How does everyone score their game, is 3 standard for par?

[Nasty Nate]

We don't put actual hole pars on scorecards in tournaments because players can't seem to add properly when there are pars other than 3. As far as needing it, yes we do at least for this happening right now: http://www.pdga.com/apps/tournament/live/live.php?TournID=16381&Div=MPO

Wait.. does this mean that Paul and co. bogeyed the first hole? And why would that be in green and a birdie in red? Maybe I don't read so good.

Is there such thing as a par 5 in disc golf? I have yet to see one.


Also I usually play 3 on every hole unless it's not feasible. Just make it to the basket in 3 and you'll play well :thmbup: or you can get 4's sometimes and play well, too.

 

[Timeetyo]

I use an app on my phone that I can save course pars in (most courses are already in the app) and then I just track my score. Nothing difficult.

This (Disc Caddy 2) is what I use as well. Just makes it way to simple. Even if I'm keeping a scorecard for the tourney I'll also be keeping it on my app (it is super fast) as it makes it nice and easy w/o the chance of a math error.

..now if only timg would get that dgcr app out that they are testing.

 

[rakeyohn]

I like to think that having legitimate par fours and fives help people on the outside to see it more as a sport and not a hobby. Not to mention parks might feel handcuffed to designing new courses as only having holes with par three difficulty.

 

[Anon]

Wait.. does this mean that Paul and co. bogeyed the first hole? And why would that be in green and a birdie in red? Maybe I don't read so good.

Green = plus/positive
Red = minus/negative

Maths is hard.

 

[Nasty Nate]

Green = plus/positive
Red = minus/negative

Maths is hard.

But green mean good and red mean bad!


Or maybe not?

 

[pmatt1969]

Same as everybody else. Use the 3 as par and count total strokes. Noobs can use sign par to measure their progress till they are ready to play 3's. That way they will not get discouraged

 

[Olorin]

To determine par I use Close Range Par.
For quickly adding up my score I usually add up my score based on over or under 3 per hole. For example, yesterday I played Rock Ridge that has a CR par of 64 (short tees) but I still added up my score in relation to 3 per hole, even though 54 is 10 less than the course par. Does that make sense?

Par and this scoring shortcut are two separate items.

For a little more reading on this subject check out the Par Encyclopedia.

 

[Nasty Nate]

http://golf.about.com/cs/historyofgolf/a/hist_birdieeagl.htm

I have been reading the About Golf page for a few minutes now and it is fascinating. Here are the supposed origins of "birdie" and "eagle", etc...

"In American slang of the 19th Century, the term "bird" was applied to anything particularly great. "Bird" was the "cool" of the 1800s in the U.S.

So on the golf course, a great shot - one that led to an under-par score - came to be known as a "bird," which was then transformed into "birdie." The term birdie was in worldwide use by the 1910s, and it's believed it debuted in the U.S. in 1899.

Who first used "birdie" on a golf course? Most sources point to Atlantic City Country Club in Atlantic City, N.J., as the place of origin. The USGA Museum cites the book Fifty Years of American Golf, published in 1936, which cites a match played at Atlantic City Country Club in 1899. One of the participants in that match, Ab Smith, is quoted in the book thusly:

"My ball ... came to rest within six inches of the cup. I said 'That was a bird of a shot ... I suggest that when one of us plays a hole in one under par he receives double compensation.' The other two agreed and we began right away, just as soon as the next one came, to call it a 'birdie.' "

And "eagle" simply followed "birdie," being added to the lexicon in keeping with the avian image of birdie. And "albatross" later came along for the same reason. So once "birdie" was established as the term for 1-under par, avian terms for 2-under par and 3-under par were also adopted."

Cooooooool

also apparently an albatross (aka double eagle) is rarer than a hole-in-one! What a world we live in.

 

[Porthos]

Just so I can make sense of the everything is par 3 crowd, are you writing 0, +1 or -1 on your scorecard? If so, why not just write down the actual throws instead, or get an app to keep score?

Writing down +1 when you shoot a 4 on a par 4 doesn't make it a par 3. It just means you are using 3 as your baseline for keeping score. Sounds like that is what the OP is getting at anyways.

 

[DavidSauls]

Just so I can make sense of the everything is par 3 crowd, are you writing 0, +1 or -1 on your scorecard? If so, why not just write down the actual throws instead, or get an app to keep score?

Writing down +1 when you shoot a 4 on a par 4 doesn't make it a par 3. It just means you are using 3 as your baseline for keeping score. Sounds like that is what the OP is getting at anyways.

Speaking for myself and others I know in the "par 3 crowd", no.

We most often use "all-par-3" when not using a scorecard at all, to keep score in our head. Some of us also use it when totalling the scorecard---the actual numbers are written down, and total calculated by counting under (2s) and over (4s or more).

And, yes, the use of the word "par" is inappropriate. But it is a convenient, short word for what we're doing.

 

[Brodysseus]

Speaking for myself and others I know in the "par 3 crowd", no.

We most often use "all-par-3" when not using a scorecard at all, to keep score in our head. Some of us also use it when totalling the scorecard---the actual numbers are written down, and total calculated by counting under (2s) and over (4s or more).

And, yes, the use of the word "par" is inappropriate. But it is a convenient, short word for what we're doing.

Exactly.

 

[kenjiac]

Counting +/- using 3s and par are two different concepts that unfortunately get mixed up a lot. I use the counting trick of adding or subtracting based on 3 for every hole, but that's totally separate from how I look at each hole. If I come up on a par 4 hole and I get a 4, then I feel like I scored a par not a bogie, at the same time I score it as a +1 in my head if I'm keeping score mentally.

