1100+ rounds

[VictorB]

Unrated hot shot Timmy gets a Pdga no and plays some hot rounds on his home course. Some pros play who dont know the course well. Timmy winds up being 1000 rated. None of those points are "won" from anyone else. He plays a few more tournaments on local courses. Just enough rounds are completed for Timmy to become a propagator.

Encouraged, Timmy goes to a major and plays courses he's never seen before. His round ratings average 900. Because Timmy is a propagator, his performance boosts the ratings of the pros. They "won" some points from Timmy. Disheartened, Timmy never competes again.

Enter Jimmy, who does the exact same thing as Timmy, except Jimmy winds up being 1001 rated initially because the pros with respect to whom his rating was generated all have slightly higher ratings now.

Repeat for a decade. How much creep is there?

This is exactly the argument as to why ratings, in the grand scheme of things, really REALLY don't mean anything, they are just bragging rights.

I had a couple of bad rounds in big tournaments last year. My rating is 939. What exactly does that tell you about how good or how bad I am?

 

[juju]

Ratings are like @$$&%#*$, everyone has one and they all stink.

 

[Lewis]

never mind. Stupid reply. Please delete.

 

[DavidSauls]

This is exactly the argument as to why ratings, in the grand scheme of things, really REALLY don't mean anything, they are just bragging rights.

I had a couple of bad rounds in big tournaments last year. My rating is 939. What exactly does that tell you about how good or how bad I am?

Nonsense. If you're a pro, that rating means you can enter advanced divisions, under the assumption you're not so good that the other advanced players have little chance against you. If you're an amateur, it means you can play without 1000-rated players competing against you. And it means you can't play in the Rec division and clean up on your winnings.

That's what the ratings mean. They're the best system yet for allowing players to compete against reasonably similarly-skilled players. Vastly better than the system that preceded it.

Whether people find self definition or bragging rights or whatever in the ratings, that's their business. It's not what the ratings are about.

 

[giles]

Thread is drifting a bit..

I'll say the ratings don't mean much if you only have a dozen rounds to make that ratings. My experiance, I was rated mid 930's for a long time with 20 or 30 rated rounds then stopped playing tournaments all the time and dropped to the minimum number of rounds with a rating of 976. I'm not a consistant 970's golfer. I played two more events with an injured back and now I'm around 950, closer to what I think I am when healthy.

 

[T.Hizzle]

While you can concoct extreme scenarios like that, for every one of those scenarios, there are balancing scenarios going the other way to keep the system at net zero ratings inflation. Before 2005, there was an inflationary element in the system because we dropped the bottom 15% of a player's rated rounds. When we shifted to the 2.5SD/100pt method so only 2% of the rounds get dropped, we added a damping factor to the equations to gradually readjust the ratings over the next year to account for that difference.

In theory, the 2% of round drops may have a small effect over time but it's likely those rounds shouldn't ever have been included anyway for a few reasons. We've monitored the number of players with ratings over 999 since 1999 and it's remained essentially the same as a percentage of the total field of players with ratings. That number/percentage is a bellweather indicator should inflation occur. So far, the system is stable. The freak rounds you're seeing are triggered by course design elements and nothing more.

Chuck your course design inflates ratings and hurts the game...

The 2008 Worlds TD talking about how Chuck and others at pDGA told him to design course par.

"Well when we walked all the courses for 08 Worlds They said a 430' hole was a par 4 and once you get over 550' that should be a par 5 and the didn't see anything wrong with maybe par 6 & 7 on holes I was told by the PDGA that they want people to feel good about how they shoot and a champion player should never shoot over par at worlds if every thing is par 3 it still comes down to low score Wins."

 

[DavidSauls]

WHAT????

As I understand it, you could call everything a par-13, and it wouldn't affect ratings, let alone inflate them.

(But it would make my bogeys much rarer).

 

[Lewis]

Yeah course par doesn't factor into round ratings. Round ratings are totally dependent on SSA, which is totally dependent on the prior ratings of the propagators. So a player's rating says nothing about how likely he is to beat par.

