2017 Pittsburgh Flying Disc Open Presented by Discraft

[SD86]

Just wrapped up watching the FPO. Catrina Allen played extremely well. Shots were on point, she looked confident out there, and her putting was really good (Paige's putting looked strong, also). So hopefully Catrina has her mojo back and will be giving Paige some tough competition going into the rest of the season.

 

[Flick Maniac]

I enjoy looking at those stats, even though I don't fully understand them.

I really enjoyed watching Simon park one on Saturday at 18 to end his round with an eagle.

Apparently he did that twice. With a PD. For me the PD is a pretty dependable hyzer disc. For him it seems to be a magical forever flying tunnel shot disc. :gross:

 

[Steve West]

I enjoy looking at those stats, even though I don't fully understand them...

I feel the same way about women.

 

[Steve West]

Well, I couldn't help myself. I lumped all the rounds together even though the pins changed on some holes. After all: Why move the pins if not to help that hole perform better? If that's the reason, it's only fair to throw that into the mix when judging the performance of each hole.


Here is the result. Up and Right is good, and the bigger the dot, the more the hole contributed to sorting players out by skill. A hollow dot indicates the hole actually randomized the players' scores. In other words, there would have been fewer ties if that hole's scores were thrown out.

This is ugly. Six of the holes actually hurt the cause of sorting players out. A couple of others didn't do much at all, including #18 which gave out a ton of different scores.

When a hole is giving out a lot of different scores, it should be easy for that hole to give those scores out in a way that is better than almost all random ways of giving out those scores. With all the different scores Hole 18 handed out, it should have been a powerhouse; yet it barely helped sort players at all.

Broadly speaking, an average-performing hole with a normal scoring spread will allocate scores in a way that is better than 85% of all possible ways. All of the holes that fall below that line are suspect.

For holes #1, #3, #5, and #7 the cause is probably a lack of a lot of scores to give out. If a hole only has a few scores, that makes it tougher to hand them out in a way that breaks ties.

To zoom in a little, here is how holes #1, #6, and #18 allocated their scores. The vertical axis is the score the hole gave a player, the horizontal axis is the total score each player got on the other 17 holes that round, and the size of the dot indicates how many players who got that 17-hole score got each score on the hole in question.

Hole #1 pretty much just gave out a lot of 3s. It was also promiscuous about who it gave its 2s to – even to one of players that had the highest total score on all the other holes. This muddled the efforts of all the other holes.

Hole #6 shows how it did better at sorting players by skill. It gave out a lot of different scores, and the bulk of the low scores are given more to the better players (left on the chart) while the bulk of the high scores are given out more to the worse players (right on the chart).

Hole #18 gave out even more different scores, but there is a less distinct pattern for who it gave those scores to.

 

[Jabumbo]

Just watched the final round. Good lord does that course look fun to play....

Come on out, man! I'm an hour away but I try to get there any chance I get!

 

[ChrisWoj]

Come on out, man! I'm an hour away but I try to get there any chance I get!

It is about a five hour drive from me. I wanted to play the event, but hurt my back in April and it lingered. I clearly played the wrong course when I played Deer Lakes on my way through the area in December.

 

[jjtwinnova]

It is about a five hour drive from me. I wanted to play the event, but hurt my back in April and it lingered. I clearly played the wrong course when I played Deer Lakes on my way through the area in December.

There is no wrong course to play between those two. I prefer Moraine, but I love them both.

HMU when you do come though!

 

[tbird888]

It is about a five hour drive from me. I wanted to play the event, but hurt my back in April and it lingered. I clearly played the wrong course when I played Deer Lakes on my way through the area in December.

You certainly did not play the wrong course. Deer Lakes and Moraine are both worthy of their top 25 status. They're the reason why I haven't bagged more of Pittsburgh than I have. Both have super high replay factors.

 

[ChrisWoj]

You certainly did not play the wrong course. Deer Lakes and Moraine are both worthy of their top 25 status. They're the reason why I haven't bagged more of Pittsburgh than I have. Both have super high replay factors.

