For Those Who Play Both, What Do You Think is More Difficult, "Scratch" in Golf or Disc Golf?

I am
I recently found out that a 1000 rating was officially labeled as "scratch" by the PDGA (see PDGA Player & Course Rating System.)

Doing some quick googling, it appears both sports are similar in that only 1-2% of players achieve scratch.

It made me wonder which one would be tougher to do if you're a middling player (900 rated / 15 handicap), getting down to a 0 handicap in ball golf, or up to a 1000 in disc golf?

I also wonder how many people there are out there that have achieved both? Can't be too many.
I am currently a 4.4 handicap index in ball golf and am right about 900 in disc golf, though my average "good" round is in the 940's. I hardly ever play ball golf anymore, but I think if I practiced and played regularly, i would be scratch again within a few months. I don't think I ever have a chance to get a 1000 rating. So for me, it would be much harder to get to a 1000 rating than to achieve scratch in ball golf. Of course, I have a background in golf (played and taught professionally) and regularly had a plus handicap (better than scratch), so probably not a good comparison for everyone else. And I'm 61 years old.

If I were to start from day one in both sports, I think I would achieve both goals in about the same amount of time. So to me one isn't definitely easier or harder than the other to achieve. Both need a bunch of dedication and time and a certain natural ability.
 
I am

I am currently a 4.4 handicap index in ball golf and am right about 900 in disc golf, though my average "good" round is in the 940's. I hardly ever play ball golf anymore, but I think if I practiced and played regularly, i would be scratch again within a few months. I don't think I ever have a chance to get a 1000 rating. So for me, it would be much harder to get to a 1000 rating than to achieve scratch in ball golf. Of course, I have a background in golf (played and taught professionally) and regularly had a plus handicap (better than scratch), so probably not a good comparison for everyone else. And I'm 61 years old.

If I were to start from day one in both sports, I think I would achieve both goals in about the same amount of time. So to me one isn't definitely easier or harder than the other to achieve. Both need a bunch of dedication and time and a certain natural ability.

Yeah this is how I sort of felt and why I asked, minus the whole golf pro thing.

I'm a 13 handicap golfer/900 disc golfer, and if you said I had to get to 0 or 1000 with a gun to my head in three years or less, I'm not exactly sure which I'd choose. I sort of think I'd become a member at a super forgiving course with easy greens and minimal hazards and go for the ball golf 0 rather than try to put up 10+ 1000 rated rounds in a tournament/rated setting.
 
While I agree with your post this portion is a bit silly. I have never had a golf ball roll 100 feet off the green. I also have never had a golf ball roll out of bounds off the green for a penalty stroke. And I also have never had to straddle putt around a tree on a ball golf green. Wind does not have the same effect in ball golf that it does on disc golf green.

And some courses have multiple pins positions as well. But that being said it still more difficult to putt in ball golf.

If you've never played a pro cut course, you wont ever see things like this.

Hard greens where its like putting a ball on a plate of glass. I have no clue how the pro golfers do it. I was 3 putting everything, even 5 footers.

I've had a course where the greens were so fast you couldn't even approach them. Flop shots, roll off the back, bump and runs, roll off the back. bump 10 foot early and run, roll right off the back. The high drop backspin shots were hilarious, cause I would just launch them way up and try and drop them. They bounced like it was concrete. then rolled off the green.

And it doesn't need to be 100 foot roll away. anything off the green is practically a no putt. Disc golf you got a 50 foot roll away, you're okay. ball golf a 50 foot rollaway is probably gonna be a 3 putt, or a chip and 1 or 2 putt unless you roll off the other side from a bad chip.

Everything in general around the green is 100 times easier than ball golf.
 
Everyone is commenting on the notion that 1000 rated = scratch.

I'll say it again, that is absolute bull crap. Your local pro's are duking it out in MPO with -14 scores a round to win at 940-980 rated, and were gonna say that 1000 is a "scratch golfer?"

I'd honestly say 900 is a more accurate number for scratch golfer in disc golf.

But even that can't be true either, because the numbers are random based on the propagators for the tournament, They are not based on any number of this equals this.

