Teach me about "par"

[Allsport1313]

Thanks Frank, good responses

 

[thechamp]

i guess reading comprehension isn't a big thing in your part of PA.

Thanks for meaningfully contributing to the conversation. My reading comprehension's just fine, thanks. The post implied that the PDGA currently uses the word green (disc golfers use it all the time). The use of the phrase "commonly used definition of par" doesn't say golf's commonly used definition.

FWIW I've said elsewhere I don't like the use of the word "green" in disc golf - as in "that hole has a fast green" to mean an area around the basket that slants significantly. In golf it has a clear definition and rules that pertain to it. In disc golf there's no such thing in the rules as "the green" or "the putting green" so I have previously said disc golfers should just call it "the circle" or something like that.

I didn't say that the PDGA uses the word green.
Sorry I didn't know that there are other sports that use the term par. I don't know why people fight it so much but we are in fact playinig golf, we use discs, but it is golf. Steady Ed could of called it frisbee chain chuck and all drives could equal 6 grams and putts could equal 2 ounces and the first person to a pound in less then 14 chain chuck courts wins.

 

[iacas]

FWIW in golf we've seen discussions, typically around the U.S. Open or PGA and occasionally (not often) around the British Open when a par 72 course is converted to a par 70 or 71 and includes, say, a 500-yard par four hole. Some faction of golfers will say "that's ridiculous and the USGA (or whomever) is just trying to protect par" while others will say "who cares what par is - just shoot the best score possible and move on."

That doesn't change the fact that the difference between a bogey and a par and a birdie is often quite a big deal psychologically, as some have said above. If you get a 5 on a 500-yard par four, that's a bogey. If you get a 4 on that hole, you've survived it, but it's still something about which you can be proud, even if the scoring average for the day is 4.8 (so you have still picked up almost a full stroke on the field with your "par"). The opposite's true of calling the slightly longer 550-yard hole a par five: if you get a 4 you feel okay but not great about yourself, because the scoring average is probably 4.3, but if you get a "par" five you probably feel like you've bogeyed the hole.

It's a very weird thing. A 5 on the 550-yard hole is better than a 5 on the 510-yard hole simply because of the par designations. The reason, according to those who have studied it, is that golfers who get into trouble off the tee on the par four feel the need to get the ball close to the green, or try to. They take on unnecessary risk because they're supposed to take two putts for their par. Call almost the same hole a par five and golfers will pitch out to the fairway or get the ball to a good wedge yardage, then often hit it close and "save" a birdie.

It's an extension of the idea of how loss avoidance works in golf. Consistently golfers miss more birdie putts from the same exact distances and locations on greens than they do par putts. If they miss their birdie putt and tap in for par, they feel they haven't "lost" anything. But they damn well don't want to bogey, so they try harder on their par putts. It's one stroke all the same, but the internal nature of "avoiding loss" is more important to us than "gaining."

And that speaks to why accurate pars are so critical. Imagine a 450-foot hole in disc golf. It's not super wide open, but it's got a few bends such that you can't just wing it there in one. It takes a good player two throws to have a look at the basket with a putter and an average player three throws. It could be a par four or a par five.

Depending on the setup of this hole, the same hole, you'd see scoring averages change when you call it a par four or a par five. If you are near the green in three, you're more likely to miss the 20-foot putt if the hole is a par five than if it's a par four.

Accurate, good pars should test the best and apply a reasonable standard. I think I heard Greg Barsby say on a DGTL Radio show that it's ridiculous that disc golfers are shooting -40, -60, even -100 (Feldberg somewhere IIRC). It makes the sport look like a joke. If everyone is birdieing every hole, the drama goes down. The excitement of a birdie is diminished. Birdie becomes the new par. Boredom reigns.

I've heard some people talking about how putting is too easy (not here, necessarily). Perhaps that's a big part of it. I don't think you can just keep stretching out holes, because in golf even most hackers can "reach" the holes. The trouble is in getting it into the hole in two putts. PGA Tour pros make only 50% of their putts from 7'10". That's the 50/50 spot. In disc golf, where would the 50/50 range be? It's probably outside of the circle! That's a pretty big area, and perhaps serves to make "par" a little higher than it should be in golf.

Perhaps disc golf relies too much on luck - it may be the very nature of playing THROUGH trees instead of limiting them to the sides of the fairways as we see in golf. But either way, something tells me that "par" is too easily attained in disc golf when we have beginners getting a few of them per round and pros birdieing almost every hole and finishing third in an event. The answer is not to make holes par 2s or to make everything a par 3 - it's just to design better, fairer holes. Sometimes that will mean more length (and fewer trees - emphasizing skill and de-emphasizing luck), and other times it might mean almost the opposite - more trees on shorter holes as a way of providing a clear and defined fairway and more trouble OFF the fairway. A 400-foot hole could easily be a par four if you had to throw 240 feet to the corner of a fairway, then turn 90° to the right and throw another 160'. The pro will birdie a good bit of the time, while the beginner will throw it into the junk one or two times and struggle to make a 5.

