Par Talk

[Steve West]

Steve, it's refreshing to see that you still do not understand par, nor do you recognize the two issues that prevent disc golf from ever have a definition of par that makes you happy.

Yep. Too bad no one has ever been able to explain it to me in a way that made sense.

Hey wait a minute! I am happy with the definition of par.

Aren't you?

 

[johnrhouck]

One hole that had the most scoring variance went 30/35/25/10. A par 4 with a specific landing zone, a mando, thick rough on one side, and OB road on the other side. That seems like a really good one.

It probably doesn't need to be said, but: we should all remember that things like thick rough, mandos, and road OB can make for better scoring spreads, but good scoring spreads do not necessarily indicate good holes.

 

[Ryan P.]

It probably doesn't need to be said, but: we should all remember that things like thick rough, mandos, and road OB can make for better scoring spreads, but good scoring spreads do not necessarily indicate good holes.

I've been thinking this for years. It's nice to see that someone legit thinks this too. Thanks John.

 

[PMantle]

Yep. Too bad no one has ever been able to explain it to me in a way that made sense.

Hey wait a minute! I am happy with the definition of par.

Aren't you?

You mean, the one where the designer puts it on the tee sign? Yup.

 

[Steve West]

You mean, the one where the designer puts it on the tee sign? Yup.

Yes, when the designer puts the score that an expert disc golfer would be expected to make on a given hole with errorless play under ordinary weather conditions on the tee sign.

 

[PMantle]

Yes, when the designer puts the score that an expert disc golfer would be expected to make on a given hole with errorless play under ordinary weather conditions on the tee sign.

I have never seen that happen.

 

[Steve West]

I have never seen that happen.

It would be hard for it not to happen. If they just put a "3" they've got about an 85% chance if hitting the right number.

What do you think they put on the tee sign? What should they put?

 

[PMantle]

It would be hard for it not to happen. If they just put a "3" they've got about an 85% chance if hitting the right number.

What do you think they put on the tee sign? What should they put?

No way. Most would be 2.

What they put on the tee sign is the par. They should put the par.

 

[Steve West]

No way. Most would be 2.

Not most. Some.

What they put on the tee sign is the par. They should put the par.

So we agree, since par is officially the score that an expert disc golfer would be expected to make on a given hole with errorless play under ordinary weather conditions (it's in the Rules of Play).

 

[PMantle]

Not most. Some.



So we agree, since par is officially the score that an expert disc golfer would be expected to make on a given hole with errorless play under ordinary weather conditions (it's in the Rules of Play).

Those are two different things.

 

[Steve West]

Just a summary of how we're doing.

 

[adamgservo]

Just a summary of how we're doing.

Just curious: Do you also have that in terms of round rating instead of Course Par? So we would just see one line and see it moving up and down around 1000. Well pretty much always below 1000, but I do see a few points were course par was better than 1000.

 

[Steve West]

Just curious: Do you also have that in terms of round rating instead of Course Par? So we would just see one line and see it moving up and down around 1000. Well pretty much always below 1000, but I do see a few points were course par was better than 1000.

Not for that same group of events, but here is a sample from sponsored A and above tiers.

It seems that very easy courses may have round ratings for legit par below 990. They tend to be birdie-fests, mostly consisting of holes that are not quite easy enough to be par 2s. (I've only recently begun to get data on easy courses, as COVID forced more electronic scoring at lesser events.) This makes it more difficult to look at only the round rating of par and say whether it was appropriate for MPO or not.

 

[Superbford]

Why does so much math have to be involved... when I thought we were talking grammatically about the meaning of par in regard to disc golf.

Now I've confused myself. Happens all the time.

 

[adamgservo]

Not for that same group of events, but here is a sample from sponsored A and above tiers.

It seems that very easy courses may have round ratings for legit par below 990. They tend to be birdie-fests, mostly consisting of holes that are not quite easy enough to be par 2s. (I've only recently begun to get data on easy courses, as COVID forced more electronic scoring at lesser events.) This makes it more difficult to look at only the round rating of par and say whether it was appropriate for MPO or not.

Thanks for posting the graph. It is clear that the only way you could raise par to 1000 on those courses that play far below 1000 is to designate a lot of par 2 holes. This thread has a lot of debate on the 2 contrasting views.

1) If par for a round should be 1000, then you will need par 2 holes on easier courses
2) Par 2 doesn't make sense because I can't get a birdie

I don't think the 2 views necessarily have to conflict with one another though. Just make a Gold level par 2 for A tiers or whatever level tournament has pros whose average rating merit a Gold level event. For example, my local course plays about 920 for par. Mostly par 3 holes. So it is basically Blue level tees. Should you play a Gold level event there? No. But if you did, you would certainly see a birdie fest. Or you drop three of the par 4 holes to par 3 and drop four or five of the par 3 holes to par 2. Now you have a 1000 rated par round. Doesn't change the way a <920 level player like myself sees the course. Got a 2 on that hole that averages <2.4 for the pros? Still a birdie for me.