Ball golf handicaps are quite accurate vs disc golf rating.
Thats a whole different discussion, but the idea that 1000 rated = anything is silly. Ratings are based on who you're playing with and some random math that the PDGA refuses to share with us, cause its a "secret"
Not that ratings dont matter, they have some level of info, but they don't actually mean anything when there is no hard value, they will always be in flux.

A 980 rated player here in middle tennessee is not going to be the same as a 980 rated player in california, or massachusets. because the ratings are based on who you play against all the time. I play with these 950-980 rated guys. They are not scratch golfers, they are far beyond it. You show up to a weekly on a hard course and one of these guys show up, you've donated your money.

I'm a scratch disc golfer, I generally shoot par or better. Not 10-15 down. That's pro am level golf.

Ball golf, my handicap +/- a few strokes per game for your error rate is gonna be accurate about everywhere.
 
I'm a scratch disc golfer, I generally shoot par or better. Not 10-15 down. That's pro am level golf.
Your claim is like saying you are a scratch golfer because you shoot par from the "men's" tees at your local course where the greens are like memory foam. It's a lot different from the tips with super-fast greens and long grass in the first cut.

Disc golf generally doesn't have tees that are far enough back to get the same score out of 1000-rated players that the daily-play tees get out of ams. We don't have "the tips". Nor super-fast greens.

Many times the pars on disc golf courses used for tournaments were set long ago based on how far the designer could throw. If par were set for 1000-rated players, many of those courses would have pars below 54, as low as 39.

Note that while the super-high pars on existing disc golf courses can fool you into thinking you are a scratch golfer, those feel-good pars do not affect the ratings calculation.
 
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Absolutely no way 900 is scratch disc golf.

Also- determination of scratch play in golf had to be driven by at least one completely arbitrary decision to begin with.
 
Your claim is like saying you are a scratch golfer because you shoot par from the "men's" tees at your local course where the greens are like memory foam. It's a lot different from the tips with super-fast greens and long grass in the first cut.

Disc golf generally doesn't have tees that are far enough back to get the same score out of 1000-rated players that the daily-play tees get out of ams. We don't have "the tips". Nor super-fast greens.

Many times the pars on disc golf courses used for tournaments were set long ago based on how far the designer could throw. If par were set for 1000-rated players, many of those courses would have pars below 54, as low as 39.

Note that while the super-high pars on existing disc golf courses can fool you into thinking you are a scratch golfer, those feel-good pars do not affect the ratings calculation.

Thats kind of the point.

If 1000 rated was "scratch" then 1000 rated players would be shooting +/-5 strokes generally, not 15 down at tournaments.

950 rated players are cleaning up -10 to -15 rounds on difficult courses with ease.


I personally could care less if pro's shoot -15 rounds. Because at the end of the day, golf is about "how many strokes it takes you to complete the course"
It doesn't matter how hard it is. it mattes how successful you are at throwing the course in the least amount of strokes.

The problem with all of that is, people hang and live on birdies and bogies, when they really mean nothing. But nobody is going to go "oh man, paul shot a 45 and took the tournament"

nobody can really relate to that. But they can relate to "paul shot a -14 and took the tournament." And thats where we get into the weeds of golf in general.

Disc golf as a whole is much easier than ball golf, but also provides challenges that ball golf could never have and that's the part that gets me hyped about disc golf. Shot shapes, working discs, challenging lines that force me to think and push discs to their limits. Vs... hit a ball down the fairway and don't get in the rough.

So in some senses, really really good disc golf is harder than ball golf when it comes to elite level play, but our tour doesn't emphasizes that with the courses that are on tour.
Jerm and others are right about how punishing and dumb the american courses are. Having worked MCO for a number of years now, I finally dropped out of being staff because the course is terrible and embarrassing. The designers comments I'll keep private, but he has no thoughts in mind for making a challenging FUN course, its all about how much he can screw with the players.

Courses that challenge players more are not live coverage friendly. or spectator friendly.

We'd much rather have our tour stop here be cedar hill, but it cannot manage the parking or movement of spectators well enough to provide a good touranment with spectators. But it can still provide a challenging tournament if you leave those factors out.
 
