Hab/Rec Fall Open - October 3

[Bruce]

I'm going to have to disagree Steve, the am tees play much much easier than the pro. I can see many many more birdie ops from the am tees. And I have played most of them during casual rounds.

[runnaman]

I don't know, I didn't feel that the tees made much of a difference. But I do agree that shorter doesn't always equal easier and would think that the am tees played about 7-8 strokes easier. (Although I've only played 18 of the original 27 from the long tees.)

[buckley]

Steve, I've never noticed a difference in footing between am and pro tees, and I play them both equally as often. With the cold dampness in the air that day, I'm pretty sure all concrete tees could have had that awkward texture to them in the morning, or all day if in the shade. But just because I don't notice it doesn't mean it's not there. Perhaps that's a factor I should consider, especially from a maintenance perspective! For now, for the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to have to ignore it, especially since runnaman says he doesn't notice it either.

Also, I could see how inexperience from the am tees would be a factor in scoring, but when you're comparing the relative difficulty of courses, you have to approach it from an all-else-equal perspective. It's hard to assign a stroke value based on how many times you've played one course relative to how many times you've played the other.

Steve, you shot a 60 and a 62 from the am tees, averaging 61. You would have averaged about a 70 for 18 holes from the pro tees that day. Or maybe since you're more familiar with the pro tees, you would have averaged a 68. If you break down each hole and assess the difference between am and pro, each course comes out to 7 or 8 strokes difference (great estimate runnaman) A lot of the holes have a half stroke difference due to higher frequency of birdie ops from the am tees and/or less risky shot from the am tees. The distance itself is not the deciding factor. It's the average resulting score.

The reason it's actually 8-10 strokes difference is because the pro courses seem to wear you down more than the am courses, so a couple of ghost strokes just seem to add up along the way. I have a lot of empirical data to back this up, but don't ask me to post it because that would be a LOT of work if not impossible. It's not really compiled data, it's just from playing the different courses a lot with others and analyzing it. I'm telling you it's 8-10 strokes difference on average.

A good example would be Coury Coates, the pro winner who shot a 56 on each course. He is highly consistent, and I know he would have shot a 47 on each am course the way he was playing that day.

That would be cool if I could get more data points from others who play both courses. Maybe we could hone in a better number than my best 8-10 stroke estimate.

By the way, I emailed the results to Next, so they should be up as soon as the webmaster can do it. I'll post a link here.

[runnaman]

Sweet, thanks buckley.