Is “par” and/or tallying average scores good or bad for golf?

[Tim Gavrich]

Par, in and of itself, is a good concept, especially when it comes to the spectator sport of golf, as Jason mentions. It's all this superfluous meaning that gets assigned to it by golfers that's the problem.


Have people ever objected so extremely to the given par of a particular hole that it ruined the hole's architect's career? It's hard to envision such a scenario because the remedy is so exceedingly simple.

[Ira Fishman]

Mark,


Several architects who do not feel constrained by convention have routed several of my favorite courses:


Swinley Forest at Par 69
The Island Club (until last year) with 8 opening Par 4s
Brora with a Par 3 for 9 and 18th holes
Ballybunion with 5 Par 3s including Back to Back
Pac Dunes same as Ballybunion
Elie with no Par 5s
North Berwick with 3 Par 5s in a 4 holes stretch
Kilspindie with no Par 5s
Crail Balcomie with 6 Par 3s, two back to back, and one of them being the 18th


Unfortunately, it actually is too short of a list because of the impact of convention.


Btw, there are some good threads on this topic.


Ira

[Peter Pallotta]

I get an image of Adam and Eve happily knowing nothing but match play, until one day a serpent in plus-fours starts dropping hints about this new concept called "par" -- and it's been with us ever since, in various guises and known by different names. There's not much use in asking whether par is good or bad for the game, since it's actually *part* of the game, and has been since Time began. It's the Tempter, and it ensnares agnostically wayward clients and piously devout architects alike, not to mention millions upon millions of seriously monkish golfers. At one and the same time, and inexorably linked, it's both The Fall and The Game as We Know It. Or, as the modern saying goes: it is what it is.

[MCirba]

Regarding the seemingly blasphemous idea of changing the par of a hole over time to reflect "the score of the expert golfer", the most famous par four on the planet used to be a par five not very long ago.

[Duncan Cheslett]

Targets, aspirations, achievements and par.
I was fortunate enough to play Kington last year with Messrs Muldoon and Cheslett and Mrs C. Wonderful game/match.
The highlight for me though was the smiles, the high-5’s and the whooping with glee when Mr C made a birdie on the par-3 5th. And it was recorded on video. Wonderful!
Atb

It was Mrs C who got the birdie 2.


She reminds me of it regularly! 🤣

[Thomas Dai]

Targets, aspirations, achievements and par.
I was fortunate enough to play Kington last year with Messrs Muldoon and Cheslett and Mrs C. Wonderful game/match.
The highlight for me though was the smiles, the high-5’s and the whooping with glee when Mr C made a birdie on the par-3 5th. And it was recorded on video. Wonderful!
Atb

It was Mrs C who got the birdie 2.
She reminds me of it regularly! 🤣

Apologies. Typo temi! I omitted the ‘s’ from Mrs. I can still picture in my mind the huge smile on her face when the putt went in. Your happiness too. A splendid moment during a splendid game on a splendid course.
Atb

[Kalen Braley]

Have people ever objected so extremely to the given par of a particular hole that it ruined the hole's architect's career? It's hard to envision such a scenario because the remedy is so exceedingly simple.

No... but its certainly ruined a few rounds of mine! 

P.S.  I'd be willing to bet my next paycheck there isn't anyone in this group who hasn't bragged to his golf buddies, on multiple occasions, at making a par on such and such <insert beastie hole here>. Whether we fess up to it or not, making or saving par has no doubt been a source of great pride in our otherwise dull and uneventful lives! 

[Sean_A]

What the hell does pride in achieving a score have anything to do with the notion of par being good or bad for golf?

Ciao

[Mark_Fine]

Sean,
Golf is a game/sport and most games/sports are supposed to be fun and inspiring which is why people play the game in the first place.  If they can for example say they made a par on the same hole and maybe even from the same tee as Tiger made a par, that is exciting to some golfers and good for the game of golf.  I know when my wife makes a par (which is basically two shots below her handicap as she is a 36) she is so excited. 


We are adding a new forward tee at Lehigh on the 4th hole as the one there now requires a forced carry of about 120 yards over a stream which very few forward tee players can manage.  They basically have to chip down in front and then try to get over on their second shot which also presents a challenge.  The new tee will only require a 75 yard carry which she and many others are thrilled about.  Good for those players.  The game will be more fun and they will lose less balls and maybe even make a par     You know the saying, for me at least happy wife happy life!

[Steve Lang]

   Back in the day, my best Bud and I had a par 15 from the intersection of Cheltenham & Pelham Roads, around Old Orchard School, past Wright's Greenhouse, across the railroad tracks / pricker bushes and down to the 5th green at Ottawa Park... It was a measure of 7 iron prowess and fortitude in the face of natural and manmade hazards at play.  And it was good!


