What is Par?

[Olorin]

For those keeping score at home, SA par and CR par produce such similar results that only in rare cases will anyone see the difference including Olorin and myself.

I forgot that the biggest difference is that if SA Par is used consistently then there will be a honkin' lot of par 2 holes. In practice, though, to avoid this these are just counted as par 3s.

 

[Cgkdisc]

Holes that average below 2.5 for a skill level are just weak par 3s that either need to be beefed up (and there are a lot of them) or just don't meet the par 3 guidelines for that skill level.

 

[optidiscic]

I get lost in the math....but I am wondering a few things

Some holes scores rise as a result of OOB...so SSA might be over 4 on a par 3 lake hole

Some holes scores rise as a result of insane basket positions.....easy to get there but the missed putts add multiple strokes

Some holes are just really long...winds can mess with scores

Some holes are just very technical.....different levels of seasonal foliage and luck can come into play

How can the average score really be trusted to reflect par for all of these instances?
I always felt par is the ideal way to play the hole so for the above

Some holes scores rise as a result of OOB
no throws go OOB
Some holes scores rise as a result of insane basket positions
hit the putt w/o laying up
Some holes are just really long
Throw far
Some holes are just very technical
just hit the line

Some holes require all of the above.....what I am getting at is SSA may get inflated and fall out of line with set par due to these factors...especially the OOB and crazy baskets on cliffs with oob lurking

There are so many factors that SSA and score analysis seems to be flawed...I guess I am in the hole design is an art vs science camp

fascinating stuff though

 

[Stud Muffin]

Holes that average below 2.5 for a skill level are just weak par 3s that either need to be beefed up (and there are a lot of them) or just don't meet the par 3 guidelines for that skill level.

Just out of curiosity, are we determining the need to 'beef up' holes because there are 'more' good players now, or are we adjusting to the advancement of technology in the sport?

It is not hard to compare Jack Nicholas to Tiger Woods, even though they played in different eras 'because' courses kept up with the advancement in ball golf technology. Courses got longer not because of Tiger Woods ability, but the ability of spring loaded metal wood drivers compared to Jacks persimmon wood drivers.

Just because players are scoring better on holes is not a good reason to 'beef up' a hole, but if technology has made the hole 'weak', THEN I would say it definitely needed to be beefed up.

 

[Cgkdisc]

Many of the under 2.5s have been there for years. These holes were short enough as deuce or die holes for gold level 15 years before gold level was even defined. New dsic technology has had little impact on these holes. For longer par 3 holes that have been good for years, DON'T EXTEND THEM because you think they're too short now for the newer discs. In most case, they are not. Our stats have shown that good par 3s from a stats standpoint have remained good par 3s even with new discs. In fact, there's some indication that the wider rim discs and new plastics have made them "skippier" than the older DX discs and players aren't any more accurate than they were before on reachable holes.

 

[Cgkdisc]

Where the newer disc technology has impacted hole designs is legit par 4s. Par 4s and 5s should probably be a little longer, in fact, long enough that fewer players are claiming they should be par 3s.

 

[Steve West]

There are so many factors that SSA and score analysis seems to be flawed...

For those reasons, and so that winning scores are not ridiculously under par, I think par on a hole should be the score that at least 1/3 of the players equal or beat on that hole.

 

[optidiscic]

PAR should be the number of Ideal shots to the green +2 shots..or Number of ideal shots to the 10M circle +1 shot

Here is my ridiculous synopsis on why the green argument makes little sense..feel free to tear it apart

Getting to the basket area and putting out is quite a different experience than chipping onto the green in BOLF. We have so many more variables and the concept of a green doesnt really exist in Disc Golf....my argument is as follows
-The 10M circle is basically the short putt in Bolf (perhaps inside 10 ft on a 5,000 ft sq ft green/avg ball green size) Given that math the green in Disc Golf should expand to 70m or 228 ft Diameter....this makes no sense as most shots don't go beyond 10M (30 ft of the basket) so we are left with 228/2=114+30=144ft but still just 120ish ft and in. This would entail 2 shots from within 120 ft. Ok this seems reasonable as most holes in the 300-420 ft range would require a 180-300 ft drive for par 3s....that seems weird that an 180 ft pooch and a 300 precise drive are given the same value.(landing a 300 ft drive on a 100ish foot wide green takes more precision than landing an 180 footer on the same 100ish foot wide green. I am not even getting into the variables that can come into play in the approach to the basket (low ceilings, fast greens, guardian trees, oob, boulders, elevated baskets,etc) which ensure that not every shot from 120 ft is ensured of getting within 10M or the makeable putt....pulling out the design flaw card here as a way to explain issues that hinder the 2throw from 120 rule really is a way of thwarting designer creativity and making disc golf dull, uncreative and bland...much like ball golf but that seems to be what some of you want?

