Equalizer courses

[dave_marchant]

The results from the Points Bonanza in Charlotte this weekend have gotten me thinking and have gotten me a little confused.

At the new Reedy Stout layout of the old Reedy Creek course the top 4 scores in Open and Adv came in like this:

PRO:
103, 104, 108, 109, 109 - scores
981, 1002, 998, 956, 977 – corresponding players’ ratings

ADV:
103, 105, 108, 109
924, 920, 928, 926

Reedy Stout is a tightly wooded course with new tee pads on an old course. It require funky angles and accurate throws and punishment for errors.

I realize that one 2-round PDGA tournament (and a corresponding 2-round club event that had similar results) is not a good statistical sample, but it appears that there is something about this design that is an equalizer giving lower rated players a good chance to score the same as players who would on average beat them by 5-6 strokes per round (according their player ratings) elsewhere.

Anyone care to speculate what we are observing here and the causes of this?

[dave_marchant]

By the way, the new Sugaw Creek course is a similar style course that has a similar trend (but only about ½ as pronounced). Results from the Points Bonanza:

PRO:
98, 99, 99, 100
1002, 972,991, 974

ADV:
102, 104, 104, 109
920, 912, 924, 916

[MTL21676]

my thoughts based on reading this and playing the course and the tournament...

its a kind of course where any 920+ player could win an open tournament with top rated players playing.

Courses like that have many many dueces, but they are very tough to get, and there is not too much punishing trouble on the course.

The courses where pros seem to kill the am field are courses like Cedar Hills (easier birdies) and Renny (very very tough courses).

[MTL21676]

my thoughts based on reading this and playing the course and the tournament...

its a kind of course where any 920+ player could win an open tournament with top rated players playing.

Courses like that have many many dueces, but they are very tough to get, and there is not too much punishing trouble on the course.

The courses where pros seem to kill the am field are courses like Cedar Hills (easier birdies) and Renny (very very tough courses).

[ck34]

Let's say you have a dogleg hole that is 200 feet to the corner and 200 more feet to the pin. If a player can only throw 220 feet, they have the chance to score the same as a player who can throw 400 feet. Also, if the fairway is not wide enough for a skilled player to successfully execute consistently, they are not likely to progress down the fairway too much better than a lesser skilled player. These are two ways a hole can be designed to compress scoring range between higher and lower skilled players. Reedy has many wooded holes as I recall. Perhaps these types of situations ended up on too many holes?

[MTL21676]

a few holes are tight of the tee, most are just longer versions of the original shots....there was really nothing hard - 2 hard holes (both par 4's) and everything else seemed rather simple to duece

[ck34]

Longer versions of good holes that had a 2.6-2.8 scoring average before can turn into holes with less scoring distribution by adding 50-75 feet so the scoring average moves to 2.9-3.1.

[MTL21676]

which is basically what I said in my first post explaining why the scores were similar....anyone can birdie just about ever hole, but you are gonna par most of them

[Parkntwoputt]

which is basically what I said in my first post explaining why the scores were similar....anyone can birdie just about ever hole, but you are gonna par most of them

I highly dislike these styles of courses. There are many of them in the south, primarily southern Alabama and Mississippi. It is all about who gets the most birdies that day, they are courses where if they allowed the PDGA onto, the SSA would be between 38 and 42. Most of them are littered (sp) with trees and it is about knowing the 30ft high hole in the trees to reach with an overhand Valkrie shot, which is unseen from the teepad by non-locals.

I really enjoy courses that seperate the highly skilled players from the rest of the pack. Courses that don't reward luck, but skillfully executed shots. And par threes that are truly real par 3's. In a lot of courses here, there are only a few holes where you would expect a 4 after a bad tee shot, most holes can be easily saved. To me, these "equalizer courses" are not golf courses, it is absolutely no fun. Maybe you would understand if you only had these types of courses around you, you guys in NC/SC and the rest of the country are blessed with challenging courses. Actually Alabama is getting it's first +54 par course this summer. The UAH course in Huntsville is being moved, and redesigned by Lavonne Wolfe. At 7200ft, all but 2 holes will have treacherous OB and par is going to be between 62 and 66. It is a blessing to serious tournament players around the area.

Treacherous OB is just as bad. I thought you wanted to minimize the luck factor!

[Parkntwoputt]

I guess what you define as treacherous is what makes a difference.