/rambling

P.S. chainsmoker, I disagree that you're playing golf. IMO disc golf has borrowed entirely too much of the language and whatnot from golf and I think the sport would have done better to form its own identity and not confuse things by using so many of the terms from golf. One could probably argue that miniature golf has more in common (same equipment, same "target," etc.) with golf than disc golf.

 

[Frank Delicious]

Accurate, good pars should test the best and apply a reasonable standard. I think I heard Greg Barsby say on a DGTL Radio show that it's ridiculous that disc golfers are shooting -40, -60, even -100 (Feldberg somewhere IIRC). It makes the sport look like a joke. If everyone is birdieing every hole, the drama goes down. The excitement of a birdie is diminished. Birdie becomes the new par. Boredom reigns.

I've heard some people talking about how putting is too easy (not here, necessarily). Perhaps that's a big part of it. I don't think you can just keep stretching out holes, because in golf even most hackers can "reach" the holes. The trouble is in getting it into the hole in two putts. PGA Tour pros make only 50% of their putts from 7'10". That's the 50/50 spot. In disc golf, where would the 50/50 range be? It's probably outside of the circle! That's a pretty big area, and perhaps serves to make "par" a little higher than it should be in golf.

I agree with everything you said but this stood out to me. Disc golf has entered a phase where there are a dozen or so "super-pros" out there that can just break courses. Think about how ball golf was when Tiger and a handful of other guys really started hitting the ball longer and breaking courses forcing a lot of courses to move tees back, narrow up landing areas, letting greens get really fast, etc. Ball golf courses adapted faster to this new class of players because the courses they played on had money to re-design. Disc golf courses usually don't have the resources to re-design holes in a big way which is why you are seeing those crazy scores. People are thinking about making putting harder because it is one of the easier ways to make a hole harder without having to re-design it. You put a bullseye basket in there and all of a sudden the hole plays a half stroke to a stroke harder in a tourney.

I think we will see the same kind of progression that ball golf had when they went through this phase. A bunch of other pros or high level players will also raise their game and eventually courses are forced to adapt. Of course I think the whole process will be much slower than the ball golf one was.

 

[thechamp]

I'm not getting any work done.
There is a ton of stuff going on in this thread now, but I do think I am playing golf.
Some of the stuff in the last post by Iacas I agree with and some I don't but I do take exception to iacas saying that there is too much luck in disc golf. If you play courses that luck plays a major role I'm sorry but you are not playing good courses. Trees in fairways of well designed courses are selectively left in place because discs can be made to fly on many different lines and it shows skill to be able to hit those lines.
I am lucky because I don't live too far from Idlewild which is one of the best courses in the country.

 

[Frank Delicious]

There are a lot of bad courses out there.

 

[PMantle1]

A 400-foot hole could easily be a par four if you had to throw 240 feet to the corner of a fairway, then turn 90° to the right and throw another 160'.

 

[iacas]

I do take exception to iacas saying that there is too much luck in disc golf. If you play courses that luck plays a major role I'm sorry but you are not playing good courses.

I'm basing this opinion not off the courses I've played, but off the tournaments I've watched online. Two players throw and one hits a tree and goes 50 yards left, the other hits two inches farther right on the tree, barely nicks it, and that's enough to correct its line and it ends up parked. All from discs that had just missed the fairway by a little. IMO disc golf lacks the general feeling of graduated penalties found more easily in golf.

Those two throws would be one thing if they occasionally happened. Ruling luck out entirely is pointless. Golf has luck too. But luck should be minimized, and right now, IMO disc golf has too much luck factor, particularly on shots that don't hit that ten-foot gap 200 feet off the tee. A disc that just misses it is sometimes MORE likely to bang off a tree and end up in bad shape than a disc that misses it widely and somehow finds a few holes and ends up in good shape.

Plus, what Frank said. There probably ARE a lot of bad courses out there, which unfortunately makes luck a bigger factor in disc golf than it probably should be.

 

[Frank Delicious]

luck in ball golf is smaller because it is usually the way the ball bounces once it lands or if you just managed to clear a bunker or if the ball releases to the pin or not. Unless you are way off course on a drive/fairway shot luck doesn't come into play halfway through the flight of the ball too often, more at the end of the flight.