 

[oldmandiscer]

Might as well make Par 2's since we got Giant baskets. Make the sport as silly as possible.

 

[DavidSauls]

Thanks for posting the graph. It is clear that the only way you could raise par to 1000 on those courses that play far below 1000 is to designate a lot of par 2 holes. This thread has a lot of debate on the 2 contrasting views.

1) If par for a round should be 1000, then you will need par 2 holes on easier courses
2) Par 2 doesn't make sense because I can't get a birdie

I don't think the 2 views necessarily have to conflict with one another though. Just make a Gold level par 2 for A tiers or whatever level tournament has pros whose average rating merit a Gold level event. For example, my local course plays about 920 for par. Mostly par 3 holes. So it is basically Blue level tees. Should you play a Gold level event there? No. But if you did, you would certainly see a birdie fest. Or you drop three of the par 4 holes to par 3 and drop four or five of the par 3 holes to par 2. Now you have a 1000 rated par round. Doesn't change the way a <920 level player like myself sees the course. Got a 2 on that hole that averages <2.4 for the pros? Still a birdie for me.

Par for a round shouldn't necessarily be rated 1000.

Par is set by hole -- the expected score. Rating is based on the course.

Think of a hole that 1000-rated players produce these results:
2 30%
3 70%
That's a par-3.

Think of an entire course of holes like that. 1000-rated players will birdie 30% of them, so get an average score of about 49. But the course par -- the sum of the hole pars -- is still 54.

 

[Steve West]

Thanks for posting the graph. It is clear that the only way you could raise par to 1000 on those courses that play far below 1000 is to designate a lot of par 2 holes. This thread has a lot of debate on the 2 contrasting views.

1) If par for a round should be 1000, then you will need par 2 holes on easier courses
2) Par 2 doesn't make sense because I can't get a birdie

I don't think the 2 views necessarily have to conflict with one another though. Just make a Gold level par 2 for A tiers or whatever level tournament has pros whose average rating merit a Gold level event. For example, my local course plays about 920 for par. Mostly par 3 holes. So it is basically Blue level tees. Should you play a Gold level event there? No. But if you did, you would certainly see a birdie fest. Or you drop three of the par 4 holes to par 3 and drop four or five of the par 3 holes to par 2. Now you have a 1000 rated par round. Doesn't change the way a <920 level player like myself sees the course. Got a 2 on that hole that averages <2.4 for the pros? Still a birdie for me.

Here's a pro tip for anyone wandering into this thread for the first time:

You only need to read the posts by DavidSauls. All of his make sense, and he has referenced every thought that makes sense.

Like David said, par does not need to be rated 1000. I used to think it should be rated around 1000. That was because when I started this, the only courses and events that had hole-by-hole scores were those that were held on courses designed for top players. On those, standardized par was generally rated from 990 to 1030. The range indicates the different levels of punishment the courses gave out for errors.

Now that everyone is using PDGA Live Scoring, I can look at a lot of events held on smaller courses. On those, par can be rated quite low. The reason is what David said, and it can be even more extreme than that. These courses might have one or two par 2 holes, but there generally aren't enough holes that should be called par 2 to raise the round rating of par up to 1000.

(Re-labeling the so-called par 4s and 5s on these short courses is usually needed to bring par down to standard.)

I've actually stopped looking at just the round ratings to see if par looks OK. However, it is still true that the farther below 1000 the round rating for par is, the more likely it is that par is too high.

For the other point, the definition of par does not mandate that birdies be possible. Set par as the score that an expert disc golfer would be expected to make on a given hole with errorless play under ordinary weather conditions, and let the number of birdies, bogeys, eagles, etc. fall where they may. Otherwise, birdie, bogey and eagle won't really mean anything.

 

[DavidSauls]

I think of the variance between total par and SSA on a course as being a thumbnail of how difficult the course is.

Assuming par is well-set -- or, at least, consistently set -- the closer the par gets to SSA, the more difficult the course. Fewer birdies, more bogeys (or worse).

We have two overlapping layouts at our private course, and there's no doubt that one is noticeably more challenging than the other. The pars are probably blue-level pars, not of great importance to us because we're not hosting elite events, but at least they're consistently set by the same people. The total pars are 62 and 61 (not much difference); SSAs are 58.5 and about 54 ("about", because there have been no rated rounds since changes were made). The difference in the differences, well describes the difference in how the courses play.

*

I also thought I'd throw this fallacious formula in somewhere, just because it's been rattling around in my mind about the Par-2 debate:

Par = Expected Score = 2 = Birdie

 

[Steve West]

Im willing to change my mind if you can somehow make a Par 2 exciting.
Basically before a shot is thrown, no chance for birdie. It would be more of a "dont mess up" hole instead of a scoring hole.

True, for any hole that should be called a par 2, there is almost no chance of gaining a throw on the competition. However, that's true no matter what you would call the par. Might as well call it what it is. That way, everyone - including the spectators - will know the situation.