You can't manage and improve your game unless there's some metric for assessment and ongoing measurement...  does golf really need Ladbrokes to weigh in on average par?

[Tim_Weiman]

Mark,


I don’t have any problem with the concept of par. The vast majority of golf holes are either 1,2 or 3 shots plus 2 putts. I don’t think that hurts anything.


Are there holes not so easy to fit into one of these three options?


Yes, there are. For me a good example would be the 1st hole at Crystal Downs. It just strikes me as what one might call a par 4 & 1/2 or 2 & 1/2 shots plus 2 putts.


But to me calling it either a par 4 or par 5 doesn’t matter. My assessment of the risk reward is that I am likely to score best with a second shot that comes to rest a little short and to the left of the green. Missing right is not good regardless of the designated par.


It won’t surprise me if someone argues that my example of #1 at Crystal Downs (or perhaps the Road Hole at St Andrews) makes the case against the concept of par. I just don’t think so. Such holes are unusual and I know one when I see one. But they are exceptions, not the rule.


Saying that I don’t have a problem with the concept of par certainly isn’t meant to discourage architects from building 1/2 par holes. Not at all. I just think that at the end of the day most golf holes are going to be 1,2 or 3 shot holes and that’s ok.

[Garland Bayley]

It'd be damn near impossible to follow a golf tournament without the concept of "par" being present.

...

So the scoreboard that says
Player A -21
Player B -19
Player C -18
is so much easier that the score board that says
Player A Leader
Player B 2 behind
Player C 3 behind
 
 
I guess you like your math!

Par, in and of itself, is a good concept, especially when it comes to the spectator sport of golf, as Jason mentions. ...

Timothy, Timothy, Timothy 

[V. Kmetz]

Regarding the seemingly blasphemous idea of changing the par of a hole over time to reflect "the score of the expert golfer", the most famous par four on the planet used to be a par five not very long ago.

...And while not claiming that MC is in agreement with the entirety of my position (Get Rid of Individual Hole Par off the Card, Every Course is a "Understood" Par of 72), the fact that 40 years ago the Road Hole was commonly billed as a 471 yard Par 5, is a detail piece in that position... has the hole gotten any more or less sui generis because of that terminology/application of 4 as opposed to 5? Was it such an easy par 5 that the hole was in architectural disrepute because of that par?  Is the basic quality of any current grandee "half par" hole diminished because the course pushes its card par up past the .5?  Is the foundation of virtues of a "half par" hole, or the "drivable" or "short" "par 4" only found in that the hole doesn't obey its par number, or that the hole is great because of the path, the challenges, the obstacles, the green coordinating with those elements, its look, feel, placement in the routing, etc...


Unlike the dubious claims advanced by those inclined to the psychological, culture "virtues" of par, I am not suggesting that golf world or your foursome has to stop using the term, and that we can't go on using the cribbed language of par in our golf... just that we take it off the card without comment and see what happens... there's no golfer in the world who stands on a tee, beholds the new hole and its yardage before them and is rudderless because a stated par is absent...


I am solely interested in the architectural innovations and fresh potentials that are being held back by the tired and rather meaningless, imposed "concept" of par... that we don't have more "half par yardages"  (chiefly, 240 - 285 and 450 - 490)... that we'll never see the design of a 700+ yard hole, not for the championship golfer, but for the everyday golfer, unless we call it a Par 6, and call a "4" made on it an "Eagle." 


This board spoke of a "Par 2" hole and some of its features, and one of those potential features was its length (30 - 70 yards)...well, I think we'll never see that/those holes, because no public support is seemingly available for something that must be assigned a par of 2. 


It would be great if Tom Doak made an interesting 50 yard shot to an interesting green, that had mounds like the old Stoke Poges, designed and grassed to be cut at "5.5" and thus permitted realistic play over them, but that won't happen because no one is going to let him make a Par 2 on their course, with their precious treasury. And its nearly the same for a 265 yard hole... if TD did so, and didn't list a par, it would be the first question asked...


To recap several years, par ought be removed from individual holes because

• ...it is a subjective medal application placed on the organics of design
• ...that has no meaning to the day in day out standards of match play
• ... no meaning to Course Rating and Slope or Handicap
• ...that stifles continued innovation with regards to the objective, in situ, and designed elements that blend to make GCA what it is.
• ... a 4 is a quality score on any hole...12 to 18 of them will send 97% of us home happy
• ...the cribbed cultural language of par will still exist, for you, for TV, for history
• ...no one requires par to appraise their own possibilities and GCA virtues of a hole

Amen.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

So the scoreboard that says
Player A -21
Player B -19
Player C -18
is so much easier that the score board that says
Player A Leader
Player B 2 behind
Player C 3 behind
 
 
I guess you like your math!