Take for instance a hole we have on our course. 370ft, 30ft drop in elevation. Most advanced and pro players throw a sweeping anhyzer with an overstable midrange. The difficult part of the hole, is that the pin sits 15ft from the edge of a 5ft drop off into a creek. Go for the pin and risk skipping OB, end up too short and your approach can go OB. Or if you are 30ft from the pin, it makes that birdie really tempting but devastating if missed. It is not about luck, just smart playing and accuracy off the drive. I would call this treacherous, but definately not luck.

[eddie_ogburn]

I hate holes that have OB inside of the circle. There should always be some sort of "green" 10 meters around the pin to give players a fair landing zone. If you throw and park a hole but your disc happens to hit a root and roll 10ft. away, you shouldnt have to worry about it going OB.

[Plankeye]

Hole 7 at Reedy Stout has OB 6-7 feet in front of the basket. In the first round I landed right at the edge on the tee side of OB, but I didn't want to take the chance of missing the putt and having it roll backwards in the OB.

Second round one of the guys in my group landed nicely but it skipped OB. He missed his circle three putt.

[dave_marchant]

Longer versions of good holes that had a 2.6-2.8 scoring average before can turn into holes with less scoring distribution by adding 50-75 feet so the scoring average moves to 2.9-3.1.

IMO, this is a contributing factor at Reedy Stout. I will need to look at the scoring spreads to analyze this aspect further. The new tee pads for the most part were pushed back 30-70 feet and offset to give a new look to the fairway (3 holes got new basket positions and 2 got radically new/different fairways).

At 15 years of age, Reedy is an older course. It needed this upgrade since due to trees dying and faiways widening (and disc technology improving) the course was no longer tournament worthy. Birdie fest, deuce or die, a little too boring etc.

But...I think there is another equalizing factor that has unfortunately and maybe unintentionally been designed in…….Luck. This is kind of what MTL is saying. This is what seems right intuitively, but it would need to be confirmed. The problem is that there is not the “classic” luck designed in – you know, the hole that is 320’ long and at 280’ there are a bunch of trees spaced at 8’ apart guarding all routes to the basket. I am at a loss to find a way to describe acceptable luck factors (in the forms of possibility of bad bounces etc) and distinguish it from blind luck.

This is the course:
**A: 7 Easyish birdies with small chance of a 4 – no real danger (1, 7?, 9, 10, 12, 16, 17)
**B: 5 Easyish birdies with a good chance of a 4 – early kicks will be punished bad (2, 3, 4?, 5, 8)
**C: 5 Birdie-able with miracle drives or if you sink 60-100’ “putt”s. 3’s happen a lot, 4’s are normal, 5’s happen. Miracles are due to tricky navigation rather than length since you can reach these holes if you can throw 350’ (6, 13?, 14, 15, 18)
**D: 1 “True” par 4 (#11) . Pseudo dogleg with small landing zone and then a 180’ gauntlet. Any score from 3-5 is reasonable and acceptable for any Adv or Pro. 6’s happen, but that is a combination of bad luck and poor execution.

What I think happens on a course like this is that the 4’s in B and the potential for punishment (4’s and 5’s) in C are randomly spread across all skill ranges. So, the leaves 6-7 holes (group A) for the higher rated players to demonstrate their skill. And they are more finesse holes than anything else. And, I am not convinced that skills in finesse is how most high rated players became high rated players.

[dave_marchant]

I say all of that about the specifics of Reedy, not to debate the specific merits/demerits of Reedy Stout, but to get to what I said the last sentence:

I would like to think that finesse and scrambling for par saves should be skills that separate top rated players from lower rated players, but I am starting to think that this is not usually the case.

My main questions here are these:
1) Are skills in finesse and scrambling for par saves (creative “outs” and longer putts from odd stances) skills that are “valued” and rewarded in the numbers that typically go into Top pro’s ratings?
2) Are equalizer courses like these considered worthy of top level tournament play?
3) From a course design perspective, how does one philosophically separate acceptable forms of luck and unacceptable luck?

[ck34]

1) Are skills in finesse and scrambling for par saves (creative “outs” and longer putts from odd stances) skills that are “valued” and rewarded in the numbers that typically go into Top pro’s ratings?

Despite the many places for luck/punishment on the Paw Paw courses (which is a stated design goal of the owner), the final results of events there, show players pretty much ranked by descending rating, little different from most other courses. So, skill with forehand rollers, trick shots, saves from odd locations and unusual putting stances do pay off. The primary thing luck does is juggle the finish order of players who have similar ratings, i.e. among four players rated around 960, they are still likely to finish close to each other but luck will have more to do with their final finish positions than might be the case on a more conventional course.

