Determining Player Rating???

[tomschillin]

How does one determine his/her player rating? I see these reviews that say "it's a good course for a 950 player" what the hell does that mean? and how do I figure out what my number is?

 

[darnella]

goto the pdga.com for help on player rating but basicaly it breaks down like this

1000 and above pro
935 -999 advanced
890- 935 intermediate
898- below recreational

all courses have a course rating say a course rating is 53

if you go out and shoot a 53 that would be a 1000 rated round

if you shot a 58 that would be a 950 rated round

if you shot a 52 1010 rated round
every stroke over the course rating subtract 10 points a stroke from a 1000

every one under add 10 points a stroke to a 1000

hope this helps a little

 

[ERicJ]

Player Ratings

The easiest way to find out your player rating is to join the PDGA and play in a PDGA sanctioned event.

Pretty much everything you could want to know about PDGA Player Ratings can be found on this page:
http://www.pdga.com/competition/ratings/index.php
and these two PDF files:
http://www.pdga.com/documents/2008/08RatingsGuide.pdf
http://www.pdga.com/documents/2008/08PlayerDivisionsGrid.pdf

darnella has it pretty close. They've tweaked the divisions a bit for 2008.

There's no specific threshold for "Pro Class" though the generally accepted Open division minimum Player Rating is ~970.

For "Amateur Class" to play in:
Men's Novice division your Player Rating must be <850,
Men's Recreational <900,
Men's Intermediate <930,
Men's Advanced is open to any Amateur player (typically >930).

For typical courses that are rated with an SSA (Scratch Scoring Average) of ~50 a player with a 1000 rating would be expected to average a score of 50. At that SSA every 10 rating points equates to one stroke. So like darnella says, a 950 player should average a score of 55 on that course.

To get into even more detail: as courses get easier or harder, i.e. different SSA's, the 10 points/stroke value changes. That's due to a factor call "compression" and is explained in this PDF file:
http://www.pdga.com/competition/ratings/WhatIsCompression.pdf

 

[DGtourist]

Its like learning a new language, I can't help but to think a simplier method could have been used.

 

[ERicJ]

Its like learning a new language, I can't help but to think a simplier method could have been used.

It definitely is tough at first. But for me so was hyzer, anhyzer, turn, fade, etc..

Coming from a long career in racquetball I've really come to appreciate PDGA's rating system. Racquetball is just now getting around to developing a ranking (not rating) system. But they really don't have anything in place to delineate skill divisions. Sandbagging has historically been a problem.

The PDGA's system is actually pretty straight forward to me, but then I'm an engineer and deal with numbers and equations most of the time anyway. What the system lacks is a comprehensive handicapping method like ball golf has. That would allow players of all ratings to compete "equally". But given the variety of courses and complete lack of course standardization this will probably never be a reality.

However, that hasn't stopped me from trying to implement a handicapping system that, at least on the local level, starts everyone off as equally as possible: http://www.pdga.com/msgboard/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=Club980&Number=834906

ERic

 

[Donovan]

ERicJ,

Bro, that looks like it is working pretty good. The best players and worst players are close to the money. That is usually a good sign of a good handicap system. It shows that the good players are being consistent and that the worst players usually show the fastest improvement. NICE JOB!

 

[tomschillin]

thank you guys so much for the explanations...i'm still not really sure of what my rating is (hardly ever keep score) but at least now I know what those numbers mean...thanks again

 

[edge3281]

Is there a place that has the ratings for a particular course? I don't have a schedule that would let me compete in PDGA sanctioned events right now and it would be nice to have an idea of what my rating would be.

 

[ERicJ]

Is there a place that has the ratings for a particular course?

Yes! This page allows you to look up the SSA course ratings. Scratch Scoring Average is the average score a 1000 rated player will throw. The higher the SSA the harder the course is.

http://pdga.com/tournament/course_ratings_by_course.php

Enter your state to get a list of courses that have been rated, i.e. have had a PDGA sanctioned tournament played there.

Two things to note. Some courses are entered by state with full name, e.g. "Texas", and others have state abbreviations, e.g. "TX". So you may want to try searching both.

The other thing is that the SSA's are reported by event. That is some events may have been played from the long tees and generated a higher SSA than an event played from the short tees. Sometimes the same event will have better players playing long tees and lesser players playing short tees. In that case there should be two different SSA's reported.

All that get's you is the SSA of a course, not your player rating. If you're not going to play in a PDGA event the next simplest way to estimate your rating is to look at the scores from a PDGA event at a course on which you play.

http://www.pdga.com/schedule/search.php

Look at the individual scores and click the "Show Round Ratings" link. Then find a score close to you average and you should see a rating close to the same ballpark as what yours would be.

Here's a example of a page with round ratings shown. This event was played on three different courses, one for each round.

http://www.pdga.com/tournament/tour...7296&year=2008&include_ratings=1#Recreational

 

[Olorin]

Rating Calulator

I've got a Rating calculator file that I'll try to attach, but had problems the first time using Firefox. I'll see if I can work out the problem...

 

[Olorin]

Tim,

It's an Excel file with macros and I keep getting an error message that it's an invalid file.

 

[ERicJ]

It's an Excel file with macros and I keep getting an error message that it's an invalid file.

From the Upload Manager: "Valid file extensions: gif jpeg jpg png".

Tim even checks to see if it's a real image file so you can't just change the ".xls" to ".png".

 

[Olorin]

Attachments

Tim,

I can't attach Word docs either. Any idea why? Could it be my firewall?

 

[Olorin]

From the Upload Manager: "Valid file extensions: gif jpeg jpg png".

Tim even checks to see if it's a real image file so you can't just change the ".xls" to ".png".

Thanks Eric.

 

[timg]

http://www.dgcoursereview.com/stuff/PersonalRatingCalculator.zip

 

[Olorin]

Attachments

[FONT=&quot]I guess I need to give up on the idea of attaching files here, so check DG Resources in the Files section for files on calculating your rating and developing handicaps.[/FONT]

 

[edge3281]

Thanks everyone for the information and the file!!

 

[Olorin]

Is there a place that has the ratings for a particular course?

Use this link to the PDGA to get course SSA ratings. A course has to have had a PDGA tournament to have an SSA.

Keep in mind that SSA is not a number set in stone. It changes with each tournament round, and especially with different layouts. Weather also affects it, so you can only use this as an estimate. Or you could calculate an average of rounds where all layouts were the same.

 

[Olorin]

SSA Variance

For an example of how SSA can vary for the same course check out Cedarock in Burlington NC.

 

[Olorin]

However, that hasn't stopped me from trying to implement a handicapping system that, at least on the local level, starts everyone off as equally as possible

Here's a link to Disc Golf United who will give you a handicap for $20/year.

I already have a handicap... my drive. (couldn't resist)