That only really works when all three are on the same hole.

Otherwise a player 10 shots back in your system could be leading by two.

[Garland Bayley]

So the scoreboard that says
Player A -21
Player B -19
Player C -18
is so much easier that the score board that says
Player A Leader
Player B 2 behind
Player C 3 behind
 
 
I guess you like your math!

That only really works when all three are on the same hole.

Otherwise a player 10 shots back in your system could be leading by two.

Got it! A slight oversight on my part.

However, they know the average score on each hole, and could add them to a players score to give a projected final score. So, no use of par is necessary, as it would be a less accurate predictor of the outcome.

[Garland Bayley]

So the scoreboard that says
Player A -21
Player B -19
Player C -18
is so much easier that the score board that says
Player A Leader
Player B 2 behind
Player C 3 behind
 
 
I guess you like your math!

That only really works when all three are on the same hole.

Otherwise a player 10 shots back in your system could be leading by two.

Did I neglect to say my tournaments use a shotgun start.

[Mark_Fine]

Erik,
You are correct about the score keeping.  Without some relevance to expected strokes per hole, you would not know who is leading in a tournament (even in a shotgun start) until all players finish (and they would all still need to count strokes which I know some don't like).  What is the problem with counting them on each hole? The reason the shotgun start doesn't matter is because the nines (if you are playing an 18 hole tournament) could be very different from a scoring or difficulty standpoint. 


Speaking of numbers, both the slope rating and the course rating are a total of the ratings generated for each individual hole.  As such that individual hole rating is in essence the par for that hole.  If a 345 yard hole is deemed to have a slope rating of 3.95, that is its effective par for the bogie golfer.  You add all those up and you get the slope rating.  Same for the course rating. 


Other than the standard number of holes (18) that has been around for a long time, I don't think architects have been that limited in what they can or can't do.  Holes come in all sizes and lengths.  Who really wants to play an 800 or 900 yard golf hole?  Talk about adding real estate to golf courses    And there are many very short holes out there.  Pitch and putt courses are still very prominent at least in the U.S.  Forrest Richardson has even built Par 2 holes in AZ.  I asked earlier, what would architects do differently.  I guess they could make some holes so difficult (since their was no score keeping or par, you just pick up your ball when you get tired of playing).  Ira pointed out that some courses that are a little less conventional (I have played most of those he mentioned and they are fantastic designs).  Nothing wrong with building more of them. 


No matter what an architect builds or whether or not par is on the card or distances are on the card, golfers are going to figure it all out.  For one they have to figure it out or there won't be a way to come up with handicaps which is one of the great things about golf.  I used to be a pretty good tennis player in college and there is no real way to handicap tennis players that I know of.  In golf we all can play with anyone and have a fun and interesting match.  The only way to do that that I can think of is to have a way to estimate what different players of different skill levels would score "on each particular hole".  If for example we only played three holes for our match, how would two players of very different abilities compete?  Remember golf is a game 

[Tom_Doak]

Unlike the dubious claims advanced by those inclined to the psychological, culture "virtues" of par, I am not suggesting that golf world or your foursome has to stop using the term, and that we can't go on using the cribbed language of par in our golf... just that we take it off the card without comment and see what happens... there's no golfer in the world who stands on a tee, beholds the new hole and its yardage before them and is rudderless because a stated par is absent...


I am solely interested in the architectural innovations and fresh potentials that are being held back by the tired and rather meaningless, imposed "concept" of par... that we don't have more "half par yardages"  (chiefly, 240 - 285 and 450 - 490)... that we'll never see the design of a 700+ yard hole, not for the championship golfer, but for the everyday golfer, unless we call it a Par 6, and call a "4" made on it an "Eagle." 


This board spoke of a "Par 2" hole and some of its features, and one of those potential features was its length (30 - 70 yards)...well, I think we'll never see that/those holes, because no public support is seemingly available for something that must be assigned a par of 2. 


It would be great if Tom Doak made an interesting 50 yard shot to an interesting green, that had mounds like the old Stoke Poges, designed and grassed to be cut at "5.5" and thus permitted realistic play over them, but that won't happen because no one is going to let him make a Par 2 on their course, with their precious treasury. And its nearly the same for a 265 yard hole... if TD did so, and didn't list a par, it would be the first question asked...

VK:  I am far more likely to design a par-6 someday, than a par-2.  There is precedent from 200 years ago for the former, but not for the latter.


I agree with you entirely in the first paragraph quoted above.  I spent a couple of days last week with Zac Blair and he seems like just the sort who could get behind having no par on the card and just making everyone keep track vs. "even fours" if they insist on keeping track.


