Difficulty apart from distance

[Ben Sims]

I’m not well-versed in the field of statistics. But I imagine that when it comes to making a quantitative judgement on the difficulty of a golf hole, there has to be a way normalize distance and remove the gross effects of that variable.


Say we do that. What features would you expect to be prevalent on difficult holes when we normalize distance?

[Buck Wolter]

Stroke and Distance hazards

[Michael Felton]

Narrow fairways with OB or hazards around, then small elevated greens with large runoff areas or bunkers close to the green I would think.


You could look at difficulty by average shots vs expected based on length from the tee. Mark Broadie's book has expected shots to hole out by distance from various places, one of which is the tee. So if a 300 yard hole is 3.71 shots and it averages 4.11, then it's 0.40 strokes over expected and therefore quite hard for its length. If on the other hand a 450 yard hole is 4.13 and averages 4.01 then it's 0.12 strokes easier than expected.

[Tony Ristola]

I’m not well-versed in the field of statistics. But I imagine that when it comes to making a quantitative judgement on the difficulty of a golf hole, there has to be a way normalize distance and remove the gross effects of that variable.


Say we do that. What features would you expect to be prevalent on difficult holes when we normalize distance?

Blindness in conjunction with a singular nasty hazard or drop-off so one knows there's dire consequences awaiting if you misjudge.


With all the distance info we have today... yardage guides, lasers, gps... it's one element that creates discomfort.


Some form of blindness on the tee shot. The shot doesn't have to be fully blind... rather you see one side of the fairway, but not the entire breadth of it. That I often found irritating, especially if the fairway had a curve to it and you couldn't see the inside line. I think it's a good ploy to confound those playing from back tees. That said, the obstruction has to be close enough to the tee (10, 20, 30 yards) so you can't gauge your shot off of the vegetation.

[Jeff M Johnson]

During a recent rerating of my home course, I was chatting with the Washington Golf Association person in charge of rating, and he mentioned that the model they use to determine hole difficulty explains over 70% of the scoring variation per hole strictly using distance. This surprised me, so I went and looked to the hole by hole scoring data I have for my home course (tournament rounds only.) And it worked even better than that on my course. You can basically take the yardage of a hole, divide it by par - 2 (to get the length of shots needed to get on in regulation), and stack rank the holes that way, and it will nearly perfectly match hole difficulty as measured by scores over par. I was surprised.

[Tim Martin]

I often hear the phrase “par is defended at the green” for shorter Golden Age courses and it’s why a place like Cape Arundel remains relevant, fun to play and is no pushover for purposes of posting a score despite tipping out at less than 5800 yards. Sloping and contoured greens and surrounds are a remedy for lack of scorecard distance ramping up both excitement and difficulty.

[Matt Schoolfield]

If your genuinely asking about normalizing distances, my back-of-the-napkin approach is to literally just -- Slope/Length -- to get a good idea at how difficult the course is apart from "hit it long and straight."

I wrote a long piece on Luck vs Skill on the golf course, and I think it's incredibly relevant here. If we're talking about what features, I think the easiest way to do that is look at features that are both high-luck and high-skill focused on dispersion patterns, but high-luck courses will always increase difficulty regardless of skill (which is often just a proxy for controlled shot distance).

I recently posted my redesign for #13 at Valhalla which requires both skill and a bit of luck. Tom mentioned afterward:

One reason island greens generally suck, is because you can't have contours like the ones Matt has designed here, or decent approach shots will wind up wet.

I think that distance-normalized, higher difficulty is going come from exactly the types of features that are effectively not controllable, and can only be mitigated by choosing the lesser of two evils (in my example, making a shot that risks the bunker instead of the water), or one that could only be mitigated by an angle that was played to before hand.

As an aside, an exercise I've always wanted to see (and may already exist), is a course that has sets their back tees at a lower rating and lower slope than their second longest tees. I believe this could be achieved with challenging angles, on obstacles that block assess different sections of a wide fairway.  This could keep the "we play the tips" folks in play, while giving the serious player, who actually looks at the rating/slope before play, the opportunity to take on a real challenge. Maybe that's functionally impossible with the current slope/rating system, but it should be possible in principle.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

As an aside, an exercise I've always wanted to see (and may already exist), is a course that has sets their back tees at a lower rating and lower slope than their second longest tees.

That's gonna be pretty tough since the slope is basically a measure of the difference between the scratch rating and the bogey rating, and the bogey rating considers all the stuff along the corridor of the hole, so from longer tees you're considering all the stuff as the shorter tees… and then some.

You'd have to go at it from the scratch rating side, which really only considers things in the landing zone or close to it… and even then, the guys playing the forward set of tees with the (manufactured) higher rating could just hit shorter clubs to where the back tee scratch guy's landing areas are.

So, unless I've brain farted here… tough.

[Michael Felton]

As an aside, an exercise I've always wanted to see (and may already exist), is a course that has sets their back tees at a lower rating and lower slope than their second longest tees.

That's gonna be pretty tough since the slope is basically a measure of the difference between the scratch rating and the bogey rating, and the bogey rating considers all the stuff along the corridor of the hole, so from longer tees you're considering all the stuff as the shorter tees… and then some.

You'd have to go at it from the scratch rating side, which really only considers things in the landing zone or close to it… and even then, the guys playing the forward set of tees with the (manufactured) higher rating could just hit shorter clubs to where the back tee scratch guy's landing areas are.

So, unless I've brain farted here… tough.

