Par Talk

[Steve West]

An article in the WSJ about the effect of chanring the par on a hole here.

Key paragraph:

In a study of U.S. Open scoring data at two holes where par was changed from 5 to 4 without other substantial modifications—No. 2 at Pebble Beach and No. 9 at Oakmont—Elmore and Urbaczewski found that players approach the holes more aggressively and score notably better when the holes are labeled par 4s.

 

[Whirlwind Disc Golf]

I've seen similar, to a lesser degree. The aggressiveness doesn't necessarily result in better average score, because the number of major mistakes also goes up, but it does increase the percent of lower scores.

 

[Steve West]

The 37th Annual Kansas City Wide Open Presented by Discraft 2019

"All holes are par 3" works for Water Works.

For WyCo, the pars were graciously set exactly as appropriate for FPO.

 

[TAFL]

For WyCo, the pars were graciously set exactly as appropriate for FPO.

Heh. As I watched video of MPO rounds at WyCo (the county is called "The 'Dotte", round here), I was surprised at the listed par for some holes. Shoot, my rounds out there could be under par if I used those ratings!

 

[DG_player]

An article in the WSJ about the effect of chanring the par on a hole here.

Key paragraph:

It's an interesting concept, but I wouldn't put too much stock into that study.

First they found a pretty minimal difference, between 0.01 and 0.22 strokes. Second their controls are pretty limited. They make the assumption that setup difficulty is equivalent between par 5s and par 5s converted to par 4s. Anyone who watches golf, and particularly the US Open would be aware that this isn't the case. The USGA typically stretches difficulty on the US Open course to such a degree (and particularly on long par 4s), that they will have to make adjustments just based off the weather and direction of wind for a particular day, or certain holes would become essentially unplayable. Just as an example if you had the same hole labeled as a par 4 and par 5, and conditions were difficult, they would make an adjustment to pin location and teeing area if it was labelled as par 4, but would make no changes if it was labeled a par 5 and be pleased that it would essentially play as a true par 5. This could easily explain the small difference they found. Finally, I always think something is fishy when I see a statement like this: "We restrict our attention to par 5s given that the affect of technology on these holes, and the overall play, is likely to be more similar across the common set rather than across par 3s and par 4s", without any support as to why they believe this is the case. It sounds to me like what they are really saying is: "We didn't find statistical significance when comparing across all holes so we found a dataset that worked."

Furthermore anecdotally, just from my watching of golf, I would say that professional golfers are just as likely to layup on a par 4 off a bad tee shot, as they are on a par 5. They seem to understand that saving a stroke by hitting the smart shot, instead of a low percentage hero shot, is the right play whether it's the difference between a par and a bogie on a 5, or a bogie and double bogie on a 4. This might not be the case for less accomplished players, but part of what makes the top guys the top guys, is that they make the correct decisions (or have a good caddy that talks them out of doing something stupid).

 

[Steve West]

DGPT - Discraft Ledgestone Insurance Open 2019, Sunset, 7,045 ft, FPO

I'm not surprised that #6 and #14 were over-parred. There is temptation to assign higher pars to holes just because they are a little longer than other holes of the same par.

While par of 60 would have been good for 850-rated players (and thus below the skill level of FPO), hole #6 would still not be a par 5 for that skill level. (Hole #14 would be par 4 at 850, and hole #3 would become a par 4 to get total par to 60.)

 

[Steve West]

DGPT - Discraft Ledgestone Insurance Open 2019, Lake Eureka, 9,647 ft, MPO

Hole #1 was showing signs of becoming a par 3 last year. It looks like it's there now. I guess everyone has figured it out. I wonder if players would take more risk if it was par 3.

Hole #11 seems determined to be just about the longest par 2 in the world. Maybe the few trees by the tee and OB boundary help to channel the player's throws.

(As a reminder, these are based on the play of the prototypical 1000-rated player, so strength of field should not come into play.)

 

[Steve West]

Dynamic Discs Tyyni sponsored by Latitude 64, 2019

I must commend the excellent job of setting pars for the FPO field.

Maybe someday MPO will be worthy of the same effort.

 

[krupicka]

I think the best way to set par is to have Paul McBeth play the course and then add one to his score on every hole.

 

[Steve West]

I think the best way to set par is to have Paul McBeth play the course and then add one to his score on every hole.

While that system has some flaws, it wouldn't be much worse than whatever a lot of TDs do.

At Discraft's CCR Open 2019, course par for MPO was appropriate for 850-rated (Beginner) players. Interestingly, course par for FPO was actually tougher, just shy of being appropriate for 900-rated (Intermediate) players. Both pars, of course, are too high.