Having played Deer Lakes - I do agree with you that it was definitely worth the trip. I, without a doubt, appreciate what a beautiful play it was. I'm merely looking at them next to each other - where I see Moraine as closer to the style of golf I generally prefer to play. The Par 4s and 5s at Deer Lakes, if memory serves correctly (it may not be, I was rushing through a round to get in before dark with my girlfriend sitting in the car), were a bit tighter. I had a great time out there, but the holes just didn't feel as "epic" visually as the Moraine holes appeared to be.

 

[tbird888]

Having played Deer Lakes - I do agree with you that it was definitely worth the trip. I, without a doubt, appreciate what a beautiful play it was. I'm merely looking at them next to each other - where I see Moraine as closer to the style of golf I generally prefer to play. The Par 4s and 5s at Deer Lakes, if memory serves correctly (it may not be, I was rushing through a round to get in before dark with my girlfriend sitting in the car), were a bit tighter. I had a great time out there, but the holes just didn't feel as "epic" visually as the Moraine holes appeared to be.

It's really nice that they both have different "feels" to them. I feel like it's kind of an Idlewild/Lincoln Ridge thing. Both are great courses, but one is going to hurt you more then the other. I've tended to score better at Moraine, but I've left with a smile on my face at both places. So much goodness between the 36 holes!

 

[ChrisWoj]

It's really nice that they both have different "feels" to them. I feel like it's kind of an Idlewild/Lincoln Ridge thing. Both are great courses, but one is going to hurt you more then the other. I've tended to score better at Moraine, but I've left with a smile on my face at both places. So much goodness between the 36 holes!

I think they're a bit closer in comparison than Banklick (It will always be Banklick to me!) and Idlewild. Banklick/LR is my favorite deuce-or-die course, where Idlewild is in my top 5 courses period. Banklick/LR probably isn't in my top 10-15 played. But I agree with the gist of your statement.

 

[tbird888]

I think they're a bit closer in comparison than Banklick (It will always be Banklick to me!) and Idlewild. Banklick/LR is my favorite deuce-or-die course, where Idlewild is in my top 5 courses period. Banklick/LR probably isn't in my top 10-15 played. But I agree with the gist of your statement.

Moraine definitely doesn't have the front half of Bank (it's Bank to me too, but I have begrudgingly started using LR for practical purposes here). The back half though has more difficulty. I am glad that you recognize the deuce course in Bank. I get a lot of weird looks from some people when I call it a modern day deuce course (Winton and Woodland Mound being "old" ones). If you hit your lines, you can tear it up.

 

[ChrisWoj]

Moraine definitely doesn't have the front half of Bank (it's Bank to me too, but I have begrudgingly started using LR for practical purposes here). The back half though has more difficulty. I am glad that you recognize the deuce course in Bank. I get a lot of weird looks from some people when I call it a modern day deuce course (Winton and Woodland Mound being "old" ones). If you hit your lines, you can tear it up.

Without a doubt - I played in the 2009 Bluegrass Open and the second round at Banklick was especially memorable because someone on my card birdied every single one of the 24 holes on the layout. It may not be deuce or die for every level of player, but at the Open level in a decent size event you're gonna lose a stroke to someone in the field on any hole you par. The challenge though is still sufficient that you don't necessarily need to birdie every-single-hole just to keep up. Looking at the results - Tyler Horne came in with a -17 and the next closest was -13.. but 8 out of 21 shot at least -10.

 

[tbird888]

Without a doubt - I played in the 2009 Bluegrass Open and the second round at Banklick was especially memorable because someone on my card birdied every single one of the 24 holes on the layout. It may not be deuce or die for every level of player, but at the Open level in a decent size event you're gonna lose a stroke to someone in the field on any hole you par. The challenge though is still sufficient that you don't necessarily need to birdie every-single-hole just to keep up. Looking at the results - Tyler Horne came in with a -17 and the next closest was -13.. but 8 out of 21 shot at least -10.

There are Wednesday dubs out there that have been running for years, and it's it's not uncommon, even in the winter 18 hole layout, for teams to finish with 17s and 18s. I remember my first time out there, I was shocked to see the course destroyed like it was. Completely changed my train of thought in terms of golf. It pushed me from averaging +5 sign par to -5 pro par. I miss scoring like that. I doubt I'd even break par at this point. :wall:

 

[brutalbrutus]

One of the local open players drew himself as partner on a Wednesday dubs at Bank a couple years ago and shot -24 with an ace.