One of the reasons I don't like par is because people have become too fixated on the "half par" holes you mention, when those lengths seem skewed to the favor of low-handicappers.  If you don't want to favor one player over another, holes should come in all lengths including 280 and 490, but they shouldn't be bunched in bias toward certain lengths.  Honestly I think the lengths that are being ignored now are 170 and 370 and 500, which used to be staples of every course.

[JESII]

Wait a second...Tom, how do half par holes favor low handicap players?

[Jim Sherma]

Half-par holes is a lot of what makes a course architecturally interesting in my mind.


Courses that have half par holes going both ways are the ones that are most fun in my opinion. Hershey Parkview (NLE) was exceptional in this regard in that there was a mix of a few drivable par 4's and a couple reachable par 5's offset by a few long difficult par 4's where 4 was a very good score. I felt that this mix led to a really fun day since you could get some birds and possibly a look or two at eagle. This was offset with some likely bogies or worse that you could turn into pars with good play. Definitely added to a nice ebb and flow to the round where you alternated between trying to get something versus hanging on to what you had.


Courses where all of the half pars are either up or down are much less interesting day to day.

[Mark_Fine]

I know we talk about them here but I have never seen a 1/2 par hole on a scorecard    When I bring up the concept with golfing buddies they don't really get it.  Are all tough par fours 1/2 par holes?  Are all easy par fives 1/2 par holes?  Are some holes 1/3 par holes if they are in between?  We all play holes where we probably beg to differ with the scorecard par.  Isn't that why we all have our own personal pars?  I just played a 285 yard par four hole at Atlantic Dunes in Hilton Head.  I was pin high behind a greenside bunker on my tee shot and proceeded to skull my flop shot over the back and made 5.  Is the hole a par three, a par four, or something in between?  I just think it is a very tempting hole I should make 3 on but it doesn't always happen.  And doesn't the term 1/2 par come from what the expected score would be on that particular hole for a proficient golfer?  That is all par is any way yet we all get hung up about it.  It is just an expected score and no matter what an architect builds, it will ultimately get a number.   

[Ira Fishman]

Mark,


You missed my point. Of course there is nothing wrong with more courses such as those I listed. My point is that there are not more of them because of the Convention of Par and the Conventions Around Par act as limitations on architects designing such routings. You will notice that there is only one Modern course on my list. I am sure that there are others but probably not many.


Ira

[Garland Bayley]

...
Speaking of numbers, both the slope rating and the course rating are a total of the ratings generated for each individual hole.  As such that individual hole rating is in essence the par for that hole.  If a 345 yard hole is deemed to have a slope rating of 3.95, that is its effective par for the bogie golfer.  You add all those up and you get the slope rating.  Same for the course rating. 
...

Erik, free to correct him on this misstatement. I demand equal correction.

[Mark_Fine]

Ira,
As I said, it would be interesting to hear what architects would do differently were it not for par concerns?  Tom said he would build par 6's.  I say go for it.  I think the challenge with longer holes is the time it takes to play them and a lot more real estate.  Plus if you are playing match play and your opponent hits two out of bounds off the tee and says your hole, it is long walk to the next one    We play cross country golf sometimes at Lehigh where we play from say the third hole to the seventh green.  Who knows what "par" is but if we played it enough, I am sure we would figure it out. 


I still don't think architect's creativity is severely limited because of par.  Their goal is to make interesting golf courses uses all the tools they have at their disposal.  Different starting points (tees) make help adjust for all different playing abilities.  If, however, we all had to start at the same starting location it would be a totally different matter.  Think about my skiing analogy.  It would really suck for most and many would give up the sport if the only option was you had to go all the way to the top and figure out how to get down.  Different stops on the lift are like different tees in golf.  Same goes for the different hazards and steepness of the slopes etc.  The architects of ski slopes have the same kind of challenges as golf architects.  They have "pars" too 


Garland,
If I am wrong, I stand corrected.  I am (was) certified to do course slope ratings.  Maybe I am out of touch but we would go hole by hole to figure out the final tally. 

[David Ober]

Mike Cirba,


8 at T/F is much better as the original where the green is before the creek.


  As for par whole numbers cause the problem. At Rolling Green we have two par threes that were originally designed at 260 and 130 yards. Those are the same par?


Much of the desire to change holes is to fit the par rather than the other way around.


I think it works for keeping score.

Was/is the 260 hole downhill? Did/does it have a large and accessible green?


Not to be flip, but if you took even a very good amateur event field, the average score on those two holes could be quite close, perhaps 3.08 on the short one and 3.35(?) on the long one -- if the long one has an elevated tee, and a large and accessible green, which most "par 3's" of that length do.


Certainly a 260 yard hole could be designed so that there's no way it would play to that low of a stroke average.


Would be curious to know the scoring average of the longest, yet easiest par 3's on Tour. So the "lowest stroke average per yard" on the PGA Tour. And then the converse would be fun, too.