I think the best Par concept is number of Ideal throws to the 10M circle +1 as this relies on what most of us think of as the defined green area. This allows for tunnels, guardian trees, obstacles, streams, and any other type of mayhem a designer will challenge you to face on the way to the coveted 10M circle...where you should make the putt. (most agree from within 10M we as disc golfers should make that putt)
This idea ensures that the goal is to get within a makeable shot and make it. It just allows for more variables and makes sense with the way courses are set up and how they ACTUALLY play.

 

[Steve West]

I think the best Par concept is number of Ideal throws to the 10M circle +1 as this relies on what most of us think of as the defined green area.

Why not just say the number of Ideal throws to put the disc in the basket? What good does stopping short and adding +1 (or +2) do?

 

[DSmith]

As far as signage par goes I think you need to take into account what kind of feel you want the course to generate in a average player.
Do you want the player to feel like they are making head way in their game? Offer them the chance to get birdies or even eagles.
Want them to come away from the course saying "Man that course was hard, I barely made par". Set the par to raw par.
When I had to re-install course signage here at our 2 local courses I set the pars different to create a different feel for both.
Shillito is set to an inflated par (throw+2) because it's an introductory course. This gives new players a chance at birdies and possibly eagles (according to signage par).
Veterans is set to Raw par (raw distance+1). It makes the course score wise feel tougher and getting under par more rewarding for intermediate and advanced players.

 

[DSmith]

Let me also add that both courses have those short holes that should end up as par 2's but I rounded the par up to 3 on those.

 

[denny ritner]

As far as signage par goes I think you need to take into account what kind of feel you want the course to generate in a average player.
Do you want the player to feel like they are making head way in their game? Offer them the chance to get birdies or even eagles.
Want them to come away from the course saying "Man that course was hard, I barely made par".

This is an important point. What does "sign par" mean? It runs the gamut. That is a problem. There is a solution that has been worked out by Chuck and others in the designer's group. The pdga skill level color standards that have developed are a thoughtful tool that is beginning to receive wider-spread acceptance. New courses, imo, should all be designed with the color standards in mind. Older courses should have their signage and scorecards updated to reflect these concepts. (of course, as funds allow for improvements.) Tees don't necessarily need to be changed, but baskets can easily be moved slightly.

The following image comes from the hole of the day thread from a course in Minnesota. I'm guessing that Chuck had something to do with this course going in. This is a terrific example of how the color standards work. On courses with multiple tees, it'd be great to know what color skill you are and have the color standards help you select which tees to play from. On a course like this, the color standard can serve as a rough handicapper for playing a friendly match amongst friends of varying skill levels. This is an opportunity for disc golf to all get on the same page and make the sport more enjoyable for all.

 

[grodney]

This here is your handy dandy Par Maker 3000:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmDt3ts8a8dLdDk3di1ydWM0OUdGQ2Q1T3VtWHVWckE

You enter the hole length, the elevation change, and the "trouble" (scale of 0 to 10 for trees and OB), and for a given skill level it tells you the par for each hole, and how stupid it is.

If you want to play with it, set yourself up on Google Docs and save yourself a copy. Or download it into Excel (it was uploaded from Excel, so it should convert just fine). Or whatever.

The course shown is Circle R Rolling Meadow (blue tees). Note that it correctly calculates Par 63 for both a 325ft thrower and a 375ft thrower. And if you change it to a 350ft thrower, none of the holes have any stupidity at all.

You all have edit capability, so if somebody totally hoses it, I will restore from a saved copy. But please don't totally hose it.