Forget about par. Par, in disc golf, has nothing to do with ratings -- or with who is or isn't a scratch disc golfer.

We could set every hole on our course as Par 1. Or as Par 10. The scores, described as over- and under-par, would be wildly different, but total score for a 1000-rated round would be the same. Nor would the pars we set have anything to do with measuring a "scratch" disc golfer; the ratings would.

As for par, there's a thread about that. It'll take about 5 weeks to read it all, but it's available.
 
Thats kind of the point.

If 1000 rated was "scratch" then 1000 rated players would be shooting +/-5 strokes generally, not 15 down at tournaments.

950 rated players are cleaning up -10 to -15 rounds on difficult courses with ease.


I personally could care less if pro's shoot -15 rounds. Because at the end of the day, golf is about "how many strokes it takes you to complete the course"
It doesn't matter how hard it is. it mattes how successful you are at throwing the course in the least amount of strokes.

The problem with all of that is, people hang and live on birdies and bogies, when they really mean nothing. But nobody is going to go "oh man, paul shot a 45 and took the tournament"

nobody can really relate to that. But they can relate to "paul shot a -14 and took the tournament." And thats where we get into the weeds of golf in general.

Disc golf as a whole is much easier than ball golf, but also provides challenges that ball golf could never have and that's the part that gets me hyped about disc golf. Shot shapes, working discs, challenging lines that force me to think and push discs to their limits. Vs... hit a ball down the fairway and don't get in the rough.

So in some senses, really really good disc golf is harder than ball golf when it comes to elite level play, but our tour doesn't emphasizes that with the courses that are on tour.
Jerm and others are right about how punishing and dumb the american courses are. Having worked MCO for a number of years now, I finally dropped out of being staff because the course is terrible and embarrassing. The designers comments I'll keep private, but he has no thoughts in mind for making a challenging FUN course, its all about how much he can screw with the players.

Courses that challenge players more are not live coverage friendly. or spectator friendly.

We'd much rather have our tour stop here be cedar hill, but it cannot manage the parking or movement of spectators well enough to provide a good touranment with spectators. But it can still provide a challenging tournament if you leave those factors out.

The PDGA defines Scratch as 1000, that's where I'm getting it from.

From the official PDGA site page on ratings at PDGA Player & Course Rating System:

Your PDGA Player Rating is a number that shows how close your average round scores are compared to the course rating, called the Scratch Scoring Averages (SSA), of the courses you've played in competition. Players who average the SSA on courses played will have a rating of 1000 and are considered "scratch players". A player who averages scores lower than SSAs on course they've played will have a rating over 1000.
 
The PDGA defines Scratch as 1000, that's where I'm getting it from.

From the official PDGA site page on ratings at PDGA Player & Course Rating System:

Your PDGA Player Rating is a number that shows how close your average round scores are compared to the course rating, called the Scratch Scoring Averages (SSA), of the courses you've played in competition. Players who average the SSA on courses played will have a rating of 1000 and are considered "scratch players". A player who averages scores lower than SSAs on course they've played will have a rating over 1000.
If disc golf courses posted their average SSA (say a "Course Rating") vs. "par" people would scream 🤣
 
Our course has 2 overlapping layouts, and I've given average SSAs to people trying to decide which to play. Nobody's screamed yet.

But our everyday layouts have been fairly consistent with the layouts used in tournaments. I know of other courses whose average SSAs would be meaningless; they were derived when extra holes were added, or extra OB, or when a different combination of holes were used than you'd play casually.

The PDGA used to make SSAs available for courses, and I wish they would again. Knowledgeable people could decide whether they applied every day, or not, and even post them, if they wished.
 
The PDGA defines Scratch as 1000, that's where I'm getting it from.

From the official PDGA site page on ratings at PDGA Player & Course Rating System:

Your PDGA Player Rating is a number that shows how close your average round scores are compared to the course rating, called the Scratch Scoring Averages (SSA), of the courses you've played in competition. Players who average the SSA on courses played will have a rating of 1000 and are considered "scratch players". A player who averages scores lower than SSAs on course they've played will have a rating over 1000.

But 1000 isn't defined.
our ratings are not determined by any hard numbers anywhere.

