Course Modification Possibilities, Plantation Ruins

[tom12003]

My suggestion would be to rank everyone in your stats by rating from top to bottom. Then drop out as many of the lowest rated players from the bottom up until the remaining players average 950. From this remaining pool of blue level players averaging 950, see what your hole averages look like and especially the percentage distribution of 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s on each hole. That will give you great blue level baseline stats to see if tweaks might be useful.

Did this recalculation to do hole-by-hole scoring to correspond to an average of a PDGA 950 rating. Ended up being the "top" 129 players (out of 281) in the MA1 Worlds based on their pre-Worlds PDGA ratings. Average "blue" score revised to 53.74 (versus the overall average of 55.86). Hole-by-hole difficulty rating for the 950 category didn't change much. Out of this 950 grouping, their round rating averaged 3-5 above their PDGA rating (about 10% at their rating, 50% above their rating, and 40% below their rating)--PDGA ratings are a pretty good measure.

A few minor tweaks could easily raise the "blue" average to about 55.

I met Bikinijack and Sloppydisc on the course today and showed them possible new tee positions for #1 and #3--look forward to their feedback. Both tweaks should raise those hole averages by about 0.2-0.3 each.

 

[Cgkdisc]

It's not the score averages that matter but the percentage of 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s on each hole. If you increase a relatively open hole that averages 2.7 to 2.9, you may have generated a worse distribution with too many 3s overall. Look at your 2-3-4-5-6 percentages on each hole from your top 129 players first before determining whether a change might improve the hole for blue level.

 

[bikinjack]

Tom, I liked the longer tee you showed us on one. I think it would be a little better back and to the right from where sloppy and I threw from, as we talked about after we threw. I wasn't crazy about the new tee for 3. It was OK but not great. I think you could back it up a bit more to a position that made the area in front of the existing tee a landing zone for a 250'ish 2nd shot to the basket and call it a par 4. The trick to that would be positioning the tee to make it somewhat of a challenge to land your drive so that it was positioned well for the second shot, but still giving the big arms a chance to air one out and go for a (much) longer drive. I don't know if that's feasible. The new tee was a little confusing not being able to see the basket from the tee. Both of us were aiming a little too far to the right thinking the pin was more in that direction.

 

[sloppydisc]

I am with bikinjack on both. But some of the #3 issue may depend on the ability of the player throwing it. For us, average players, Bikinjakc nails it. Maybe for a Pro the longer position works well since they could hit the gap 300' away and reach a long putt or normal putt position. Tough call. Most players would agree with bikinjack, but very talented payers may be better challenged by the longer position you have set up. Depends on your goal, and who is playing the course most of the time. Do you want your average local player to be happy, or do you want the Pro that is there once a year to be challenged? Your call.

 

[BrotherDave]

I think you could back it up a bit more to a position that made the area in front of the existing tee a landing zone for a 250'ish 2nd shot to the basket and call it a par 4. The trick to that would be positioning the tee to make it somewhat of a challenge to land your drive so that it was positioned well for the second shot, but still giving the big arms a chance to air one out and go for a (much) longer drive.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

 

[tom12003]

As much as I would like to make the Plantation Ruins course at Winget Park (Charlotte, NC) to have more teeth (had/have plans), I am finding resistance (other than a few minor tweaks). It's not about creating more of a challenge (it's already near a 950 Blue course); it's more of a question of diversity of courses. When an area might only have 2-4 (or less) decent courses, designers often look at course modifications to create harder alignments (human nature). Charlotte has so many courses, you can travel from a 3.6 rated course to a 4.5 rated course in less than 9 miles if you want to experience the super challengers. We do not want to discourage non-super pros in playing our sport by making every course a b*ll buster. Surprisingly our local "super-pros" are often seen at our local 3.6 rated courses to test their control shots.

Not every course needs to be 4.5 rated, if we want to grow the sport.

 

[1978]

Course rating is not directly linked to difficulty. Amenities will in crease your rating. More and better benches, tee signs, directional arrows. Finishing touches...or you could go the other route... tell everyone you see to give the course a 4.5 disc rating. A 3.5 disc course in Charlotte would be 4+ anywhere else, in my experience. We have all been extremly dissapointed by 3* courses. I dont think you will feel that playing a 3.5 rated course in Charlotte.

 

[Dave242]

Tom - Mark is correct. You are talking difficulty and the ratings are likeability/popularity by the DGCR audience (which is the general DG population.....at least once there are enough reviews to be statistically stable). Polish has more influence on the DGCR rating than difficulty (and, by "Polish" I do not mean Craig).

