Measuring par.

[ferretdance03]

The biggest arguments I hear for the correct defining of par basically come down to the penalty for missing holes at the start of your round and that the mother sport has a well defined par system that is pretty well understood, even by non-players.

I agree though, BU, it all boils down to how many throws you made.

[Chuck Kennedy]

In the long run, one of the more important reasons for setting par well is for spectators, not the players. By not having much of a spectator base in disc golf, proper par hasn't emerged as a hotter issue yet.

For example, in Worlds there are multiple pools within some divisions at the start of the event. These pools may play courses with significantly different pars until they've all played the same set of courses, but in a different order. If the hole pars are set properly, then it's possible to compare who's doing better within the different pools before the pools are shuffled and the top players are brought together.

Another situation is live scoring. It's not uncommon in larger events to track the live hole-by-hole scores of several or even all groups (USDGC) similar to ball golf events. The only way to properly compare the over/under for groups that have played a different grouping or number of holes so far is if the pars on those holes have been set properly.

So maybe par isn't that big of a deal to the players themselves while playing unless they happen to be late to the tee. But for those watching remotely via internet or TV, par helps them understand the challenge of the holes and compare the live performances while the event is unfolding.

[rehder]

IMHO all holes 60meters and shorter should be par 2's.

Doesn't really matter much, does it? All the tournaments I've played have been stroke play so Par has no real meaning. I'd be interested to hear about other scoring methods where Par would come into play.

I play a course where all the holes are under 300' and several are around 200'. I've birdied all 18, but only once have hit even half of them in the same round. I guess if you're at a pro or semi-pro level, then courses like that you'd like to see those shorter holes at a par 2, but a Par 3 seems to hit a wider range of players than a Par 2 would.

This is true for tournament play it doesnt matter. In addition to what Chuck wrote there is the small case: That telling somebody you shot -8 or +9 doesnt mean a hoot, unless they know the course. On some courses you would have played poorly if you shot 8 down. (Ie. courses which are primarily deuce or die holes) Even this saying suggests that players realize that a 3 is really a bogie on those types of holes.

[MIdiscgolfer]

I think that the idea of par doesn't work SSA does. In ball golf they have a course slope and rating that really tells you how difficult a course is. This rating system is used for handicapping and course comparison when accuracy is needed. The reason SSA is better than Par for comparing courses is that par is discrete and SSA is continuous. Whats worse is par is discrete on a per hole basis. This means that a "perfect" system for establishing par is no more accurate that plus or minus a half stroke per hole. In an extreme case you could have two courses where every hole on course A is almost to the next level (ie the par 3's are almost par 4's etc.) and on course B all the holes are barely into their level and have their SSA's be almost identical yet par would be 18 strokes apart. If I were in charge I would come up with a general rule to calculate par and then once you have an SSA adjust it so that the course par mimics the SSA. There are several methods for calculating par floating around and they are all adequate. Just pick one and then once you get an SSA you can adjust the par rating as ness.

[Chuck Kennedy]

We tried doing that for Worlds in 2001 & 2002 but people objected to all of the (real) par 2s needed to make the total par come within a shot or so of the SSA on each course. Golf used to use half pars in their early history (i.e. par 3, par 3.5, par 4, par 4.5, etc.) http://www.popeofslope.com/courserating/par4.html and maybe that would be an option at some point if there really was a drive to become more precise in our pars. Having a par 2.5 option for appropriate holes would solve much of the disconnect between par and SSA currently.

[MIdiscgolfer]

It doesn't suprise me that people would object I still think it's the mostaccurate workable system to compare courses. I would also like to see some sort of "average" SSA for courses on the PDGA directory. If I am going to a new course SSA is way more informative to me than hole by hole par. Most of the time I don't even look at course par ratings.

[Chuck Kennedy]

At minimum, we want to get the SSA database linked to the Course Directory so you can pull up the history from the directory rather than from here: http://www.pdga.com/course-ratings-by-course However, unless the course only has one tee and pin per hole, it may be hard to know what SSA options you might experience visiting a course on any given day.