DISCLAIMER: Course design is an art, not a science. This is just for those of you that feel it's necessary to put numbers on everything.

 

[Stud Muffin]

Many of the under 2.5s have been there for years. These holes were short enough as deuce or die holes for gold level 15 years before gold level was even defined. New dsic technology has had little impact on these holes. For longer par 3 holes that have been good for years, DON'T EXTEND THEM because you think they're too short now for the newer discs. In most case, they are not. Our stats have shown that good par 3s from a stats standpoint have remained good par 3s even with new discs. In fact, there's some indication that the wider rim discs and new plastics have made them "skippier" than the older DX discs and players aren't any more accurate than they were before on reachable holes.

If technology is changing the sport, then I am for adjusting the courses for those changes.

As far as par 3's, you are right, and distance does not always need to be added, sometimes a tree planted in the right place can make a world of difference I would certainly think.

I am just not down with the change because more people play on a higher level. I have another thread where I talk about a 660' par 3. It's not that I am against a challenge, but I want to play golf, not enter a long drive contest.

 

[Olorin]

I always felt par is the ideal way to play the hole so for the above

Some holes scores rise as a result of OOB
no throws go OOB
Some holes scores rise as a result of insane basket positions
hit the putt w/o laying up
Some holes are just really long
Throw far
Some holes are just very technical
just hit the line

Opti,

This is the core philosophical premise underneath CR Par. In the current "when is par 3 no longer realistic" thread I recently said this:

Myself and others have any entirely different outlook about the fundamental nature of par that is expressed with this idea:

"Note that par is based on a "reasonable throw" along an intended flight path to a landing zone. One way to visualize this is to think of the flight path as a clear tube, with the shape of the intended flight path, extending from the tee to the landing zone. Everything inside of the tube is the intended flight path. Since foliage, obstacles, or OB are outside of the tube they have no direct effect on the disc. If a player hits a tree or goes OB, no matter how high the percentage of times it might happen, then it was not a throw that went in the intended flight path. If the fairways seem too narrow or the flight path unreasonable or there is too high a risk of going OB then these are design issues, not par issues."

This says the same thing you just did.

 

[Olorin]

PAR should be the number of Ideal shots to the green +2 shots..or Number of ideal shots to the 10M circle +1 shot

Since the close range constant is 1.67 both of these could work. I could see how DG par could be calculated by # of shots to a circle +1. It would seem to work best if the circle was long enough to avg 1.7 shots for the appropriate skill level. So just off the top of my head, with no data, Gold might be 40 ft, BLue 35', White 30', Red 25'. (someone else could figure out the distances to use.)

On a practical level I'm satisfied with using Close Range Par so I'll stick to the close range +2 camp.

P.S.- instead of "ideal" I prefer the word "reasonable". On a reachable hole the "ideal" shot would go in the basket while a "reasonable" would go near the basket.

 

[Steve West]

The Par 2 Hole 8 at Fort Snelling

So here's the deal on the Par 2 for the Gold tees on Hole 8 at Fort Snelling. [I will digress a lot.]

First, I'm not defending the hole itself as being a really good Gold-level hole. I'm just talking about how it came to be labeled Par 2.

For background, each hole has three tees that are designed so that groups of different abilities can play together. [The nature of the landscape on this flat golf course did not allow for the three sets of tees to have much in the way of different "looks" from each tee. Also, I did not expect many people would want to play the course as repeatedly as they would a free course. So, I choose to make a coherent multi-skill level course, rather than three courses-within-a-course.]

For Hole 8, there was no room for longer tees, and not much room for shorter tees. [I couldn't put a tee in the golf fairway.] Rather than have a meaningless differential, I thought it might be kind of fun for those of lesser skill to have a chance to play the same-length hole as the better players. [The 950-rated players don't have to sky hyzer around the whole tree, and the 850-rated players don't worry about the tree.]

For the course as a whole, I wanted to set the pars for each set of tees so that the variously-skilled players could compete based simply on how many over- or under- their own par they scored.

The pars of 2, 3, and 4 on Hole 8 worked out so neatly that one might think I forced this hole to be a Gold 2 (and Red 4) just to get the par spread I wanted. Actually, I had set pars at 3, 3, and 3 initially, for an exciting one-hole chance at nearly head-to-head competition.