 

[Steve West]

Not a bad job setting par at 2019 PDGA Professional Masters Disc Golf World Championships Driven By Innova.

I'm especially pleased the the single par 5 was legit.

There was no Open division, but MP40 is good enough to use the Gold tees and gold pars.

Par for the gold courses was appropriate for a 975-rated player. At least the Gold courses weren't using Blue, White or Red par. But still, being just two parlecules off adds up to 10 throws over 5 rounds.

Here are the histograms for the 6 holes I would like to see changed.

 

[Steve West]

I'm re-thinking my cutoff percentage. I want to test it against the larger number of newer scoring distributions I have now.

My question to all is:

What's the best way to evaluate how well any method of setting par is doing its job? NOT what the definition should be, but how do we know par is doing what we want par to do?

 

[gdub58]

I'm re-thinking my cutoff percentage. I want to test it against the larger number of newer scoring distributions I have now.

My question to all is:

What's the best way to evaluate how well any method of setting par is doing its job? NOT what the definition should be, but how do we know par is doing what we want par to do?

As I said a few hundred pages ago, the question should not be focused on whether par is doing its job. The issue has always been whether the design of a hole creates a scoring distribution where a good par can be assigned. Your data simply shows that some holes can't have a good par because they are poorly designed.

As this thread has become little more than you displaying scoring data in a variety of ways, I would like to see you make suggestions as to how the hole design can be changed to make the scoring distribution more appropriate for a particular par. Those changes may be in conjunction with changing the par, or it can be a suggestion to make the hole harder or easier to bring scores in line with the current par. Doesn't matter either way. The goal should be to have a good scoring distribution around par.

So, I think the question is: "What is the range of scoring distributions that we would find acceptable?" Should we start with the notion that par should always be the most frequently achieved score, but no higher than 80%? Can we agree that the proportion of birdies should be at least 5%? 10%? And they should be no higher than say, 30%?

I'm just pulling these numbers out of the air, but I think those are the questions that we should focus on, and, once we come to a consensus on the distributions that make a well-designed hole, your analyses going forward should tell us how many holes fit the "well-designed" criteria.

Thoughts?

 

[TAFL]

As I said a few hundred pages ago, the question should not be focused on whether par is doing its job.

I think that should be one of the first questions. That doesn't preclude others. It's just that I very much want par to do the job expected of it, which is to indicate what an expert would expect to score with errorless play.

Your data simply shows that some holes can't have a good par because they are poorly designed.

This is also a very good question--is a hole designed well?

So, I think the question is: "What is the range of scoring distributions that we would find acceptable?" Should we start with the notion that par should always be the most frequently achieved score, but no higher than 80%? Can we agree that the proportion of birdies should be at least 5%? 10%? And they should be no higher than say, 30%?
...
Thoughts?

Well, I'd expect par to be the most frequently achieved score among experts who play the hole, sure. I don't think any particular percentage of par scores in play would be expected, in general use. For competition purposes, I'd expect designers/TDs to want holes that provide scoring spread, so an analysis for competitive play would include that.

I also don't think there should be a minimum percentage of birdies, nor a maximum percentage of bogies, in general. Again, I can see it being a concern for scoring spread in competitive play. I certainly don't have any problem with holes being designed with that in mind.

As for percentages with competition on mind, I reckon at least half of all experts should score par, with the rest of the scores being lower or higher in roughly equal percentages for a hole to be well-designed for competitive play. A hole playing 50-60% par, 20-25% under par, and 20-25% over par seems fine to me. I also wouldn't be offended by a hole that gave up only 2% under par scores and 38% over par. (I'm not a competitive player, though, so my ideas of suitable scoring spread may not match those of competitive pros.)

 

[Steve West]

As I said a few hundred pages ago, the question should not be focused on whether par is doing its job. The issue has always been whether the design of a hole creates a scoring distribution where a good par can be assigned. Your data simply shows that some holes can't have a good par because they are poorly designed.

As this thread has become little more than you displaying scoring data in a variety of ways, I would like to see you make suggestions as to how the hole design can be changed to make the scoring distribution more appropriate for a particular par. Those changes may be in conjunction with changing the par, or it can be a suggestion to make the hole harder or easier to bring scores in line with the current par. Doesn't matter either way. The goal should be to have a good scoring distribution around par.

So, I think the question is: "What is the range of scoring distributions that we would find acceptable?" Should we start with the notion that par should always be the most frequently achieved score, but no higher than 80%? Can we agree that the proportion of birdies should be at least 5%? 10%? And they should be no higher than say, 30%?

I'm just pulling these numbers out of the air, but I think those are the questions that we should focus on, and, once we come to a consensus on the distributions that make a well-designed hole, your analyses going forward should tell us how many holes fit the "well-designed" criteria.

