Ask Chuck Kennedy

[TobbeF]

I see, thanks a lot

[MTChristian]

Howdy Chuck,
I'm sure this is covered somewhere, but to whom should i direct an email about a mistake in an already-official tournament results (the payout starts a spot below where it should, so the prize $ attributed to everyone is off...looks like 1st won $0, 2nd won the top $ amount, etc.) I'm guessing it's either Mr. Gentry or the TD...

http://www.pdga.com/tournament-resul...nID=10465#Open

Thanks for any help.

Christian

[cgkdisc]

Gentry is the one to contact. dgentry at pdga.com

[Dana]

Chuck- I've noticed that nearly all of my rounds this past year were rated higher when unofficial, am I imagining things or are most or all official round ratings dropping a few points?

[cgkdisc]

Imagining things overall. Unofficial ratings only use the current rounds scores. Official ratings combine the rounds on the same layout. Sometimes the average rating of the props also drops when rounds are combined which can cause the ratings to go down a little.

[Dana]

Interesting.....I still think that 9/10 of my ratings have dropped from unofficial to official. For instance, the unofficial Vibram results had me AVG'ing 995 but once it went official the AVG dropped to 985.

[pg043]

Hi Chuck,

http://www.pdga.com/tournament-resul...ratings=1#Open

I think that this td report may not have been correctly filled in to show that all am groups (including advanced) played a different layout. It wasn't much different, but they played two shorter tees on a couple of big over the water shots. But the ams have the same rating for the same score as the pros. Is that possible, given that they played an easier (albeit only slightly) layout?

Thanks

[cgkdisc]

According to the TD report, all divisions played the same layout each round but each round was a different layout. If that's not correct, the TD needs to contact, Dave Gentry for a correction.

[Yeti]

Originally Posted by Dana

Interesting.....I still think that 9/10 of my ratings have dropped from unofficial to official. For instance, the unofficial Vibram results had me AVG'ing 995 but once it went official the AVG dropped to 985.

This system works on averages so players that play in tournaments that have tee times most likely don't have a true reflection of their round. Chuck doesn't believe that wind, morning dew, air coolness affects the outcome if enough scores are averaged together. You and other players know the difference when the wind picks up in the afternoon, the grass skips or discs grip better when grass dries etc. These little factors may only add up to one rating point or throw/stroke like you point out in your 995 to 985, but those strokes do make differences. If you were off by one stroke each round after four rounds you may have very well went from 1st to 4th. That boils down to quite a bit of disparage when you look at losing 10 rating points each round over the span of 30-110 rounds that many serious players are rated on in any given period.

Another impact for you is that the more players play a course track the better they get at it. This makes a negative impact on the player that rocks the first round or two, but then loses ratings points because by round 3 and 4 most players (especially lower rated players) are playing the track smarter. When averaged, those first couple hot rounds are bound to come down a bit.

In the end there is not enough reflection of round conditions by tournament directors so the ratings team is forced to just average everything out in hopes of reducing the negative impact. Rounds with tee times should never be averaged all together even based on perfect conditions. There is even a psychological difference between an early morning round and waiting all day long for a 3:00 pm tee off.

[cgkdisc]

While all of those effects are valid, they never mean players will get lower ratings overall. All of those effects are included in the average official ratings. For example, if dew and wind boost the unofficial ratings by 16 points in the morning versus playing the same layout in the afternoon, the player gets maybe an unofficial 1016 in the morning and a 1000 in the afternoon for the same score. When the event is processed officially, the player gets two 1008 rounds. No rating points are lost.

[Yeti]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

Imagining things overall. Unofficial ratings only use the current rounds scores. Official ratings combine the rounds on the same layout. Sometimes the average rating of the props also drops when rounds are combined which can cause the ratings to go down a little.

Dana was talking about Vibram and tee times. So yeah, your explanation makes sense. The guy that plays well in the wind gets deducted from a 1016 round to a 1008 round when the days am and pm rounds from 8:00am---3:00pm all get averaged out. Enough of these over the long haul tends to make a difference. Dana loses a stroke a round over the course of a three round tournament.

We wouldn't feel right about adding three strokes onto his final tournament tally just because he didn't fall within the average by artificially shooting better in worse conditions.

How about the ratings comments over on the Skylands threads? What is a perfect rated round and how do we even compare SSA 60 courses with 66 SSA let alone a 60-66 to an SSA 70+

[cgkdisc]

The ratings process is not accurate enough to differentiate between round SSAs that are less than about 2 shots apart. In other words, we don't know if an SSA of 56 in the morning and 54 in the afternoon on the same layout among the same pool of players is due to more wind in the morning or just normal stats variance. As a player you might feel the difference but we have to go with the known stats accuracy and average the numbers.