[dave_marchant]

Fair enough. That is what I would expect from course where there is bone fide luck and punitive elements built in (I classify this kind of luck as bad). Over time, good kicks and bad kicks will average out.

I am taking your comments on Paw Paw's design philosophy as saying that blind luck is an acceptable design feature (although probably not preferable).

BUT….this is not what I am observing at Reedy Stout. That is why I am asking question #3: From a course design perspective, how does one philosophically separate acceptable forms of luck and unacceptable luck?

Care to take a crack at that question? Or am I even asking the right question?

Maybe the kind of luck at Paw Paw that I call bad is not actually bad from a design philosophy standpoint.

Maybe it is the other kind of luck I am grappling with defining that is really the kind of luck that turns Reedy Stout into an equalizer course. And…that leads me to question 2: is this equalizer phenomenon a good thing or not?

[ck34]

2: is this equalizer phenomenon a good thing or not?

Certainly not ideal. Depending on the scoring average of a "good" hole, it's almost a certainty that either adding or subtracting about 85 feet will turn it into one of Houck's dumb holes where the scoring distribution narrows and comes close to a round number like 3 or 4 and scores do not spread as much. You see it happen in exactly these situations where courses are upgraded and the holes are modified based on what's possible in terms of space, but the hole stats are not taken into account.

It's possible to take a course that did a great job spreading scores, even if it's a birdie fest, and add 50-80 ft to each hole and wreck it for spreading scores. Much better to add 100-160 feet to a hand picked set of half the holes.

Just because players are throwing farther with new plastic, doesn't mean they are throwing a specific distance more accurately nor putting better than 10-15 years ago. In other words, the scoring average for a reachable hole, say 265 feet, won't likely be any lower now for a group of players averaging 950 rating than it was 10 years ago. So, if the scoring spread and average of maybe 2.7 was good 10 years ago, it will likely still be good today.

Every 25 feet adds about 0.1 to the scoring average. So, we lengthen this hole by 50 feet to 315 because players are now throwing farther, right? What will happen is that more players will have the chance to reach a 315 ft hole today than 10 years ago but their accuracy won't be any better. The scoring average on this hole will rise to 2.9 and most players will get 3s with less scoring spread than at 265. The designer got sucked into the thinking that a reachable hole needs to be lengthened because players are throwing farther. It's primarily 2-shot and 3-shot holes that might benefit from lengthening now that players are throwing farther.

Now, holes with scoring averages below 2.5 (the infamous par 2s) can certainly benefit from lengthening so they're not "auto birdies" and rise to 2.5-2.8 scoring average and get out of the par 2 zone.

[dave_marchant]

I agree with what you are saying here, and I will be doing some number crunching on the scoring averages. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not lead to a lot of clarity. This is due to the phenomenon that I seem to be observing with acceptable luck and unacceptable (or is it?) luck.

But, can you give me some guidance? Do I average everyone’s scores or just a range of players’ scores? I would think that it would make more sense to look at scoring spread in narrow groups of skill levels: in the 10-20 point ratings range. Is this correct thinking?

You talk a lot about adding length to address disc technology. What about adding length to add difficulty due to strategic trees coming down as a result of blight, wear and tear of discs damaging them, and ice storms? I think this was more of the rationale for the new tees. I am not convinced that added length is an appropriate way to compensate for this.

And just to make this post longer….I will say this: My curiosity and confusion could be a result of a statistical anomaly. The scores in question are based on only 2 rounds of data.....on a new course that a lot of out-of-towners had never played before. On top of that, the Adv players who shot in the top 4-5 places have ratings that lag their skill level by probably at least 30 ratings points. But even with all that said, IMO a statistical anomaly should not make such a marked difference.

I went back and looked at the scores from a club event at Reedy Stout (Spring Fling) and the two 1000 rated guys (McDaniel and Johansen) shot 5 strokes per round better than the 950-ish guys. BUT…there were still lots of 920-ish guys who scored the same as the 970-ish guys (same basic equalizer phenomenon).

[ck34]

The first thing that should be determined is what skill level the tees have been designed for. My assumption is that the Blue 950 level is the intent. So, I would analyze scores for a pool of players who average 950 with a range from maybe 900-1000.