^^^ This. Par is what ever the card/tee sign says. When i'm adding my card I count everything +/- to 3(not par). 18 holes x3 is 54 but par may be more. It's just faster add easier and I'm less likely to make mistakes.

 

[Alcuin]

There are legit par 4s and 5s in disc golf, but there aren't that many.

My home course has one, hole 10 at Hiestand (long pad to blue pin), but it isn't marked and I count it as a "par 3" for scoring purposes. If I get a 4 there though, I'm not too bummed about it, because I know that the rest of the field is going to card some 4s there too. I consider it a par 4, but don't really care because it's the number of throws that ultimately counts.

Determining par for courses can be done systematically but often is not. Token Creek and Cap Springs in my area have absolutely ridiculous course pars. They are laughably inflated, and if someone tells me they use course par at those courses, my opinion of their game changes (I can't help it).

This guy on Reddit yesterday asked if anybody had any suggestions for a replacement for his Predator, because that game took his game to the next level and he wanted to take it to another level yet again (the nextest level). He claimed to shoot on average -17 to -20 on his home course (Baraboo Lions) from the long tees. Then he said he shot -12 whenever he played the courses here in Madison. For reference: -2 at Hiestand longs to blue pins is about 1000 rated. I was going to ask this guy if he was trolling, but I don't think he was. I didn't ask: turning off the computer seemed the best response to that.

But this brings up the problem at hand here: communication. What is this guy talking about? What are his actual scores? Obviously, he's not that good a player, but how bad is he? We don't know, because he's going by some weird course par that somebody (maybe him, maybe someone else) made up.

Sometimes more casual players have asked a group of us what we shot and if we shoot all par 3s. This happened at Hiestand once, and I wanted to ask, what par do you go by? Do you determine par on the teepad? The par is then a kind of ad hoc thing, something you and your friends made up, but if you're going to communicate to the outside world, you have to have a baseline. A "par 3" has to be that baseline.

I'd love to see a tradition of accurately determining course pars that makes its way to good signage on the course. But that's not going to happen in disc golf, and I don't think it matters anyway. Counting throws works well enough.

But yeah, if you shoot in the high 60s at Iron Hill gold, you've scored some birdies. But that course is one of a handful that are legit gold level courses with a coherent sense of design that has par 4s and 5s as an intentional part of the design. 95% of courses have nothing like that kind of consistency of intent, so determining course par on these courses tends to be done on a whim.

 

[bhadella]

Considering all holes a par 3 won't make you a better/worse player. The goal of the game is to hole out with the lowest amount of throws. That should be your goal; not somehow getting 3 on a 950' wooded hole (yes, they do exist).

Honestly, it's pretty amazing how much difficulty people have doing simple addition. I played a four round tourament and had to correct 3 cards incorrectly totaled by the final cardholder. Pretty amazing. That said, + / - based on all 3s is a quick way to add a card and then adding that number to 27 is a quick and easy way to count up scores.

 

[gradus]

Around Charlotte, the par numbers are reasonable so I use what's posted. Many other places I've played are way off, so I decide early which method to use. (nominate this for the worst method in thread)

 

[CaptainAnhyzer]

Honestly, it's pretty amazing how much difficulty people have doing simple addition. I played a four round tourament and had to correct 3 cards incorrectly totaled by the final cardholder. Pretty amazing.

At least one card per tournament that I run comes back wrong. Sucks to penalize people but they usually double check after getting hit for the 2 strokes.

That said, + / - based on all 3s is a quick way to add a card and then adding that number to 27 is a quick and easy way to count up scores.

This.

 

[Pwingles]

My way is a pretty far out there concept.
What i do is, i start at the beginning with the first number, and i add that to the next number. Then, i just keep doing that.

 

[mashnut]

Honestly, it's pretty amazing how much difficulty people have doing simple addition. I played a four round tourament and had to correct 3 cards incorrectly totaled by the final cardholder. Pretty amazing. That said, + / - based on all 3s is a quick way to add a card and then adding that number to 27 is a quick and easy way to count up scores.

It's also amazing how confusing it is for the people who use that mental math trick (I do too) when there is a number of holes other than a multiple of 9. I've played a lot of events where they added 2-3 holes, and people continued adding their +/- score to 54 rather than 60 or 63.

 

[Future_Primitive]

Just so I can make sense of the everything is par 3 crowd, are you writing 0, +1 or -1 on your scorecard? If so, why not just write down the actual throws instead, or get an app to keep score?

Writing down +1 when you shoot a 4 on a par 4 doesn't make it a par 3. It just means you are using 3 as your baseline for keeping score. Sounds like that is what the OP is getting at anyways.

Speaking for myself and others I know in the "par 3 crowd", no.

We most often use "all-par-3" when not using a scorecard at all, to keep score in our head. Some of us also use it when totalling the scorecard---the actual numbers are written down, and total calculated by counting under (2s) and over (4s or more).

And, yes, the use of the word "par" is inappropriate. But it is a convenient, short word for what we're doing.

What David said. :hfive:

During casual rounds I simply keep score in my head as I am pretty good with numbers. Calling them all Par 3's is pretty simple math, then I just need to remember my birds and bogies to come up with the overall score at the end.

But during tournaments I always write down the actual score... 2, 3, 4, 5, etc... Never want to assume what "par" is as others may have a different concept of par. I also ask my card mates to give me their actual scores (I got a 3) and not names (I got par) when I keep score.

In the end it doesnt matter if par is 54 or 62, it only matters how many throws it took to get around the course.

 

[notapro]

I've often toyed with the idea of playing gold level courses as par 4 courses. Easier to keep track (closer to +/- 0).

But I usually blow up and stop keeping score anyway.