Regarding tee time rounds, I'd prefer to just never provide ratings at all due to the issues you bring up regarding differences from morning to evening. But players want them so we do what we can and sometimes see situations where split round SSAs are generated. Note that the ball golfers are affected just as much with unbalanced weather factors. Their world rankings depend on finish position which can be significantly affected by their draw and whether they get the wind, rain, soft greens, etc.

[cgkdisc]

How about the ratings comments over on the Skylands threads? What is a perfect rated round and how do we even compare SSA 60 courses with 66 SSA let alone a 60-66 to an SSA 70+

We don't compare the record rounds. They are compared within their SSA categories: 60-65.99 and 66+

[JohnLambert]

Check out End of the Trail 2010 results. Although the results are in order, for some reason the "Place" column is wrong on many divisions. I've tried many variations of uploading to try and find what I am doing wrong but for the life of me I can't find the problem. Hope you've seen this before and have some idea what I'm forgetting to do. Thanks.

P.S. I've created all the layouts online and assigned each round and divisions to their layouts.

[cgkdisc]

Since the volunteer programmer who did the scoring display hasn't been involved with the PDGA for quite a while now, we don't know some of the inner workings. However, two things that we've noticed is you sometimes get weird results if you don't Edit and use the Default Layout as one of your courses. Also, if you use the Finals check box, it can be good to also have a Semi-Final by just calling Round 3 your Semi even though everyone plays it.

[JohnLambert]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

Since the volunteer programmer who did the scoring display hasn't been involved with the PDGA for quite a while now, we don't know some of the inner workings. However, two things that we've noticed is you sometimes get weird results if you don't Edit and use the Default Layout as one of your courses. Also, if you use the Finals check box, it can be good to also have a Semi-Final by just calling Round 3 your Semi even though everyone plays it.

I think I've tried everything, including all your suggestions. Maybe I should rewrite the scripts for posting unofficial results.

[cgkdisc]

The time is coming up soon to be able to do that. The next phase of behind the scenes database work is almost ready so that some updates like improving uploading scores and display process will be possible.

[JohnLambert]

Any other TD's have any suggestions I might try? I see the other tournaments posted results with a finals round and their results seem to be posted normally which makes me think it could be something I'm doing.

[cgkdisc]

Did youi have pool assignments at some point during the event? Sometimes that will create funky Place values. Now that the event is shown as "Complete" the program also may not act the same.

[JohnLambert]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

Did youi have pool assignments at some point during the event? Sometimes that will create funky Place values. Now that the event is shown as "Complete" the program also may not act the same.

No, no pools or anything fishy. I want to say I uploaded the results exactly the same I have been for the last few years. Just went funky this time.

When I upload and it gets to the tiebreaker screen it says 7 people are tied for 1st in the open division. The people range from the actual first place winner, Pal McBeth, to the last place finisher. It makes no sense, the total scores don't match each other, except in the instances of actual ties.

I'll probably have to wait until the results become official, hopefully they'll get cleared up then.

[Cooper]

Quick questions for clarification.

I am registered as an Am currently and just cashed in an open event at my home course's C-tier. There is an A-tier coming up in the area and I'm interested in playing but can't afford the open fee and honestly probably stand a better chance in advanced. My rating currently stands at 958. Am I allowed to sign up and play advanced? From some of the documents that I've seen that is the impression that I get but I'm just trying to figure out some of my options. Thanks!

[cgkdisc]

Yes, you can continue to win cash and still occasionally enter Advanced as long as your rating stays under 970.

[keithjohnson]

BUT.......what happens on Jan 1st, 2011 that WILL change for him?

I'll let you answer as it is the ask Chuck thread

[cgkdisc]

You mean he will need to renew at the Pro PDGA member rate of $75 rather than the Am rate of $50?

[ishkatbible]

looks like a tournament i was in back in april was finally turned in... even thuogh it missed a couple of ratings updates, would it be included in the next one?

i did very well, for me, and am one of those who is concerned about ratings. i'm currently allowed to play rec and keep kicking myself in the butt for "i would have won rec, but don't want to be a bagger" i'm just trying to get to a point where i "can't" play rec anymore. that way i don't have a choice

[cgkdisc]

Yes, once the tournament results get turned in, they will be in the next update. The ratings will also be inserted in the correct date sequence. In other words, those ratings will be "older" than any newer rounds you might have that have been rated since then in terms of which ones might get double weighted.

[cgkdisc]

Had a few email questions sent to the PDGA Ratings Contact in the past day that ended up in my spam folder and got deleted. If that might have been your question, please resend it and I'll check the spam folder.

[Kette_Master]

Can one use a Super Class disc (eg. Zephyr) in a "regular" PDGA sanctioned event?

[gotcha]

Click link to see list of PDGA approved golf discs:

http://www.pdga.com/files/documents/...scs_090310.pdf

[cgkdisc]

Can one use a Super Class disc (eg. Zephyr) in a "regular" PDGA sanctioned event?

Yes. All Super Class discs meet the standards for use in regular beveled disc events.