1000 means nothing. It's a number we've attached a value to that actually has 0 value.

if someone says "Oh, Joe shot a 1150 round"

What did joe shoot?
What was his score?

What if someone said "Jim shot a 1000 rated round."

What did Jim shoot, what was his score?

Because all ratings are based on propagators and averages and no defined number of this equals that, the ratings system is arbitrary.

This article in general is poppycock to even make that claim.
And the reason it probably makes that claim is because some guy wrote an article for PDGA a number of years back and full claimed that 1000 rated is an even scoring round, to which we know isn't true either.


People are being mind blown by the pro round ratings getting higher and higher.
There is nothing more spectacular about the rounds this year than 3 or 4 years ago. The difference is the average rating of the players playing together and the number of high rated players playing together is larger, so when you take the propagation and the average and put them together to generate your round ratings, they will continue to climb for eternity.

The ratings system we use is absolutely fantastic way for everyone to have a great rating if we were playing something like a video game where you're rating was set over 1000's and 1000's of games a year.

This is why we can't say 1000 rated is scratch golf. Because 1000 rating has 0 mathematical anchor to the game whatsoever.


There is a few things our rating system is good at though.

It's good at comparing you to the people you continually play with, or the course you play at.

But comparing a 980 nashville local pro to a 980 rated michigan pro is completely different skill levels.

Some 980 guys came down here from michigan a few years ago for MCO and got smoked so hard while our 980 guys here held up in top 50.
 
Ehh sorry about that a little bit, cause that was a bit of a derail.

We were trying to define "Scratch" golfer as a medium of comparison, but it just turned into me grandstanding about the piss poor ratings system we use.
 
Ehh sorry about that a little bit, cause that was a bit of a derail.

We were trying to define "Scratch" golfer as a medium of comparison, but it just turned into me grandstanding about the piss poor ratings system we use.
That's OK. Ratings are such an important part of joining the PDGA that they should be constantly questioned.

Also, you were annoyingly close to making an actual point. One thing that will help is if you remove any talk about par. Par's weaknesses do not bleed into the effectiveness of ratings.

Unlike golf handicaps, ratings were not set based on scoring even par, their job doesn't have anything to do with predicting scores relative to oar, par never enters into the calculation of ratings.

Part of the reason for that is, as everyone knows, many courses out there do not set par according to any standard - let alone the PDGA Par Guidelines. Par Guidelines
 
On the 4 courses I play most often, my averages are probably something like par, +5, +8, and +16.

My distance from scratch shouldn't depend on geography.
 
On the 4 courses I play most often, my averages are probably something like par, +5, +8, and +16.

My distance from scratch shouldn't depend on geography.
Your rating doesn't depend in geography. "Scratch" in disc golf is defined as 1000-rated, not distance from par.

However, your distance from par should also not depend on geography. But it's par that needs to be fixed, not the ratings. See the PDGA guidelines. If those are followed, par will be as closely tied to ratings as possible.
 
Yes, I agree. My discrepancies are the result of varying interpretations of "par" on these courses. I'm the same lousy player, regardless of where I play.

That's why ratings reflect my skill level much better than my scores, relative to par.
 
That's OK. Ratings are such an important part of joining the PDGA that they should be constantly questioned.

Also, you were annoyingly close to making an actual point. One thing that will help is if you remove any talk about par. Par's weaknesses do not bleed into the effectiveness of ratings.

Unlike golf handicaps, ratings were not set based on scoring even par, their job doesn't have anything to do with predicting scores relative to oar, par never enters into the calculation of ratings.

Part of the reason for that is, as everyone knows, many courses out there do not set par according to any standard - let alone the PDGA Par Guidelines. Par Guidelines
Ill agree to disagree here.
 
1000 rated does not equal scratch so please 'scratch' that from your brains! Whomever came up with the idea that 1000 rated = scratch in golf did so with conjecture. Quit trying to compare two different sports to each other who aren't much alike aside from having the word golf in the name. Comparing 1000 rated disc golfers to scratch golfers and which is harder to achieve is about as useful as trying to compare career homeruns in baseball and career sixes in international cricket so just stop. Just because they are similar doesn't mean they are comparable.
 

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