David, to your post ago about Theegala; I didn't see where we were locked in on a Par 72, or even a rating of 72. Ben put together a hypothetical 6,400 yard par 70 for this exercise and certainly calling the longest par 4's at Lakeside par 5's will help, but that's not really legit in my view.
More than that though, I think you and AC are overstating how good these guys are. Don't get me wrong, they are the best in the world so by definition, they are as good as it gets. But...my belief is that there are natural, but unmeasurable, reasons that 40 under is virtually impossible.
How often do guys follow up a super low round with another? Not 6 or 7 under, but the 9, 10 or 11 under they would need in this exercise. They just don't. It sounds like AC is working on some research and techniques to break down barriers like that so good on him. To date, there's an awful lot of evidence that consecutive 10 unders is just really unlikely. Sure, we are describing a different course but we're not talking about a pitch and putt course.
Berger won this week...who has access to his stokes-gained numbers to see where a winner ranks in those categories? I don't think it's fair to use the best result in every category to establish what a winning score would be. Might as well just use a Ringer Board and post 25 under per round...
Jim,
So many things to unpack here.
First, we can just keep the discussion to score if you want. Fine with me. So you're dismissing four-round tournament scores of 250 to 254 on a 6,400 to 6500 yard golf course (how ever many "under par" that is), right? Or am I misunderstanding you?
Regarding rating, if you can find a course of 6400 to 6500 yards that has a rating of much higher than 72.9, it would be a rare one. As I'm sure you know, rating is primarily concerned with length -- not solely, but primarily. It's why course ratings are overwhelmingly 74+ for courses of 7100 or more yards, and why course under 6600 are usually 72.0 or thereabouts. For courses of 6400 to 6500 yards, the vast, vast majority are going to be rated ~70.5 to ~72.5. 72.0 seems a fair course for our hypothetical. If not, why not?
Course set-up: We need to agree on a baseline set-up. We're all over the place with what kind of course we're talking about, and that allows for some "goal post moving." I've put forth my home course as an example and given real world examples. I mentioned Lakeside, a much different, considerably more difficult course that is 200 to 300 yards longer than our "hypothetical course," but very much "Tour-worthy" in terms of shape, rough thickness, etc.
Regarding your "following up a low round with another very low round": A huge part of that is the courses they are playing. They are often playing courses with effective ratings/slopes of 76+ and 145+. Of
course it's difficult to back up a 63 with a 62 on those types of courses. That would be back-to-back scores of 13 and 14 below the rating, which is very, very difficult to do. But 63, 62 at my 6,517 yard home course is only 8.3 and 9.3 below the course rating. Those are two very, very different things, akin to shooting 67, 66 at even a reasonably difficult Tour stop. Additionally, guys just aren't nearly as afraid of going low anymore -- at least not nearly as afraid as they used to be. Witness the number of verifiable rounds in the 50's shot by pros and amateurs alike in the last 10 years, versus in all the time before that.
Here's another way to look at it, I'm a sh*tty, broken-down never-was of a golfer. I'm 53, fat, with spondylolisthesis and an arthritic spine. I'm in near constant pain when I play. When I'm completely "healthy," and relatively pain-free, I carry driver 225 - 230 with a total, all-in distance of 245 to 255. I'm a regionally-competitive almost-senior golfer, that's it. And yet in September, leading up to our club championship, I shot the following four, consecutive rounds from our back tees: 65, 73, 64, 70. The 64 was shot in the club championship. In between there I played rounds from other tees, but those were the four rounds I shot, consecutively, from the back tees. At the time, I was a +1.0. After that nice week, I was down to my season low index of +1.9.
Now let that sink in for a moment. If you don't think the top professionals in the world are a full five strokes better than I am (and more like 7 to 10+ on a truly difficult Tour stop from the very back tees), I don't know what to tell you. Just know that they are, actually, 5 or so strokes better than I am on a course like ours. Put a full-field PGA Tour event on my home course, and someone in that field is going to beat a guy like me -- even when I play a really solid four-round stretch -- by at least 5 strokes per round. One of 'em ... at least.
5 strokes better looks like this: 60, 68, 59, 65, which is a score of 252 or 36 under "par," but only 33.2 below the 4-round, combined
rating. It is not at all uncommon for the winning score in a Tour event to be 30 - 35 under the combined course rating for the four days. Pebble is rated 74.9 to 75.7. Berger just shot 30-under the course rating, assuming 75.0. Dylan Frittelli shot 40.2 under the combined course rating to win the John Deere Classic. Michael Thompson shot 43.8 below the course rating to win the 3M Open. I found those three examples in 15 minutes.
I honestly don't even know why we're arguing about this. Several years ago, I played a money match with two top-20 in the world players on a cold December day at Bear Creek in Murrieta and watched one of them shoot 65 on a course rated 75.8/149 when the greens were rock hard and 14. Effective rating/slope that day from the back tees was easily 77/155. Greens were so hard you couldn't find a pitch mark on a full wedge. The ball just made a little discoloration -- if you were lucky enough to find it. 7 to 10 handicappers struggling to break 100 -- from the 6400 yard tees! Players were angry at the head pro for letting the greens get so hard.
I received a 700 yard advantage (member tees vs. tournament tees) and played as well as I possibly could have playedand shot 71. My buddies (also scratch/+1" amateurs) shot 76 and 77. The elite pro waxed us by 6, 11 and 12 shots, and we had a
700 yard head start. I watched the same guy shoot 62 a month later in similar conditions, missing the course-record by a shot -- a course record set by Si Woo Kim,
as a 17 year-old a year or so before.
If a broken-down, lifelong amateur bunter of the ball like me can shoot 272 at a 6500 yard course when he's playing his very best, the best players in the world, when they're playing their absolutely best, can absolutely shoot 252 -- and probably a bit lower than that.
Jim, you said AC and I are "...
overstating how good these guys are." I respectfully submit that it is you who is considerably underestimating just how good they are at their best. And with ~150 of them teeing it up in a full field event, there's always at least one of them firing on all cylinders and dropping putts.