Tree density affects scoring average and adding length can compensate so the scoring average remains the same if the foliage density drops over the years.

[xterramatt]

Another factor. The hot Am rounds seemed to be from Burros. Now, don't get me wrong, but I think that Burros have an advantage. they spend more time on the course, probably play a round there after their work, and generally put more time in on the courses. This can be said for Reedy and Sugaw. Now, I'm not saying that makes them lucky, but it does build their skillsets and confidence on tough holes. Most pros simply don't play Reedy. It's pitch and putt, it's busy, and it's way out there. I think the locals had an advantage at Reedy stout, they have their favorite discs for each hole, etc. The pros just had to play pseudo blind comparatively.

My $.02.

[Moderator005]

Every 25 feet adds about 0.1 to the scoring average. So, we lengthen this hole by 50 feet to 315 because players are now throwing farther, right? What will happen is that more players will have the chance to reach a 315 ft hole today than 10 years ago but their accuracy won't be any better. The scoring average on this hole will rise to 2.9 and most players will get 3s with less scoring spread than at 265. The designer got sucked into the thinking that a reachable hole needs to be lengthened because players are throwing farther. It's primarily 2-shot and 3-shot holes that might benefit from lengthening now that players are throwing farther.

Now, holes with scoring averages below 2.5 (the infamous par 2s) can certainly benefit from lengthening so they're not "auto birdies" and rise to 2.5-2.8 scoring average and get out of the par 2 zone.

This is possibly the most relevant and important statement about course design I've seen on the PDGA board this year. I wish all course designers around the country could understand this.

PRO:
103, 104, 108, 109, 109 - scores
981, 1002, 998, 956, 977 – corresponding players’ ratings

ADV:
103, 105, 108, 109
924, 920, 928, 926

Where these rounds shot on the same day? I want to know why the ratings are drastically different even though the same score was shot. Did conditions worsen that much? Does shooting in a different division mean different propagators of rating?

The same thing is shown in the Waco Charity Open where my score on the Beast (shot in the afternoon when the wind has usually picked up more) was the same as an advanced players (who shot in the morning when it was calmer) but my round rating is lower than his.

[gnduke]

The calculated scores for the round were the same for players that shot the same scores. The numbers listed beneath the scores are the player's ratings before the round.

The point he is trying to make is that players with very different ratings shot the same scores on this course on this day.

[Plankeye]

Where these rounds shot on the same day? I want to know why the ratings are drastically different even though the same score was shot. Did conditions worsen that much? Does shooting in a different division mean different propagators of rating?

The same thing is shown in the Waco Charity Open where my score on the Beast (shot in the afternoon when the wind has usually picked up more) was the same as an advanced players (who shot in the morning when it was calmer) but my round rating is lower than his.

Yeah, the rounds were on the same day. The ratings are the player's current rating. Dave's point was that Reedy Stout "equalized" the course since the advanced and pro final results were very similar yet, the player's current ratings were different.

For example, my rating is 859. I played advanced and after the first round I was doing better than half of the pro field.

Okay, i'm understanding now. Sorry bout that.

It may be thread drift but could somebody still explain what I asked about?

[dave_marchant]

It may be thread drift but could somebody still explain what I asked about?

I think that this was your unanswered question:

Does shooting in a different division mean different propagators of rating?

All players regardless of division who play the same course and course layout in the same round get grouped together for ratings. All elligible propogators are used to determine ratings.

If one division plays even one hole differently during the same round, they get rated separately than the other players and propogators will not be shared between the division(s) playing one layout and another division(s) playing a different layout.

I hope this answers your question.

We played the same layout from the same tees and even though we got the same scores the adv. player got a higher rating than the int. player. Chuck, don't you do the ratings? Can you explain this?

[ck34]

It's up to the TD to enter the course layouts correctly. No one playing the same layout in the same round should have a different round rating when shooting the same score.

[Plankeye]

We played the same layout from the same tees and even though we got the same scores the adv. player got a higher rating than the int. player. Chuck, don't you do the ratings? Can you explain this?

If you played it in the afternoon, and the advanced players played it in the morning, then the ratings will be different.

For example, last year's sneeky pete:

Saturday: Advanced played course A in the Morning
Pros played course B in the Morning
Advanced played course B in the Afternoon
Pros played course A in the afternoon.

So if and advanced player shoots E on course A and the pro has the same score, the ratings will probably be different. And more than likely the advanced round will be rated higher than the pro round.