gdub58
Birdie Member
Okay, so ball golf has never or very rarely adjusted it's holes or par for any reason.
Has golf ever adjusted any of its elements to accommodate advancing or changing play in any way?
Private courses will make changes mostly based upon the wishes of their boards. When I was 14 I worked for a greenskeeper who had to cut down a perfectly healthy tree because too many members were hitting it.
Daily fee courses are in decline and are the least likely to make changes. The ones that survive have either great designs that don't need changes or have lower greens fees and can't afford to make them.
Tournament courses (public and private) will make adjustments based on results, often mid-tournament. There are many options available - changing pin positions, mowing (or not), moving tees - to adjust the difficulty between rounds. More significant changes like adding bunkers, altering green complexes, etc. to impact play does happen as well but not all that often. There are a few cases I'm aware of (including one at Augusta) where large trees have been planted specifically to prevent pros from taking shortcuts (a la Simon Lizotte).
These changes are often made to get scores closer to par. That's what we are trying to do in disc golf, and tools like Steve's method are a great resource to identify holes that should have some changes in design to be more in alignment with their assigned par.
So, perhaps my divergence with Steve is largely semantic - I reject the notion that par is incorrect. Par is what the TD sets - full stop. I prefer to think of the design as incorrect for the assigned par. When Steve uses his method to say that a hole's par was incorrect, that's results oriented thinking - not the best way to achieve the end goal.
If the TD sets a par on a hole and the data shows too many non-par results, what changes would we recommend to the hole to make it play closer to par? This is the discussion I want to have the next time Steve posts results at the end of a tournament.