To get a good measure of comparative difficulty simply divide SSA by course Length. Do that for all the Charlotte courses, sort them from highest to lowest, and you will have a good indicator as to what courses "have the most teeth".

I wonder where Winget rates on the list. My guess is near the top based on the one round I played there. The course has plenty of teeth, IMO.

 

[1978]

I initially wanted the Nevin mascot to be a saber tooth tiger...long teeth. Winget has short teeth like a barracuda or pirrahna. Wouldnt want to be bit by any of them.

 

[1978]

By Length Charlotte short courses.
Elon Eager 3.22 3338'
Bailey 3.19 4198'
Winget 3.58 4751'
Reedy 3.60 4806'
Sugaw 3.24 5520'
Eastway 3.46 5565'

 

[Dave242]

Do you have SSA's for each of those courses (for configurations at those lengths)?

 

[Dave242]

I initially wanted the Nevin mascot to be a saber tooth tiger...long teeth. Winget has short teeth like a barracuda or pirrahna. Wouldnt want to be bit by any of them.

I am guessing that the difficulty of Winget is higher than Nevin. Not "perceived difficulty" mind you, but actual obstacles per length.

(Obstacles are measured by obstacles you hit in a typical round that result in added throws.......which is reflected directly/proportionately in the SSA.)

 

[1978]

Been discussing this at the CDGC website. Re: the SSA's of popular layouts.
Bolded have been played recently in tournaments.

Bailey (worlds 2s, 7L, 9L, 13S, 14L, 16L)
Bradford Long
Bradford Short
Hornet's Nest Web
Hornets Nest
Nevin all long
Nevin World layout (all short)
Kilborne All short pads to short baskets
Kilborne Worlds layout
Skillborne all long pads all long baskets
Eastway All Short
Eastway All Long
Eastway (minus) Worlds13L&14L
Sugaw
RL Smith (minus) Long #4
Reedy Creek - Worlds
Reedy Creek - All Long
Reedy Creek - All Short
Idlewild - All Long
Idlewild - All Short
Idlewild - Worlds - (No 1L&17L) - 53
Winget[/B
]Eager Beaver - Long
Eager Beaver - Short
Angry Beaver - Long
Angry Beaver - Worlds Layout (needs to be set to be played)
Renny Gold
Renny Silver
Renny Worlds Layout (needs to be set to be played)

I haven't done the work to average the individual world's rounds to get an SSA. I would have to match up the schedule to what pool the player was in to the round scores. Don't have that time right now.

 

[tom12003]

I initially wanted the Nevin mascot to be a saber tooth tiger...long teeth. Winget has short teeth like a barracuda or pirrahna. Wouldnt want to be bit by any of them.

I like the analogy! Most better MA1 players start (from hole #1) with 3+ birdies until they hit holes #7-12 when the short teeth start gnawing at them until they finally hit the long tooth of #13 (247' uphill par 3, plays 300+' but averaged over 3.6 during the Worlds; can't be a par 4 as I've seen it aced); after #13, these "better" AM players can often recover on the final holes to finish 3-4 under par--great beginning expectations only to end up a little disappointed.

 

[tom12003]

I haven't done the work to average the individual world's rounds to get an SSA. I would have to match up the schedule to what pool the player was in to the round scores. Don't have that time right now.

I've tried but extracting the results (posted on the PDGA webpage) can be very confusing because of the shuffling of pools and many pools playing in the same round, etc. I can confidently do SSAs (1000 rated) for the following World courses: Sugaw (49.7), RL Smith (52.4), Angry Beaver (56.8), Winget (49.6), Hornet's Nest (54.0), Renny (pros) (65.3), Bradford Long (pros) (53.0, thanks to MJ for skewing this number with his -17 round), Bradford Short (49.5), Nevin (pros) (58.2), Scrapyard (53.0). The other World's courses were just too confusing to sort out based on published results.

PDGA sent me all the 570+ Winget World's scorecards that enabled me to do a hole-by-hole analysis (very time consuming data entry and too many accompanying suds). The overall MA1 average score (par 57 course) was 55.86. MA1 had 4 pools; after the shuffle the top pool (K pool) averaged 53.30, the L pool averaged 54.50, the M pool averaged 56.40, and the N pool averaged 59.60. The Am Masters (MM1) averaged 57.93, the Am Grand Masters averaged 59.63, and the Am Sr Grands averaged 62.09. The detailed hole-by-hole scores (and degree of separation by hole) are probably only interesting to me as the course director in further tweaking holes; I've tried posting them here (DGCR) only to have the files removed (???).