That was my impression too. I don't know how you'd make a hole harder for a scratch player if you also make it shorter. It's conceivable that you could have a higher average score if you tempt people into making poor decisions from the front, but I doubt if that would get picked up by the rating system. I guess you could perhaps have the relative gain from shortening the course be higher for the scratch players, so the slope might increase, but then the rating would have to come down too.

[Thomas Dai]

Do shorter holes particularly very short holes present more difficulty to the longer hitter? Not just indecision or over-thinking on partial shots or flight, trajectory, wind issues but do their expectations get out of kilter when they tee-up on a par-3?
Maybe it’s mere perception but it seems like par-3’s are where they mainly drop a shot or screw-up? And when they do the effect between the ears seems to be more significant than at par-4’s/5’s.
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

I think it would be impossible to design a course where the middle tees have a higher course rating or slope rating than from further back.  I've seen quite a few courses where the slope is pretty much the same from multiple sets of tees, but as noted length is the #1 factor in the course rating and the slope system doesn't account very well for strategy.


I think you COULD design a hole where the scratch player fared better from a further back tee.  I suspect it would be on a mid-length par-4 that isn't drivable, and the player could leave himself with a 70-yard bunker shot to either side of the fairway on an offline drive, where if he was 30 yards further back on the tee he'd be unlikely to reach the bunker.  This is exactly the sort of hole where a Tour pro would lay up, but a lot of scratch players wouldn't think of that.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I think it would be impossible to design a course where the middle tees have a higher course rating or slope rating than from further back.  I've seen quite a few courses where the slope is pretty much the same from multiple sets of tees, but as noted length is the #1 factor in the course rating and the slope system doesn't account very well for strategy.

One way you could do it is if the shorter tees were in a very different place than the longer tees. It'd have to be significant, but for example… the longer tees play directly north, while the slightly shorter tees play from 45° to the right, or to the northwest, and have a big pond or OB close to their line of play.

Nearly 18 times.

So, yeah, not really gonna happen.

[Sean_A]

If Holes were ordered longest to shortest, what would be an unusual relative hole difficulty ? I don’t know, but my guess is anything more than one. Meaning maybe a shorter hole is more difficult than the next longest hole, but not the two next longest. I would be very surprised if any jump occured between pars. Meaning a par 3 is more difficult than a par 4. That’s how important distance is for difficulty. If you start adding in stuff like penalty or lost ball opportunities, narrow fairways, high rough, fast greens it might soon feel like a goofy course and not that good.

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

If Holes were ordered longest to shortest, what would be an unusual relative hole difficulty ? I don’t know, but my guess is anything more than one. Meaning maybe a shorter hole is more difficult than the next longest hole, but not the two next longest. I would be very surprised if any jump occured between pars. Meaning a par 3 is more difficult than a par 4. That’s how important distance is for difficulty. If you start adding in stuff like penalty or lost ball opportunities, narrow fairways, high rough, fast greens it might soon feel like a goofy course and not that good.

Sean:


I was surprised to find that in a big event at Stonewall, which had all of the best players in the state, the six toughest holes to par for the week were the par-4 18th, and all five of the par-3's.  But, after a bit of thought, I realized those were the six longest approach shots the players faced all day .  .  . the other two-shot holes were 440 yards or under, and for those players, they were shorter approaches than a 150-yard par-3.


The same would not be true for a senior who drove the ball 200-220.

[Sean_A]

If Holes were ordered longest to shortest, what would be an unusual relative hole difficulty ? I don’t know, but my guess is anything more than one. Meaning maybe a shorter hole is more difficult than the next longest hole, but not the two next longest. I would be very surprised if any jump occured between pars. Meaning a par 3 is more difficult than a par 4. That’s how important distance is for difficulty. If you start adding in stuff like penalty or lost ball opportunities, narrow fairways, high rough, fast greens it might soon feel like a goofy course and not that good.

Sean:


I was surprised to find that in a big event at Stonewall, which had all of the best players in the state, the six toughest holes to par for the week were the par-4 18th, and all five of the par-3's.  But, after a bit of thought, I realized those were the six longest approach shots the players faced all day .  .  . the other two-shot holes were 440 yards or under, and for those players, they were shorter approaches than a 150-yard par-3.


The same would not be true for a senior who drove the ball 200-220.

I guess there are a few ways to look at it. I don’t really think of relative to par designation for difficulty. I can’t really if I don’t believe par matters. As I have been playing more 9 holers in recent years I notice so many holes don’t adhere to their par designation. Often holes that are less than 275 being labelled as par 4s. One was a par 4 that wasn’t much longer than 200 yards.

So I simplify things by ignoring par. Just run down the hardest holes by stroke average. It would be rare for a 150 yard hole to have a higher stroke average than a 275 yard hole. Yet golfers fool themselves by bringing par into question to create a false construct of the 275 hole being easier.

Ciao

[Ben Sims]

An aside for the discussion, I’m told the hardest hole at Old Barnwell for the ladies (South Carolina, Duke, Miss St, FSU) at the Derby Matchplay was the par 4 9th, 275 from the white tees that were used in the matches.

[Joe Hancock]

How about substantial elevation change?

[Don Mahaffey]

I’m not well-versed in the field of statistics. But I imagine that when it comes to making a quantitative judgement on the difficulty of a golf hole, there has to be a way normalize distance and remove the gross effects of that variable.


Say we do that. What features would you expect to be prevalent on difficult holes when we normalize distance?

Probably not quantifiable but IMO difficult on interesting to play golf courses start with Convex features and contours- balls runaway from target if offline

Most holes and features are concave and while scary looking act as containing the ball close to intended lines.

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