 

[keltik1]

I'm gonna stand by the statement I made earlier. We need to just use the top two lines of Chuck's Chart and be done with it.

 

[JR]

These days some do just wing it to 500'+ above every obstacle even with a hyzer. That was something the commentators were talking of during the Discgolfplanet.tv coverage of the previous Memorial. Discs fly farther each year and what pros and ams reach is in a state of flux now.

 

[JR]

I do not understand what you are trying to convey.

For a competent player par is a futile term. They should not aim at getting a birdie or a par.Par is futile you don't aim to gain par or birdie on any hole really. you aim for the best repeatable result. If you attack too hard chances are you'll be bit at one time or another and play below your skill. That is not a way to win. Be all you can be on any given throw do not try to be more than you are if there is risk. If you modify your shot planning to get any score you should be good enough to reach it realistically and know what the others are likely to shoot. That is the projected par before a round that you have to beat to lead. If you don't aim for the lead but take some safety margin and are consistent enough to be competent anyway some that charge too hard will likely mess up and be behind you and those that are hot are ahead of you. For a single round. There are many rounds in many events so not leading by taking a sensible good score might not be so bad if the guy that was hot. Charging hard each time might not be doable in the next rounds. If they are you're talking of elite level performance and how many can challenge the McBeths, Shustericks, Locastros, Feldbergs, Wysockis and others that are known to string multiple better than world class rounds per event in a row? Good luck shooting 1040+ rated rounds for the entire event. More power to you if you succeed. For the rest of the majority of us goal setting should be different. Even those elite guys that get hot streaks at times for a few months in a row cannot get 3-4 top rounds per event in indefinitely.

Climo once said in an interview that he does not play against the other players he plays against the course. It is nice if you're that good. Many battle against themselves before they can start to attack the course. You should not try to score any arbitrary number and modify how you throw. You should try to get the best risk/reward analysis throw on any given throw from the tee to the basket. If you banged first available you don't try to throw 600' if your max is 400'. When you are competent shooting the best risk/reward option is good enough to challenge the opposition too. Finals in good attacking places or after seeing the opposition failing might be a good time to make a move whether it is to lay up or attack hard whichever way gives the best chance of getting an advantage in score. There are few other times to break to rule of best average risk/reward option for every throw. There are hundreds of throws in larger tournaments so any one shot will not usually totally ruin the event. It might kill your chances of a victory playing against the elite. How many of us do or realistically expects to win against them? And do you expect them to throw better or worse than they can AKA playing within their limits based on a changed par? If they don't play according to par or birdie at all to start with?

 

[PMantle1]

That's no different than golf, and par and golf will never be separated. I think we agree on principals, but not on conclusions.

 

[thechamp]

I'm gonna stand by the statement I made earlier. We need to just use the top two lines of Chuck's Chart and be done with it.

If we have to use the chart I totally agree

There are a lot of bad courses out there.

true

 

[Frank Delicious]

JR par is pretty important and a good evaluation tool for players to gauge their skill level.

 

[JR]

That's no different than golf, and par and golf will never be separated. I think we agree on principals, but not on conclusions.

I'm not a golfer and as such can't comment on how important it is there i was talking of disc golfers.

Frank i wrote in an earlier post that the way i see it par is only useful for up and coming players as a yardstick and i have no problem with it whatsoever.

 

[keltik1]

 

[JR]

Grinz!

 

[Frank Delicious]

That's no different than golf, and par and golf will never be separated. I think we agree on principals, but not on conclusions.

I'm not a golfer and as such can't comment on how important it is there i was talking of disc golfers.

Frank i wrote in an earlier post that the way i see it par is only useful for up and coming players as a yardstick and i have no problem with it whatsoever.

Well that is my fault as I only really read 1 out every 4 posts of yours. sorry.

 

[Widdershins]

Par is a cryptid that is reputed to inhabit frolf holes in courses across the USA and, indeed, the world. It is similar to supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next. Popular interest and belief in par has varied since it was brought to the frolf world's attention in approximately 1964. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal and extremely flimsy, with minimal and much-disputed photographic material and pseudo-mathematical "proofs" of its existence.

The most common speculation among true believers is that par represents a vestige of a line of long-surviving red herrings of the genus chuckkennedia. The scientific community regards par as a modern-day myth, and explains methods of "calculating" or "measuring" it as a mix of hoaxes, extreme mathematical ignorance, and wishful thinking. Despite this, it remains one of the most famous - and perfect - examples of pseudoscience, and is revered by scores of frolfers the world over. The mythical creature has been affectionately referred to by the nickname "Three" for nearly 50 years.

:lol: :lol: :lol: