more ties than they resolved. That happens when a hole gives out a lot of different scores without much consistency.

Off the top of my head, I'm guessing holes 4,5, and 19 fall into that category?

 

[BlueMonk]

I enjoyed McBeth and Leiviska doing commentary. I love Big Sexy, but there's nothing wrong with a change of pace. Big Sexy adds a little silliness, but with Paul and Cale, almost all the talk is about how to approach the different holes and a description of the shots. I enjoy both styles.

 

[MattS]

This hole 19 has a bailout zone the entire length of the fairway, fair distance for almost any rating of player. Throw from long tee to the short tee is only about 180 ft, so you have a choice of easy midrange layup, or go for the pin, or anything in between. It's part of the mental challenge to choose how much of that distance you want to bite off. Excellent design in my opinion.

The problem is really the brush. This park is notorious for staff resisting any efforts by volunteers to clear out that brush. It's all invasive species too {eyeroll}. If staff turns over to people who are more friendly toward disc golf, hopefully the local club will eventually get permission to clear all the low brush starting about 50ft short of the pin so that shots into the woods are penalized but still playable. Clearing the undergrowth brush back to 15-20 ft into the woods is all it would take to really make this hole fantastic. The trees that would remain will make for very scary putts through tight lines toward the water, instead of just pitching out sideways for a putt.

I expect that the course designers wanted players to attempt to land on the narrow fairway with an interesting risk/reward decision on how far up the fairway to go for. Such a shot would require excellent control of both distance and direction. That would have happened, if they had made an OB line along the woods (using the same DZ as the water OB). The hole would have been hellishly difficult (probably too difficult), but at least great shots would have been rewarded. Since they left the woods as a bail-out, players instead aimed at the trees and threw the about the most routine shot they have: a 380ft hyzer with no real concern about it coming in too fast.

When the description of what the best players in the world are trying to do on a tee-shot ends with "... and hopefully it hits an early tree.", it's a bad hole.

 

[brutalbrutus]

Now if I can just get him to lay an egg, that spawns an embryo, that will attach to my face, burrow down my throat, and lay 1,000 rated skills in my belly... that doesn't burst out of my sternum and escape into the woods.

 

[captain jack]

Paul wins again. :yawn:

I'm getting bored with disc golf tournament coverage. The most interesting part of tournaments to me is the long throwers.
The crush bros, Drew, and the rest of the super long throwers, picking lines that I could never dream of, that's what makes me watch. High percentage Circle 1, and Circle 2 makes are boring. With practice, any of us could do this. Pulling a Ricky 600' golf line is way beyond my talent level, and always will be, THIS is what makes disc golf interesting to watch.

 

[Steve West]

Curious, how do you do this type of analysis? And do you have results from other types of courses that could be compared to this?

Generally, courses and holes that actually test skills spread scores out. Generally, randomness lumps them together in a pile in the middle; – like all those bell curves of random distributions. So, I measure how much flatter (or spread out) each hole makes the distribution; as a proxy for skill-testing ability.

I calculate the Scoring Spread Width of the Total Scores for the tournament. Then, for each hole I calculate what the Scoring Spread Width of the Total Scores would have been if they had not played that hole (by subtracting the scores for that hole from the total). The difference is the Contribution to Scoring Spread Width of Total Scores.

For example, of the 55 players rated 970+, they basically got 25.1 different scores.

Breakdown: 14 players got a unique score, another 14 players were in two-way ties, 18 players were in three-way ties, 4 other players all tied with each other, and 5 other players all tied with each other.

If hole #24 had not been played, this field would have only gotten 20.9 different scores. (For example, there would have been a six-way tie.) So, hole #24 spread the scores out from a spread of 20.9 to 25.1. (e.g. It partially broke the 6-way tie.) Hole #24's contribution was a positive 4.2.

