2023 The Open at Austin presented by Lone Star Disc

[nothinbuttree]

Originally Posted by Ryan P.

I very much agree with what you said. One day soon I'd love for UDisc or StatMando to record every throw's landing spot for a multi-shot hole (par 4 or 5) and create a heat map for it so we could see what landing zones lead to better and worse scores.

I wonder if knowing what discs were used in addition to, or instead of, landing zones would be more valuable to the players. If 30% of all drivers went OB, but only 10% of fairways, and 0% of mids, that could be useful to know.

Ideally, you could see every disc and where it landed, and where it ended up, because ground play is quite important. Problem is how to get all that data? Someone would have to be on every hole, and somehow know what the disc was, whether it was LHFH, RHBH, etc.

[CincyIllinifan]

Originally Posted by KillerDiller

Rick took a DNF with three holes to go. Does anyone know what happened?

Looks like his wrist hasn’t healed enough.

https://twitter.com/sockibomb13/stat...379669504?s=20

[Shallows]

Originally Posted by nothinbuttree

I wonder if knowing what discs were used in addition to, or instead of, landing zones would be more valuable to the players. If 30% of all drivers went OB, but only 10% of fairways, and 0% of mids, that could be useful to know.

Ideally, you could see every disc and where it landed, and where it ended up, because ground play is quite important. Problem is how to get all that data? Someone would have to be on every hole, and somehow know what the disc was, whether it was LHFH, RHBH, etc.

That’s exactly the kind of data that sports books and peripheral gambling companies, individuals etc. will be incentivized to gather.

[foxdawg10]

Originally Posted by Shallows

That’s exactly the kind of data that sports books and peripheral gambling companies, individuals etc. will be incentivized to gather.

It is slightly disconcerting to think that course designers could be enticed to design courses to favor certain players, or a certain type of player, based on this type of data.

[Ryan P.]

Originally Posted by nothinbuttree

I wonder if knowing what discs were used in addition to, or instead of, landing zones would be more valuable to the players. If 30% of all drivers went OB, but only 10% of fairways, and 0% of mids, that could be useful to know.

Ideally, you could see every disc and where it landed, and where it ended up, because ground play is quite important. Problem is how to get all that data? Someone would have to be on every hole, and somehow know what the disc was, whether it was LHFH, RHBH, etc.

Perhaps, yes. The more data, the better the chance at finding something meaningful. However, there's also a practical requirement that you need to be finding meaningful information or the process of gathering data becomes fruitless. All I'm trying to say is that whoever does this needs to start by gathering data they expect to be meaningful and move along from there.

I don't think the logistics of getting that data is a significant obstacle. There's a UDisc person on virtually every card now; it just needs a little more precision. Gk Pro already gathers all the discs in a person's bag to list them on their round preview. Additionally, determining where a disc ended up is as simple as adding dots (think USDGC) to a graphic. I'm confident that it wouldn't take UDisc too much work to add that feature. Training is probably a slightly harder obstacle, but most people could pick it up with a video or after a few holes.

In the future, if DG continues growing, stuff like SportVU could be added to drones that fly above holes to automatically gather disc flight paths, landing location, rolls and skips, type of shot (RHBH/LH/FH/OH/etc.) and who's throwing it. It might even be able to determine the model of the disc based on the stamp. The NBA has had this system in place for a decade now, and it leads to some pretty neat heat maps like the one halfway down this article. I realize that it'd take a lot more for disc golf (18 cameras cost a lot more than 1-2), but if the money comes, that will come in time.

Originally Posted by Shallows

That’s exactly the kind of data that sports books and peripheral gambling companies, individuals etc. will be incentivized to gather.

Yep. You'll notice the link to gambling on the SportVU website fairly quickly.

Originally Posted by foxdawg10

It is slightly disconcerting to think that course designers could be enticed to design courses to favor certain players, or a certain type of player, based on this type of data.

Sure, but that sounds a lot better to me than the slightly intentional, slightly haphazard designs we have now. Hole 5 this weekend was aimed at longer players, and hole 17 at accurate players. While having more data would increase the ability for devious designers to do devious things, we can as a community go in the right direction and create better courses.

[Steve West]

Here are the scoring spread charts. I changed on thing, the scoring spread with of total scores is for the sum of all three rounds, not the average scoring spread width of total round scores.

There are two reasons I did this. First, it is closer to what we are interested in - the actual sorting of players at the end of the day.

Second, this allows us to look at the effects of penalties. Penalties are not easily attained for hole-by-hole score, but we can get the totals for each player. So, we can look at the penalties as a kind of 19th hole.

For FPO, if the penalties were a separate hole, it would have averaged 3.42. This "penalties hole" would have contributed 4.21 to the scoring spread width of final scores, which is just about as much as any of the real holes.

Note that if we performed a penaltectomy on the real holes, they're contribution would likely have gone down, so the penalties hole was likely the most effective.

Which is not surprising if you think of it as a hole where players can average anywhere from 1.33 to 7.00 over three rounds. How else could you design an easy ace run which could result in a quadruple bogey?

For MPO, the penalties hole would have contributed less, just 2.71 to the 34.42 scoring spread width of final scores (about as effective as a typical hole), it would have averaged 2.85, and the range of average score over three holes would be 0.66 to 8.33.

It makes me wonder if the next big thing in strategy will be to think of penalties as an extra hole - one where you could score zero or eight - and make a plan to get a low scores on the penalties hole.

But, I digress. As for what the numbers reveal about the design, for MPO one take-away is that there are too many 3s. Most new courses have this problem. The solution here is more 4s (instead of 3s) on some holes.

FPO also has a lot of holes with too many 3s, but the course overall offers about the right amount. Also, the course is generally just too hard, they should get more 2s and fewer 5s+.

[Steve West]

Here are the charts showing how the courses fit the players who played them.

[Steve West]

And the performance tracks:

[araytx]

Originally Posted by Shallows

A dreary and disappointing replacement of the Lindsey Park courses on the Elite Series but I suppose this is the future. Not quite the worst course on tour but in that bottom quarter conversation. The lack of a forehand for Eagle and Vaino is really what cost them with so many favorable left to right holes.

Not much elevation to work with but they did their best. If the wind is not up this course gets easy real quick.

This course was the replacement for Belton, not the Texas States at Lindsey Park in Tyler where it had been the last few years.

Texas States has always been a tournament that moves around every couple years. Texas States is owned by the Houston DGC, and they had given it to Tyler the last few years. This year it is back in Houston at a newly designed course. We will see what the pros comments are at Brock Park.