[MIdiscgolfer]

Just to complicate things further would it be feasible to have a second average similar to ball golf where Rating is Scratch average and Slope is What an 18 handicap would shoot. We could have SSA for a 1000 rated round and HSA (Hack Scoring Average) for like an 875 rated round.

[Chuck Kennedy]

Slope is potentially a mythical concept but ball golf doesn't have a way to prove it one way or the other. Their whole handicap system is built on shaky ground with no direct connection with real world data. Based on our attempts to determine whether slope exists in disc golf, we could not find it as much as one person formerly on our committee tried. In other words, there's no indication that a so called bogey golfer with say an 820 rating will average anything other than an 820 rating on courses with 50 SSA no matter what course length, type of foliage and terrain produced a 50 SSA.

If ball golf had a rating system that worked like ours, it's quite possible that they would discover the same thing - that slope isn't really there. However, since they don't/can't adjust their course ratings based on scoring results like we can, they need an adjustment factor like slope to bring their numbers closer in line.

[MIdiscgolfer]

I just meant what kind of scores would an 820 player shoot. As a rule of thumb 10 points per stroke works but on easier/shorter courses doesn't tend to be less than 10 points per stroke? And then more than 10 points per stroke on harder/longer courses? HSA (I've decided I like that term) might be SSA +14 on one course but SSA + 22 on another. It would be a good guage for intermediate/novice players to judge their rounds at new courses. Or am I not understanding how the rating works?

[Chuck Kennedy]

If a course has a 50 SSA, no matter how long the course is or how many trees or water hazards it has, it's exactly 10 rating points per throw. If a player shoots a 68, they will get an 820 rating for that round. This is different from ball golf where a player shooting a 90 on a course with a 72 rating will get a handicap of 18 only if the slope is 113 (average). If the slope is lower, the handicap will be lower than 18 and the handicap higher if the slope is higher.

In disc golf, the rating a player gets for shooting a certain number of throws more than the SSA will be the same on all courses with the same SSA. If the SSA is 60 on a longer course with few trees or a shorter course with lots of trees, elevation and hazards, each throw is worth 7.9 rating points even though the courses appear dramatically different. For courses with 45 SSA, each throw is always worth 12.8 rating points.

[Eric O]

tiki course

yes, I second the question, what is a tiki course?

[Chuck Kennedy]

I believe it started in Virginia where a course owner set up a very short course with holes under 150 feet that was lit for play at night with tiki lights. So a tiki course has come to be known as a really short course essentially with all par 2 holes.

[ferretdance03]

This is THE Tiki course. The way locals told it to me, Mike Trappaso, the owner of the Grange, got new baskets for the original 18 hole course on his property, and needed to find a place for 18 older baskets. He carved out a course in the woods right beside his house and other courses, strung rope lights along all the fairways and baskets, and voila! Tiki golf was born. Chuck's right, all the holes are under 150, and everything is par 2. And it is a freaking blast!
At the Virginia Open every year there's a March Madness bracket style Tiki tournament.

If in Virginia, the Grange is a must, and Tiki is the best way to warm up your short game.

[MIdiscgolfer]

If a course has a 50 SSA, no matter how long the course is or how many trees or water hazards it has, it's exactly 10 rating points per throw. If a player shoots a 68, they will get an 820 rating for that round. This is different from ball golf where a player shooting a 90 on a course with a 72 rating will get a handicap of 18 only if the slope is 113 (average). If the slope is lower, the handicap will be lower than 18 and the handicap higher if the slope is higher.

In disc golf, the rating a player gets for shooting a certain number of throws more than the SSA will be the same on all courses with the same SSA. If the SSA is 60 on a longer course with few trees or a shorter course with lots of trees, elevation and hazards, each throw is worth 7.9 rating points even though the courses appear dramatically different. For courses with 45 SSA, each throw is always worth 12.8 rating points.

So on a course with an SSA of 45 HSA would be 59.1 and on a course with an SSA of 60 HSA would be 82.8. Next question is how many times do you think I have to use the term HSA before someone else uses it thinking it's an actual term?