Lowe,
Here are a few things that stand out after an initial read:
<ul type="square"> Your average drive length of 390 feet for Gold level players is based on actual driving distance data provided by Chuck Kennedy, I believe. Where do the average driving distances for the other skill levels come from? I'm wondering if they are estimated.
Where do the "fairway throw" distances come from? These seem estimated as well, and they'd be highly dependant on the hole design. Depending on foliage or OB, a fairway throw on a particular hole may 50 or 100 feet shorter or longer than the distance you've listed.
You've decreased the close range distance for Gold players from 130 feet to 100 feet. Why? The close range distances then decrease by exactly 10 feet for each skill level below Gold. How did you come up with that? Many of these numbers seem pulled out of thin air.
The core concept of CR par and reasonable throws remains the same and is based on open field driving distances. In real life, the design of a hole and foliage so greatly affect play that it renders much of this data moot. One tree that's in the path of a normal RHBH, or the size of a landing area, or the slope / angle of the landing area, and a hundred other factors may greatly affect driving distances and scoring. I cringe when I look at your chart for maximum effective length for par because I'm sure that those hypothetical distances would often fail when real life holes and courses are examined. Unless it's a mostly flat & wide open course, I just don't think you can create these generalized rules and paint such a broad picture with these distances. At least in the Mid-Atlantic region and New England, every course and every hole is unique and I'm sure we'd find many, many holes where these maximum effective lengths for par would be violated. As opposed to SA Par where only unusual circumstances such as an island green result in a deviation in par from the scoring average.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and it's too bad we don't have a wealth of scoring data to show you examples of the many holes that would go against the guidelines. All I can hope to do is keep looking for scoring data and these examples as they become available. Eventually, if I show you enough 425-foot Gold level par 4s, (such as Pyramids Silver hole#12 which averages 3.98 but CR Par methodology assigns as par 3) or 770-foot Gold level par 5s, (such as Maple Hill Airplanes #12 which averages 4.90 but CR Par methodology assigns as par 4) etc. would you start to accept that CR Par isn't something that can be universally applied and would therefore have less usefulness as a par system?[/list]