Later, when I was adding up par for each set of tees for all 18 holes and comparing it to the expected scores for all three skill levels, I needed about a throw less for Gold, and about a throw more for Red. Hole 8 happened to be one where par was the most-too-high for Gold, and it was also a little low for Red.

I liked the idea of turning this hole into one where all three levels should be feeling about the same level of trepidation when lining up for their final putts. So, Gold tees are par 2, Blue tees are par 3, and Red tees are par 4.

Of course, I still would not have labeled it par 2 if I did not believe in the existence of par 2's.

- In this case, even if you think par is average [which I don't - quite], the average score on this hole by 1000-rated players rounds to 2.

- None of the benefits which make par a useful concept leads me to think that "ability to birdie" is of any concern. [Note, this is an entirely separate question from whether a hole should be designed to produce more lower-than mode scores than higher-than mode scores.]

- If par is "number of throws to the reach the green plus two", then by definition there can be a hole short enough that the teeing area is ON the green. [Maybe there shouldn't be a hole that short, but there can be.] Hole 8 is pretty close, for 1000-rated players.

- While par does many jobs, my view is that its most important job is to compare performances that are not head-to-head. This allows players to – among other things - gauge how well they are doing during a competition. For par to serve that purpose, a player should be able to think, "I scored par, therefore I did not improve or hurt my probable final standing".

- If the competition is 1000-rated players, and you score a 3 on Hole 8, you've lost ground [By more than half a throw.] If you need a need a 2 to not lose ground, and we have to pick an integer, then that hole is a par 2.

- I know when I go out there tomorrow and score a 4, I'll figure I've lost 2 more throws to Cale.

[To really digress: Based on some recent work I've done, I actually think par 2 holes would be a very useful tool to separate players by performance. I think appropriately designed Par 2 holes can have wider Scoring Spreads than any other length of hole. And, you can make a lot of them in a give space. An ideal Gold par 2 would be shorter than Hole 8 – probably around 190 feet; but I don't have the data to validate that guess.]

So, to sum up:

On one hand:

I had a hole I couldn't make long enough to be a good Gold par 3:

I liked the neat-o "handicapping effect" of Gold 2 vs., Blue 3 vs. Red 4 with all three tees being the same length,

par 2 gives better information about how a 1000-rated player is faring on that hole,

it is a tacit admission that I know this hole is shorter than what is generally accepted as "good" for Gold.

On the other hand:

some players will whine,

it could become a psychological obstacle,

it will start a debate about the validity of par 2's,

it will get people talking about Fort Snelling.

Adding all that up, I realized I only had one hand, and Gold Hole 8 became a par 2.

 

[UnitedPuppySlayer]

The only reason that hole was somewhat difficult was because of the tree somewhat in front of the tee. You can easily get a disc within putting distance.

 

[optidiscic]

Steve....interesting stuff

In my home town during doubles we play the practice hole

It's not really a true hole but most play it as a chance to get an extra hole (it has a concrete tee and a red discatcher)....it's just 188 ft but has a 10m brick circle that surrounds the basket...we play it as an island oob with a re tee rule for shots that don't land within the 10 m circle.

There is also a beginner layout and beginners don't have to land within the circle...they play it as a reg hole with no oob

regardless the scores get pretty crazy for a 188 ft hole.....with swings between a 2 and a 12 in todays doubles (windy)

I am toying with calling it a par 2 as you should land within 10m of the tee but the oob launches the avg scores way up....I resign to keeping it a 3.

 

[Dave242]

I liked the idea of turning this hole into one where all three levels should be feeling about the same level of trepidation when lining up for their final putts. So, Gold tees are par 2, Blue tees are par 3, and Red tees are par 4.
................
I liked the neat-o "handicapping effect" of Gold 2 vs., Blue 3 vs. Red 4 with all three tees being the same length,

I have a hard time seeing how a hole short enough to be a Gold par-2 is a Red par-4. At 249' would a Red level player often be more than 10' away after their 3 throw?

What I think would be cool (neat-o) is to to have holes where the Red tee is behind the Gold tee to accomplish what you are talking about. I assume this has been done, but I do not recall ever seeing it.