Par Talk

[Steve West]

2018 Delaware Disc Golf Challenge presented by Innova - National Tour, FPO Layout

 

[Steve West]

2018 Canadian Disc Golf Championships Presented by Dynamic Discs, Hillcrest Farm DGC

 

[Steve West]

2018 Canadian Disc Golf Championships Presented by Dynamic Discs, Huck It Disc Golf

 

[Steve West]

Since a wide range of players played both courses, I might as well show the calculated pars for all skill levels. (Red is mostly, and Green is pure, extrapolation.)

Note that the Hillcrest pars which were set for the Blue tees are pretty good. Hole #14 could be a par 6.

Again, it looks like Advanced pars were used for an A-tier Open event. For shame. Note that the Huck It pars don't change much with skill level. White (900) par and Blue (950) par are the same. You could even say that Intermediate pars were used for an A-tier Open event.

A course where Pars don't change by skill level probably is not testing skill very well. That's not really what you want in a Championship course.

If you'll indulge me in a digression, here is a chart that shows how the players were sorted by round. The left and right rounds are Hillcrest, the middle round is Huck It.

 

[Steve West]

2018 United States Women's Disc Golf Championships

Now we know there can be FPO par 2s.

 

[Steve West]

2018 United States Disc Golf Championship, first round data only.

Looks like Hole #10 might not have quite lived up to its Par 4 billing. On the other hand, hole #18 came within an ill-timed sneeze of deserving to be called a par 5.

It's nice to see pars that are not set for Advanced or Intermediate.

 

[Steve West]

Final Stats for all hole locations. I bet most people would not think if this as a fairly birdie-heavy course, but it is.

Here is the scoring distribution for the only hole where I would recommend a different par.

 

[lyleoross]

One of the conversations that Jeremy Kolling and Nate Sexton have had during the USDGC is hole difficulty. Of course, hole difficulty is a measure of average score vs par. Such a discussion only has merit if par actually has meaning. Calling a hole hard because par was set too low, or easy, because par was set to high, means that a big chunk of your commentary is meaningless. It's good to see that the USDGC team does such a good job of getting this right.

 

[Steve West]

The Ed Headrick Disc Golf Hall of Fame Classic presented by REC TEC Grills - National Tour Finale / Jackson

 

[Steve West]

2018 DGPT Tour Championship hosted by Prodigy

While watching the finals live, I'll be making mental adjustments to any comment relative to par for hole #12 for FPO.

For MPO holes #2, #10, and #14. Not so much #9.

 

[biscoe]

Sample size issues aside I don't see how scoring indicates in any way that Hole 9 for the men is anything other than a Par 5.

 

[Steve West]

Sample size issues aside I don't see how scoring indicates in any way that Hole 9 for the men is anything other than a Par 5.

It IS a par 5 because the TD said so. I'm only considering whether the TD might want to change it for future events.

Par is not defined as average nor mode -though both are reasonable ways to set par. This hole gives us a rare case where methods disagree. Par isn't defined by my method either. My method - which I think is closer to the definition - would indicate there are just enough 4s to indicate a 1000-rated player could expect a 4 with errorless play. Which would mean that a bunch of the 5s are the result of an error.

However, since the scores don't give a strong indication that it could be a par 4, this a hole we'd need to go beyond the scores to look at the physical hole and also see how it is played. Watch all the rounds and see if more players got a 5 without making an error than got 4s. Maybe they did, I don't know. But, from just looking at scores, there were enough 4s to indicate that 4 very well could be the expected errorless score.

 

[teemkey]

...
Par is not defined as average nor mode -though both are reasonable ways to set par. This hole gives us a rare case where methods disagree. Par isn't defined by my method either. My method - which I think is closer to the definition - would indicate there are just enough 4s to indicate a 1000-rated player could expect a 4 with errorless play. Which would mean that a bunch of the 5s are the result of an error.
...

Of course, most of the players are well above 1000 rated.

 

[Steve West]

Of course, most of the players are well above 1000 rated.

Yes, which adds to the paucity of data if "expert" means a 1000-rated player. Because this event (and also the USDGC) are so selective, maybe the "expert" should be the typical player. Using all the scores from all the players, the indicated par would be two lower at 60. (#3 & #17)

 

[teemkey]

Yes, which adds to the paucity of data if "expert" means a 1000-rated player. Because this event (and also the USDGC) are so selective, maybe the "expert" should be the typical player. Using all the scores from all the players, the indicated par would be two lower at 60. (#3 & #17)

I think it would make more sense to calculate an "elite" (platinum?) par if you want to stick with 1000 rated as expert.

 

[Steve West]

I think it would make more sense to calculate an "elite" (platinum?) par if you want to stick with 1000 rated as expert.

For now, I do want to stick with 1000 as the expert. Also, I don't want to add another higher skill level category of par. There just aren't enough really highly rated players yet. The majority of players at the majority of tournaments are under 1000. And at all the events where the best players show up (even this one, because everyone cashes) Gold par does the best job of keeping par closest to all the scores that cash.

By the way, just like the next Hawai'ian Island will be named Lōʻihi, the next skill level up will be Black, and the mid-point rating will be 1025. But neither is ready to emerge yet.

 

[Steve West]

Moving beyond Open for a minute, the 2018 Next Generation Tour National Championships had perfect pars for 950-rated players, which is good for Ams.

Or, to put it more modestly, my method agrees with the TD.

 

[Steve West]

The Choices Flooring 2018 Australian Disc Golf Championships Presented By Nature 2 Nourish

The pars would have been perfect for an Advanced level tournament.

 

[jjmiller]

Seems pretty simple to me. In regular golf, it's how many shots it "should" take to get to the green and two putts. Putting is much harder. Even pro golfers don't expect to make everything inside 30'.

So in disc golf, we still use "shots to the green and two putts", but it's much easier to hit a basket with a disc than a 4" hole with a 1.68" ball or whatever it is.

Add in the fact that it's a lot easier to go significantly offline with a shot that's likely to be pushing 1,000' and traveling close to or maybe even over 200 mph with thousands of RPM of spin that can potentially be quite a lot of sidespin, and regular golf is just significantly harder to shoot "par" at than disc golf.

 

[DavidSauls]

So in disc golf, we still use "shots to the green and two putts"....

Ah, but we don't.

Well, some people do, in a common-law type of ruling, but fewer of them, particularly at top level events.

Nothing in our definition mentions the green, or two putts.

It used to refer to two throws from close range (not the green), but that's gone now.