If hole #9 had not been played, this field would gotten 27.9 different scores. (For example, 17 players would have had unique scores.) So, hole #9 lumped the scores together from a spread of 27.9 to 20.9. (e.g. It made 3 fewer players have unique scores.) Hole #9's contribution was a negative 7.0.

Unfortunately, this is not comparable to other courses. The different mixes of players and other rounds played in the tournament mess things up for that. Besides, it is a real squirrelly statistic. To be used for entertainment purposes only.

 

[IHearChains]

Generally, courses and holes that actually test skills spread scores out. Generally, randomness lumps them together in a pile in the middle; – like all those bell curves of random distributions. So, I measure how much flatter (or spread out) each hole makes the distribution; as a proxy for skill-testing ability.

Interesting...just thinking about the holes and how they play, some of those results definitely make sense.

On the other hand it doesn't make sense to me why 7,10,11 would show up statistically as great tests of skill. Green is guarded on 7 but otherwise it's a simple hyzer. And 10,11 are easiest birdie holes on the course, <250ft with multiple lines to choose from and wide open greens.

The results don't all match my experience on the holes, but I have no reason to argue the statistical method or results though. Thanks for taking time to explain!

 

[lyleoross]

Steve, that was a really well laid out explanation. Thanks.

As an aside, I think it should be placed in the discussion education area, just my two cents.

 

[IHearChains]

I expect that the course designers wanted players to attempt to land on the narrow fairway with an interesting risk/reward decision on how far up the fairway to go for. Such a shot would require excellent control of both distance and direction. That would have happened, if they had made an OB line along the woods (using the same DZ as the water OB). The hole would have been hellishly difficult (probably too difficult), but at least great shots would have been rewarded. Since they left the woods as a bail-out, players instead aimed at the trees and threw the about the most routine shot they have: a 380ft hyzer with no real concern about it coming in too fast.

When the description of what the best players in the world are trying to do on a tee-shot ends with "... and hopefully it hits an early tree.", it's a bad hole.

The problem you describe is real. Right now, if you're pin high the brush stops you for a 10ft putt. So I agree about that.

But as I noted before, the brush needs to be cleared, so that the design is really implemented properly. Because the park staff won't allow the brush to be cleared, it's an incomplete implementation of the design, not a bad design.

With brush cleared, aiming at the trees without speed control would penalize with skips farther into the treeline. This in turn would lead to interesting and challenging circles-edge death putts straight toward the water.

 

[Cgkdisc]

Interesting...just thinking about the holes and how they play, some of those results definitely make sense.

On the other hand it doesn't make sense to me why 7,10,11 would show up statistically as great tests of skill. Green is guarded on 7 but otherwise it's a simple hyzer. And 10,11 are easiest birdie holes on the course, <250ft with multiple lines to choose from and wide open greens.

The results don't all match my experience on the holes, but I have no reason to argue the statistical method or results though. Thanks for taking time to explain!

By definition, a hole where scores correlate well with the ratings of the players are good tests of skill, not necessarily tough holes. A regular flaw in making holes "tougher", i.e., with higher scoring averages and/or spread, can be adding too much or improperly placed OB, or too narrow fairways, sometimes with random trees, or both, to where scores are produced based more on luck than skill.

Steve's analysis simply shows holes where skill is rewarded or not. Deeper analysis is required to determine why and what elements might need to be tweaked to reduce randomness. This type of analysis has been used for years to tweak the holes at the USDGC so they reward skill even if they produce higher average scores.

 

[Steve West]

By definition, a hole where scores correlate well with the ratings of the players are good tests of skill, not necessarily tough holes. ...

Well, yeah, that makes a hole good and the hole doesns't need to be high-scoring.

I would add there are other ways a hole can be a good test of skill. For example, 11 has a weak correlation with ratings, yet it still separates players by skill well. My theory is that this can happen when a hole offers an accomplishable challenge that is rarely tested by other holes - so the skill to meet that challenge might not be reflected in ratings.

Perhaps this weird uphill shot of that particular length is unique.