 

[juju]

Funny how little Hizzle knows about ratings...

 

[T.Hizzle]

Yeah course par doesn't factor into round ratings. Round ratings are totally dependent on SSA, which is totally dependent on the prior ratings of the propagators. So a player's rating says nothing about how likely he is to beat par.

Reinforcing the fact they don't mean squat.

 

[giles]

Funny how little Hizzle knows...

fixed that

 

[jenb]

While you can concoct extreme scenarios like that, for every one of those scenarios, there are balancing scenarios going the other way to keep the system at net zero ratings inflation.

I'd say one the biggest factors fighting ratings inflation is rapid improvement of low rated players who play a lot of tournaments not being rapidly reflected in their ratings. Going back a whole year helps those propagators, who are performing at a level well above their ratings, generate lower overall ratings for everyone in the event. If you were to change the system to more rapidly reflect the true skills of such players, I predict that runaway rating inflation would occur.

 

[DavidSauls]

Reinforcing the fact they don't mean squat.

Reinforcing the fact that ratings are much more valuable and consistent than "par", par being set at the whim of the course designer or signmaker, by whichever system of "par" he or she subscribes to, or none at all.

 

[bneely]

Reinforcing the fact they don't mean squat.

This honestly couldn't be a more incorrect statement.

1. Do you really believe that calling a 430 foot hole a Par 4 or a Par 3 should affect any rating system that objectively measures player skill?

2. Will players elect to throw different shots from the tee or fairway, or execute them better/worse because an arbitrary par number has been slapped on the hole?

(Answer key: no, and no.)

 

[Cgkdisc]

T.Hizzle - The 2008 Worlds TD talking about how Chuck and others at pDGA told him to design course par. "Well when we walked all the courses for 08 Worlds They said a 430' hole was a par 4 and once you get over 550' that should be a par 5 and the didn't see anything wrong with maybe par 6 & 7 on holes I was told by the PDGA that they want people to feel good about how they shoot and a champion player should never shoot over par at worlds if every thing is par 3 it still comes down to low score Wins."

That's funny since I wasn't involved with the 2008 Worlds TD and courses at all other than providing some photos. Gentry and Houck did the course reviews and any recommendations with the TD. In other Worlds years when I have helped TDs set courses and pars for Worlds, they usually run test events up to a year in advance to determine expected scoring and pars for the holes so they are set as well as possible other than the usually unavoidable true par 2s that get set as 3s and contribute to the low scores under par at any event. Charlotte's test events are underway this spring.

 

[Scoot_er]

I'd say one the biggest factors fighting ratings inflation is rapid improvement of low rated players who play a lot of tournaments not being rapidly reflected in their ratings. Going back a whole year helps those propagators, who are performing at a level well above their ratings, generate lower overall ratings for everyone in the event. If you were to change the system to more rapidly reflect the true skills of such players, I predict that runaway rating inflation would occur.

The double weighting of the most recent rounds was initially implemented to try to help ratings keep pace with these players.

 

[puttlikeablowfly]

2. Will players elect to throw different shots from the tee or fairway, or execute them better/worse because an arbitrary par number has been slapped on the hole?

It probably matters even less in disc golf, but I do recall discussions about this in ball golf, mainly in relation to long par 4s vs short par 5s. Some people think golfers who hit a decent drive would be very reluctant to lay up on a long par 4, whereas if it was called a par 5, might lay up because they still have a shot at birdie. It's even in the discussion at the pro level, when players, media, or even the officials who set up the course argue about whether that 515-yard hole should be a 4 or 5. "It's not fair for the shorter hitter ... that green doesn't accommodate a 2-iron". OK, then play iron-iron-wedge and go for 4 that way. I do think that "par" can have an impact on how SOME players play, although again, I think it would be more of an issue in ball golf.

It would be an interesting study in either case to mark par on the same hole differently over different periods of time, and see if there are changes in scoring or how the hole is played. It would be better at a course primarily played by visitors, rather than regulars who probably wouldn't even notice.