Thoughts?

There is no connection between "good" distributions and easy-to-set par.

For one thing, I'm only looking at the scores of exactly 1000-rated players. The perfectly performing hole would give a certain percent of 1000-rated players a lower score and the rest a score of one more. Either score could be the more frequent one. There is no need for a third score on the other side of the most frequent score.

Also, a hole that did give out a nice bell-shaped set of scores to the exactly 1000-rated players might give out the same bell shape to all players. That wouldn't measure skill at all.

So, it is not possible to look at the scoring distributions I use to set par and see whether a hole is well-designed. Different kind of scoring distribution.

Even if we were to forget about par and look at scoring distributions across a range of ratings (or performances), there is no mathematical reason I know of which would tell us that a distribution of 10/60/30 is better than 60/30/10 or 30/10/60. They all chop the list of competitors into three ranked pieces of the same sizes. The number of different scores given across a range of skill levels matters, but not the ordering of the frequency of each score.

In fact, the interplay between various orderings of frequency will enhance the score-setting abilities of combinations of holes. Three perfect holes with 10/60/30 x 2, 3, 4 distributions will only give out 3 scores: 6, 9, and 12. But, three holes with the three different scoring distributions above would give out scores of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. The diversity is good, not any one particular nice-looking distribution.

Even if you prefer the bell-shaped curve for scores, a good hole would generate a shifting bell curve with the peak moving to higher scores as player skills get worse. At some points along this continuum, there will be a double peak, and at some points the second-most common score will be lower than the most common, and at other points the second-most common score will be higher than the most common one. It's just not possible for a hole that measures skill to give a nice bell-shaped curve with a prominent peak in the middle to every different skill level.

Having said all that, I will take your suggestion that a good par should have some scores below and above it. Take it one step further – there should be just as many scores above par as below – and we get back to the idea that a birdie should count for just as much as a bogey. So, one test will be how well the pars do this.

As for figuring out how to adjust the hole to get a desired scoring distribution, that's a few steps harder than computing par, so I'd only do that for specific holes on request. Anyway, it is beyond the scope of this thread. This thread's goal is to assign the most useful par to every possible hole.

 

[Jukeshoe]

Seriously, though, can't we just designate them all Par 3's and call it a day?

:| :| :| :|

 

[Jukeshoe]

Also, with all due respect, what the **** is a "parlecule"?

Seriously.

Quit trying to make up new terms such as "heroic" throws and "parlecules" and figuring out "perfect" throws and just go toss some frisbees through the woods and relaaaax, man.

 

[DG_player]

As I said a few hundred pages ago, the question should not be focused on whether par is doing its job. The issue has always been whether the design of a hole creates a scoring distribution where a good par can be assigned. Your data simply shows that some holes can't have a good par because they are poorly designed.

I'm not sure that's how the quality of a hole design should be gauged.

I'm convinced all this par obsession is bad for our sport. Tournaments on open courses have become almost impossible to watch. There's so much roping in an effort to make the scoring more difficult, that all you see the top arms do is throw control shot after control shot. Personally I want to watch the big arms throw big. How many people do you think would watch the PGA tour if the courses were set up so Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson hit an iron off every tee?

You can't have ball golf like scoring at the top level without making our courses boring to watch.

 

[ChrisWoj]

I'm not sure that's how the quality of a hole design should be gauged.

I think that should come from the opinions of the target group of players. If you're targeting 1000 rated players, it comes from their feels on it. If your target group is yourself, on your own property - that's where that comes from.

That can also be useful, it can help you understand, for example, what sort of hole metrics or combinations of metrics result in positive feedback from players. You can do propensity score matching when holes are changed to see if they're likely to result in positive or negative feedback from the target group of players.

 

[Steve West]

I'm not sure that's how the quality of a hole design should be gauged.

I'm convinced all this par obsession is bad for our sport. Tournaments on open courses have become almost impossible to watch. There's so much roping in an effort to make the scoring more difficult, that all you see the top arms do is throw control shot after control shot. Personally I want to watch the big arms throw big. How many people do you think would watch the PGA tour if the courses were set up so Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson hit an iron off every tee?

You can't have ball golf like scoring at the top level without making our courses boring to watch.

That's kind of the opposite of my obsession with par. I say just set the par to match the scores the hole generates. Most holes wouldn't need any change, a few would need a lower par, and even fewer would need a higher par.

You can have ball golf like scoring (relative to par) on any kind of holes - good, bad, easy, difficult, boring, or exciting - by merely setting par according to the definition. Nothing about getting par correct requires roping or any other kind of extra punishment.