 

[Dave242]

I am guessing that the difficulty of Winget is higher than Nevin. Not "perceived difficulty" mind you, but actual obstacles per length.

(Obstacles are measured by obstacles you hit in a typical round that result in added throws.......which is reflected directly/proportionately in the SSA.)

I've tried but extracting the results (posted on the PDGA webpage) can be very confusing because of the shuffling of pools and many pools playing in the same round, etc. I can confidently do SSAs (1000 rated) for the following World courses: Sugaw (49.7), RL Smith (52.4), Angry Beaver (56.8), Winget (49.6), Hornet's Nest (54.0), Renny (pros) (65.3), Bradford Long (pros) (53.0, thanks to MJ for skewing this number with his -17 round), Bradford Short (49.5), Nevin (pros) (58.2), Scrapyard (53.0). The other World's courses were just too confusing to sort out based on published results.

Thanks for the SSA's. Based on the lengths listed on the official Worlds maps, here are the Difficulty results.....SSA/Length (x10,000 to make them more readable)

[B]Course Name	SSA	Length	Difficulty[/B]
Winget Park	49.6	4,697	105.6
R.L. Smith 	52.4	5,339	98.1
Reedy Stout	53.0	5,647	93.9
Scrapyard	53.0	5,718	92.7
Sugaw Creek	49.7	5,520	90.0
Angry Beaver	56.8	6,328	89.8
Hornet's Nest	54.0	6,126	88.1
Bradford Short	49.5	5,660	87.5
Nevin Park	58.2	7,110	81.9
Bradford Long	53.0	6,725	78.8
Renny Goldish	65.3	8,843	73.8

I'm not surprised that Winget is the most toothy course of the list. (I also put in Reedy Stout for fun since lots of people squawked when I calculated that Stout used to be the most difficult course in Charlotte to score on :doh

 

[Steve West]

..
PDGA sent me all the 570+ Winget World's scorecards that enabled me to do a hole-by-hole analysis (very time consuming data entry and too many accompanying suds)...

With all that data, you can see which holes had the most impact on the final results. Compute the Scoring Spread for Total scores from every player. Then, for each hole, calculate the Scoring Spread of each player's (Total scores - that hole's score). The difference is a measure of how much each hole helped to rank the players.

 

[tom12003]

With all that data, you can see which holes had the most impact on the final results. Compute the Scoring Spread for Total scores from every player. Then, for each hole, calculate the Scoring Spread of each player's (Total scores - that hole's score). The difference is a measure of how much each hole helped to rank the players.

Seven of the holes (for the 281 MA1 field) had scoring averages above par. Hole 13 led the pack at +.471 (25 birdies, 138 pars, 88 bogeys, 20 double bogeys, and 10 triple bogeys).

 

[Steve West]

Seven of the holes (for the 281 MA1 field) had scoring averages above par. Hole 13 led the pack at +.471 (25 birdies, 138 pars, 88 bogeys, 20 double bogeys, and 10 triple bogeys).

Scoring average above par is not the same as the size of the contribution to final rankings. For example, if relatively more of the worse scores went to the better players on Hole 13, then that hole may have muddled the results. If that were the case, then the fact that there were a lot of big scores would mean that the results were just muddled more.

Scoring Spread is based on the entropy of the distribution of scores. It's kind of the inverse of the average of how many players share each score. If everyone got the same score, the Scoring Spread would be 1. If everyone in MA1 got a different score, the Scoring Spread would be 281.

Your final scores probably have a Scoring Spread of around 30 to 60 or so.

If Hole 13 gave out its scores perfectly according to skill, then the Scoring Spread of the total scores would be about 3.75 wider with Hole 13 than without. If Hole 13 gave the worst scores to the best players, it would have narrowed the Scoring Spread of the total scores by 2.5 If Hole 13 just assigned scores at random, it probably had little effect on the Scoring Spread.

Send me the hole-by-hole scores by player for MA1 and I'll show you.

 

[tom12003]

I sent Steve the gory details; still don't understand his and Chuck's statistical analysis process. My simple understanding is that many of 980+ AMs shot in the 940s (not all; those that "matched" their rating ended up in the overall top 10-15), while several 920 AMs shot above the 980 area.

I look forward to his stats breakdown and instruction on how to do his magic stats and what they really mean. When a tournament involves 288 players with 6 rounds, a semi-final round, and a final 4-round, how does one course's stats apply to separation of the field?