PDGA Sanctioned Tourney

[Cinque]

I was looking at the results of the recent tourney at SeaTac and I noticed that if you par the course you're shooting a 1023 rated round. I started wondering what the rating would be for a par at Terrace Creek. Can anyone tell me when the last PDGA sanctioned tourney was so I can look up the ratings?

[ericedge]

That's why a lot of folks don't think the number 54 is an accurate par for SeaTac. This always seems to be a controversial subject but in my mind the par is 60 there. For what it's worth, there are only a couple of reasons that par even matters. The main reason is the rule that a late arriving player (to a tourney) takes "par" +4 for any missed holes. In a shotgun start the player that misses hole 14 is a lot happier than the player that misses hole 1 if they are both par 3s. Other than that it's mostly just for comparative purposes and we have the ratings now which kind of takes care of that.
I would guess that a 54 at Terrace would be in the 950-960 range.

[Cinque]

Thanks, Ericedge! That makes sense. Yeah, I noticed on sites like DGCR the par is set at 60, but it's set at 54 on DiscGolfScene. Do you have to wait for a sanctioned tourney to come around to get an exact rating for a course, or is there a way to work it out?

[Jeff Hemmerling]

Originally Posted by Cinque

I was looking at the results of the recent tourney at SeaTac and I noticed that if you par the course you're shooting a 1023 rated round.

FYI, the PDGA defines "par" as the score a 1000-rated player would shoot. And every 10 rating points (+/- 2pts) equals a stroke. So par for SeaTac is between 56-57 (at least for the tourney you looked at). Hope that helps.

[cefire]

Originally Posted by Jeff Hemmerling

FYI, the PDGA defines "par" as the score a 1000-rated player would shoot. And every 10 rating points (+/- 2pts) equals a stroke. So par for SeaTac is between 56-57 (at least for the tourney you looked at). Hope that helps.

Do you have a link for this? I'm pretty sure that PDGA defines "scratch" scoring in this way but makes no mention of "par" when describing what you are talking about. At least none of the PDGA course design consultants (Houck, Kennedy, etc.) would describe par in this way.

If this was true, I would question why Feldberg shot 100 strokes under "par" at K'zoo worlds a couple of years ago. I believe PDGA uses this par calculator which factors in different skill levels and to assign par on a hole by hole basis based on player skill level: http://www.pdga.com/files/documents/ParGuidelines.pdf

[Jeff Hemmerling]

Originally Posted by cefire

Do you have a link for this? I'm pretty sure that PDGA defines "scratch" scoring in this way but makes no mention of "par" when describing what you are talking about.

You're correct. I should have said "SSA" instead of "par". You make a good point though about how to assign par to an individual hole.

Originally Posted by cefire

If this was true, I would question why Feldberg shot 100 strokes under "par" at K'zoo worlds a couple of years ago. I believe PDGA uses this par calculator which factors in different skill levels and to assign par on a hole by hole basis based on player skill level: http://www.pdga.com/files/documents/ParGuidelines.pdf

Feldberg shot -100 over 6-8 rounds right? And his rating is/was around 1040? So if the SSA equaled par then you would expect him to shoot -28 (7 rounds x -4/round). He shot way better than that so it shows that our "pars" are (in general) inflated for 1000-rated players.

You also touch on the issue (that I never considered) that you can set the par for each hole individually and still arrive at a par for the whole course that is bigger than the SSA actually turns out to be. Hmmm...

[ericedge]

Terrace has gone through so many changes over the last couple of years that any rated rounds you may come across from past tournaments probably wouldn't be very accurate to the current layout. Another point about ratings versus par... Ratings will vary from round to round and event to event on a particular course since they're calculated based on the scores of rated players that participated in a given round. Weather and course conditions will affect the scores and the ratings will adjust to those factors. A courses par won't change, it'll just be harder to shoot that score when it's windy (for example).

[cefire]

I couldn't have put it any better, Jeff & Edge

I ran a tourney at Terrace this spring which was very close to the current layout for the first round - http://www.pdga.com/tournament_results/64494

Shows scratch at around 48 (second round utilized a "long" pin for hole 2 and a few other changes so it doesn't really compare).

Small number of players though so the ratings may have more variability than filled tournies would have...

[Cinque]

Thanks, Cefire. Will you be running one here in 2012?

[cefire]

Originally Posted by Cinque

Thanks, Cefire. Will you be running one here in 2012?

Oops sorry, I don't check here all that much. Anyway, I've moved to Montana so I'm not going to be running any tourney's this year

[Cinque]

Bummer! I'm still hoping for a sanctioned tourney here in 2012.

[cefire]

Run one! No better way to make sure it happens in 2012!