Ask Chuck Kennedy

[John Hernlund]

Hi Chuck, my wife is running a ladies tournament in a couple weeks, and as part of the event the players are self-organizing into teams of 4 apiece. The idea is for these teams to compete against one another, but since some of the women don't yet have a rating we can't use ratings information to do any sort of handicap-like scheme. The players span the entire spectrum in ability, from the highest-rated woman in the world, to first-timers. They will have 3 rounds (2 Sat, 1 Sun) total.

I've personally been advocating for simply using the 1st two rounds as a baseline, and just base the team scores on the final round. I.e., with team scores calculated from Sunday's round, relative to the team's cumulative average scores in the first two rounds. That way the teams know that it comes down to Sunday performance, the revenge round. I like that it would motivate them to finish strong, and reward those who put together a great round down the stretch. Also, the new players might actually improve more by the 3rd round, than other players, so they'll feel valuable.

But I've also been wondering what sort of ideas you might have for this type of scenario (small N), and whether you might have a more clever suggestion. I'm sure you've probably come across this kind of situation previously.

[cgkdisc]

For the players who don't have a rating yet, you could use the average of their first 2 rounds unofficial ratings on Saturday night to calculate their handicap and not only apply it to R3 on Sunday but also R1 & R2 retroactively so you can also use Saturday scores towards team standings.

[surrealm]

what's the minimum amount of holes a round should consist of for a rating to be calculated by PDGA?

[cgkdisc]

At least 13 holes.

[John Hernlund]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

For the players who don't have a rating yet, you could use the average of their first 2 rounds unofficial ratings on Saturday night to calculate their handicap and not only apply it to R3 on Sunday but also R1 & R2 retroactively so you can also use Saturday scores towards team standings.

That makes sense, just use 2 of the 3 rounds to calculate the rating for the over all handicap...thanks!

[rhett]

Chuck, do you know if PDGA HQ has stopped processing TD reports between ratings updates? It doesn't seem like any tournament results have gone from Unofficial to Official on the PDGA website in a loooong time. I don't care about the ratings, but I use *official* results from the website to calculate SoCal Series points, and I haven't been able to do an update since February. TIA.

[cgkdisc]

They're still doing them. In fact they have to do them as part of the process before Roger and I process the ratings. I just processed course layouts for 60 events today and those results are shown as "official" on the site.

[rhett]

It looks like One Night Stand from March 10th just went "official" in the last two days, but it only looks like one or two other California tourneys with dates after that are "official".

[cgkdisc]

There could be 100 more events going official by Friday.

[rhett]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

There could be 100 more events going official by Friday.

So now you're saying they are letting them stack up until ratings updates?

I'm just asking if there was a process change and thought you might know. It's okay to say "I don't know" when asked a question. I didn't really want to bug the office about it if someone else knew.

[cgkdisc]

No process change. The office processes reports in batches once they get enough (30-40) to produce a batch, not as each report comes in. Lots of reports come in near the deadline so the last batches before an update can sometimes be 100 or more once the season is really underway.

[wsfaplau]

I'm trying to understand the rating system better.

I just learned that if you add the rating points of all rated players in an event you will get a number X.

The ratings points earned by those players in the event added together will also total X.

Here is a local league example.
http://www.pdga.com/tournament_resul...25261737717848

16 players, 12 with ratings. 10,750 points going in, only 10,735 coming out.
I'm missing something.

Are all 12 propagators?
Will this rectify itself once the results become official?
Thx

[cgkdisc]

Yes. The total of the propagator ratings is close to the total ratings earned in each round but not exact. By the time you see official ratings, the points awarded per round is almost always slightly higher than the average of ratings coming in. Note that because leagues extend over a few months, it's likely there will be a rating update before league results are submitted for ratings. So the unofficial ratings you see in your earliest weeks are likely to change somewhat (potentially increase) since the propagator ratings will change somewhat (potentially increase) before official ratings are calculated.

[wsfaplau]

Ok thanks.
Is there a short answer why they wouldn't be the same?

With the league length and the ratings update schedule the results fom this 5/1 league opener will show show up in players ratings in the August 23 update so I do expect them to change..

[cgkdisc]

The core ratings calculation is a shallow quadratic equation with an adjustment factor, not linear. So the numbers are close but not exact.

[wsfaplau]

thx

[keithjohnson]

Chuck - Quick question - How do I enter scores for a 4 round sanctioned Event on 3 different courses that some players only played 1 and 4th round 1st ,2nd and 4th rounds, 2nd round only, 3rd and 4th round only so that every round gets rated? The final round was at the same course as the 3rd round with the 12 finalists all playing from Hole 1 in tee times with ratings ranging from 863 to 1005. There was 8,6 and 4 players in the 3 Qualifying "mini Events" rounds (1st-3rd).

