It may have gotten lost in the shuffle because of all the Worlds coverage, but I hope that anyone who is interested in course design has read Chuck Kennedy and John Houck's article about Course Design Validation (http://www.pdga.com/course-design-validation) and is making effort to analyze whether the holes at your course are appropriate for the intended skill level and has proper scoring distributions. I think all too often, course designers choose pin or tee locations based on other factors such as aesthetics, ease of use, (on the path from the next tee, or no clearing required) or other reasons. The article does a good job at outlying why it is critical to choose locations which result in proper throwing distances and scoring distributions. Just because many golfers can throw 380' does not mean that they will rack up deuces on a particular hole at an acceptable rate. When a hole is basically an "auto 3" where a great majority of competitors at that skill level are bound to take a 3, it's not a good hole distance and does little to separate skill in a tournament.

Additionally, these concepts can apply not only to new course design, but choosing proper pin locations and tees for your existing course and events. Tees designed for one skill level are not necessarily appropriate for other skill levels. Advanced players might want to play the Gold tees at a sanctioned tournament event, but these are not designed to provide the proper scoring distributions for those golfers and may result in many "auto 3s." And since it's mostly impractical to move pin locations during a tournament to cater to varying skill levels, TDs might want to consider temporary tees for lower skill levels if multiple tees do not exist at the course.

Check it out: http://www.pdga.com/course-design-validation

It was a good article. Thanks to the authors.

The tricky thing is that courses aren't necessarily designed for a particular skill level, or with tees for every skill level. One layout, 2 sets of tees, catering to a wide array of skills, is frequently all that's available. Having sufficient data for validation, especially at the gold level where there are fewer players, is a little iffy too.

I'm not a course designer, other than our own private course---but these concepts are a great help to us in designing and evaluating our work.

it's obviously not easy to design every hole on an 18-hole course in a manner that offers fairness, fun, and challenge to all skill levels. if it was that easy everyone could be a good course designer. that's a huge component of the design challenge.

on the Blue Mtn Ski Resort courses (Palmerton, PA - just north of Allentown) that Steve Brinster and I just finished designing, i'd like to believe we did a super job accomodating as many skill levels as possible as often as we could.

one "trick" we incorporated into both the Base and Peak courses was that we didn't use two tees and 1 basket on every hole. in order to offer a greater variety of hole designs and to attempt to maximize appeasing all skill levels, on about 1/3 of the holes we designed only one tee and instead installed 2 baskets. we believe we can overcome any confusion factor by clearly marking scorecards / maps, tee signs, and by color-coding the baskets where necessary.

there were some holes where using 2 tees and one basket just didn't offer an opportunity to differentiate between skill levels. incorporating a 2nd basket accomplished this.

of course if you wanna' break the bank, put 2 baskets and 2 tees on every hole like we have at Warwick. then you can design 4 layouts per hole and everyone is happy.

dandoyle
warwick, ny

One of my all-time favorites, the defunct Still Waters Farm, had up to 5 tees on holes. Possible in part because it was a private course, and the light use meant that the natural tees would stay useable. It was cleverly laid out where playing the short tees didn't mean you had long walks past the longer tees.

Some courses can be designed for certain skill levels, in which case this document is very useful. Courses on school grounds, perhaps. W.R. Jackson at the IDGC. Our course is bluish-gold, I guess, and the principles in this validation are helpful.....except that we could only run the numbers with a wider range of player ratings, since we have relatively few players.

It's OK to use multiple rounds from players in the proper range.

1 event, 2 rounds, 6 players rated > 975, 12 throws per hole didn't seem a sufficient sample. We opted for the less-than-ideal spreads for (1) all open players and (2) all pro & advanced men. The latter is the group we built the course for, which isn't exactly a specific skill level.

Over time we'll have more data....at least on the holes we don't change.

Which I guess is my way of saying thanks for the article, we're using as much of it as we can.

That's all we can ask. Thanks.

I have recently designed a spreadsheet for analyzing hole scores from our local events to help validate and provide the needed data to improve the layouts of the local courses.

The spreadsheet includes scores from each player for each hole and is calculated to provide the scoring average, standard deviation, coeffient of variation, and actual percentage of each score per hole(2,3,4,etc).

After reading the article on course validation, the scoring average is very clear. The article doesn't address the standard deviation on a hole, which could help validate a balance between power and technical players.

What are the ideal or target standard deviation values on a hole (.6 to .8)?

What is too low (<.5) ?

What is too high (>1.0) ?

I think these values would be based on the Blue or White level player.

We (course designers group) don't look at Standard deviation as much as the percentages of each score on a hole as adjusted to a specific skill level like Blue (950) or White (900) although that is related to SD. Ideally, I look for "par" to be the highest percentage but lower than 70% and birdies to be the next higher percentage. It's OK for bogeys to be the next higher percentage on some holes but for competitive balance I shoot for having maybe 3 times as many holes where birdies and pars are the two highest percentages than bogeys and pars because these holes help separate those who are playing better at the top rather than separating the bottom from the middle which is what the higher bogey percentage holes will do.

Of course, good scoring spread is just the start. If the spread is caused by more luck or punitive elements (too much or close OB) than by skill, that needs to be considered and there are no numbers that diectly show that.

Instead of standard deviation, use the formula here http://stevewestdiscgolf.com/Documents/An%20Information%20Theory%20Measure%20of%20the%20V alue%20of%20a%20Disc%20Golf%20Hole.pdf to calculate the width of a scoring spread.

Thanks for the replies.

The sample data that I inputed into my spreadsheet was very interesting. I played around with it by deleting certain skill levels and the results did vary, as expected.

The course validation really depends on the player skill level that you are targeting. Some courses should only be designed for white level recreational players and others for the more competetive blue level players.

I have the scorecards from a recent PDGA tourney that had about 150 players. I plan on using this data for future events and proposed course layout changes for the future.

Some of our local course designers and players think that harder is better, but I disagree with that thinking. We also have a wide range of players to please in the area. Luckily, our flagship course has two tees and two pin locations on each hole. The baskets get moved between the 'A' and 'B' monthly. Some of the 'B' pins are quite difficult for the recreational players, but, of course, they are liked by the advanced/pro players in the area.

The scoring spread needs to considered. Its not all about having scoring averages in the x.0 to x.4 range. You need to have averages in x.5 to x.9 range to allow the players "in the zone" to score better, as Chuck stated earlier. Ideally, I would like to see 2/3 of holes with a distribution of scores on a given hole be: 2 (25%), 3 (55%), 4 (15%), 5 (5%). With the other 1/3 of the holes with a distribution of: 2 (5%), 3 (50%), 4 (35%), 5 (10%). Yes, there should holes where the par consists each throw being executed good to great not just good to marginal.

Anyway, I just wanted to see if the SD could show a ball park figure of the min and max SD that would be ideal for the holes on a course. That being said, the scoring averages and score percentage distribution per hole is probably the best tools to use to validate a course for a given player skill level.


Later,
Sam