This was for the GA state rep spot to the USDGC and each round was it's own "mini Event" so that players could try again to qualify if they missed out in a earler round.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Keith

[cgkdisc]

It may not work for some unofficial ratings. I think Ganz discovered that if a player didn't play an earlier round that ratings didn't show up for them if they played later rounds. It will work for doing official ratings.

[surrealm]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

At least 13 holes.

cheers for that answer. reason i'm asking is because we usually play 3 rounds of 12, which we then fit in 2 of 18 in the td report.
that sort of works, but is never a correct representation of reality.
(now we split - with rounddown and roundup - round #2 score between the two other rounds.
if we'd upgrade our courses to 13 holes, we could submit as is.

but, and i'm not a whistle blower here, but i would like to use some other tournaments as test case.
i noticed that the various "spring clang" events (last two results: http://www.pdga.com/tournament_results/65371 and http://www.pdga.com/tournament_results/80985 ) might have submitted 12 hole-results only.
latest results had unofficial listings with par 36 (which would lead to believe it's a 12 x par 3 layout, rather than 10 x par 3 and 3 x par 2 layout). their own website ( http://www.discgolfdatabase.com/resu...n.aspx?tid=149 ) clearly shows multiple events averages where only 12 holes are mentioned. The event flyer for the 2011 event however, talks of 3 x 13 holes. Confusion, confusion.

in case that is true, then either 12 hole layouts would seem to be allowed after all.
Could we in that case, re-submit our recent tournament results with rounds of 12 and/or start doing so for the future?

[cgkdisc]

No layouts under 13 holes have ever gotten official ratings. The online software that produces the unofficial ratings was not programmed to suppress calculating ratings for rounds under 13 holes. Sometimes players will see unofficial ratings for Final 9s for example and apparently some of the examples you mentioned.

[krupicka]

I don't know why a TD with a 12 hole course doesn't just add an extra hole so that the rounds would be rated. It could even be a 5 foot not-in-the-ace-pot hole.

[cgkdisc]

Ideally, no rounds under 18 holes should be rated but the decision was made 12 years ago by PDGA HQ to allow rounds down to 13 holes for "customer service." In ball golf at least 14 holes have to be completed for a round to count in their handicap stats. No "best round ever" records can be achieved on courses with less than 18 holes.

[surrealm]

ok, i know about finals rounds getting rated by mistake, but i'm not talking about something like that.

so the 2011 results i mentioned are probably a 13-hole layout, otherwise the system would have barred it from getting through.

the 2012 results however, with a clearly visible par36 layout (when they were still unofficial, showing +/- par scores relative to par36), and the website showing a 12-hole scoring distribution, with the same par36 layout, should then not show up after the results are made official. am i right?

update, i now see that the results for the 2012 event are now all combined as a 1-round event, where the 3 rounds have been merged.

[keithjohnson]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

It may not work for some unofficial ratings. I think Ganz discovered that if a player didn't play an earlier round that ratings didn't show up for them if they played later rounds. It will work for doing official ratings.

Thanks - most of the ones qualifying don't really care about Unofficial ratings - and a couple hope they never get rated

[kwilkes]

I wonder if ratings will come out a day early like they have some days in the past. I have faith they will since the deadline was missed last update.

[cgkdisc]

Tomorrow at the earliest.

[the_kid]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

Tomorrow at the earliest.

Any assignments collected after the due date will have 30pts taken right off the top.....best you can get is a 70!

[bruce_brakel]

Originally Posted by the_kid

Any assignments collected after the due date will have 30pts taken right off the top.....best you can get is a 70!

Wouldn't it depend upon how many 1000 rated pros turned in their assignment on time?

[ERicJ]

Originally Posted by cgkdisc

Tomorrow at the earliest.

Chuck: player ratings are showing updated, but there's no links to "show ratings" on the tourneys that I think should have just gone official.

E.g.
http://www.pdga.com/tournament_results/87411/Open
http://www.pdga.com/tournament_results/77785/Open
http://www.pdga.com/tournament_results/77733/Open

[bruce_brakel]

None of the tournaments that I played that looked like they were submitted in time to be included in the official ratings appear in my ratings data. Bowling Green Ams was one of them. The other was a JBird tournament I played in mid-March. But I'm fine with being an Intermediate, so do not pass this post along to the complaints department. No immediate action is required.