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Adam_F_Collins

Course with no par?
« on: January 24, 2007, 11:33:23 PM »
Are there any golf courses with no set par? Just a score card with hole numbers, handicaps and yardages?

Is this possible? Desirable? Why/not?

A
« Last Edit: January 24, 2007, 11:33:38 PM by Adam_Foster_Collins »

Chris Cupit

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2007, 11:51:29 PM »
I have thought for a long time that a neat course would be made up of a lot of "tweener" holes.  Par 3 1/2s, 4 1/2s and 5 1/2s and that each day the wind/weather would determine the day's "Par".  For example, a stretch of holes at 295, 276 and 485 might be par 3,3 and 4 downwind but 4,4 and 5 into the wind.  Or, the professional might determine that with no wind the par for that 3 hole course should be 12 (he'd assume an expert golfer should average 4s with calm or still conditions).

Anyway, you would show up and "par" today may be 69, 72 or 75.  I do know that oversees, standard scratch score for a competition is posted daily and certainly depends on the weather.

If you tried that in the states, I'm afraid most people would just look at you with blank stares or consider it a "gimmick" :(

Jeff Doerr

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2007, 12:23:38 AM »
Good question?

When did "par" begin?

I could see a course rating, and a course record - what else do you need? I've always thought the "personal par" idea is great for all above the mid teens in handicap and really would lead to better scoring.
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Jason McNamara

Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2007, 12:55:22 AM »
Are there any golf courses with no set par? Just a score card with hole numbers, handicaps and yardages?

Adam -

This was the case at Notre Dame's course (Coore/Crenshaw) when it opened, iirc.  Don't know (doubt it) whether it has remained thus.

Tommy Williamsen

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2007, 01:50:11 AM »
It seems to me that until recently Swinley Forest didn't have pars, just a card with numbers on it.
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Mark Pearce

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2007, 04:38:12 AM »
Presumably the good Dr Stableford put paid to the idea of a course without par?
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Tom_Doak

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2007, 06:50:54 AM »
When I played Swinley Forest in the 1980's, they didn't list par on the card, but they did list the "bogey" score, which was common on many courses prior to 1960.

Back in its heyday, Woking had neither par nor bogey ... Bernard Darwin wrote about that.

Mark Bourgeois

Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2007, 07:17:27 AM »
Jason,

No longer. People freaked out.

Mark, interesting.  Frank Stableford's system was a reaction to the bogey / par system. I guess if you wanted Stableford in the weekly comp, then you'd need par

But you'd probably only want Stableford in the first place because you had the par system in place already; aren't most courses that resisted instituting a par system two-ball and foursome courses anyway?

Mark

ForkaB

Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2007, 07:50:22 AM »
If "par" were to vanish from scorecards, the world of golf would be a better place.  Muirfield never had them until it was dragged recently and meekly into the 20th century by their customers.

Anybody who knows and loves golf knows that each hole has its own private par for each player on each and every day.

Mark Pearce

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #9 on: January 25, 2007, 08:06:07 AM »
If "par" were to vanish from scorecards, the world of golf would be a better place.  Muirfield never had them until it was dragged recently and meekly into the 20th century by their customers.

Anybody who knows and loves golf knows that each hole has its own private par for each player on each and every day.

I have quite a lot of sympathy with this view.  However, you need SSS or CSS to allow calculation of handicaps and some par value would need to be provided for competitions played to a Stableford or Bogey format.

Doing away with par on each hole and having a course par score might also have an interesting knock on in deciding Stroke Indexes.  Since we wouldn't have Stableford or Bogey competitions, we needn't consider which holes were those where handicap golfers most needed a shot.  Instead stroke index could be decided solely on those holes where good golfers had a greater advantage over weaker golfers.  At my club there's no doubt that the hardest hole (and current SI 1) is the 470 yard 13th, with a four foot high bank fronting the green making it almost impossible to run a ball up.  Even scratch golfers are happy to walk off with a 4, most low 'cappers will take 5 and move on.  However, most mid-handicappers can reasonably comfortably also get 5.  The 430 yard 16th, though, is a reasonably straightforward par for the good golfer but still a 5 for most mid-cappers.  Off my 11, playing a 4 handicapper, I'd rather get my shot there than at 13, though thirteen is undoubtedly a tougher hole to get par at.
In June I will be riding the first three stages of this year's Tour de France route for charity.  630km (394 miles) in three days, with 7800m (25,600 feet) of climbing for the William Wates Memorial Trust (https://rideleloop.org/the-charity/) which supports underprivileged young people.

Tom_Doak

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #10 on: January 25, 2007, 10:13:05 AM »
Mark:

I still have no idea what is the proper way to allocate stroke holes.  In Australia they have separate stroke indexes for medal and match play, and in one of them, holes 4-8-12-16 are always the four lowest index holes no matter what kind of holes they are!

That proved, for my purposes anyway, that it really doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme.  In your example, if you get the stroke on the 16th hole as you'd like, you will halve that hole and maybe halve the 13th if your opponent makes five.  The way it is now, you win the 13th with your stroke, and then lose the 16th (if the match gets that far).  It all balances out.

Indeed, the only mistake you can make in handicapping holes is to put some of the lower stroke holes at the end of the round, where a match will be over before they can be used.

PThomas

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #11 on: January 25, 2007, 10:40:23 AM »
Are there any golf courses with no set par? Just a score card with hole numbers, handicaps and yardages?

Adam -

This was the case at Notre Dame's course (Coore/Crenshaw) when it opened, iirc.  Don't know (doubt it) whether it has remained thus.

alas, I believe they do list par for each hole now
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Jim Sweeney

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #12 on: January 25, 2007, 02:36:33 PM »
Tom:

The USGA recommendas that the strokes be allocated based on actual unadjusted scores. It's really simple, actually, but takes time to collect the data. Average hole scores of groups of high and low handicappers are compared, and the strokes are allocated based on the diffences between the averages, the hole with the largest differential being the first stroke hole, etc.

Odd number strokes are assigned to the front side, and even numbers to the back. Thus, if the handicap difference between two players is an odd number, the higher handicapper gets his extra shot on the front.

As in your example, the USGA recommends that stroke allocations 1,2,3,4 do not get assigned to holes 1,2,17, or 18.

Unfortunately, too many courses allocate the strokes on the subjective principal that the lower stroke assignments should go to the harder holes. The USGA system assigns the strokes to the holes where the higher handicapper needs them most, based on the data. Of course, the recommendation concerning holes 1,2,17 and 18 modifies that somewhat.

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Adam_F_Collins

Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #13 on: January 25, 2007, 06:06:30 PM »
Perhaps it is an idea that could only hold on a course that had no interest in 'official' tournament play.

The idea occurred to me when reading about minimum acreage for an 18 hole layout. I thought about how our course is on 93 acres. A 5500 yard par 68 course that is very resistant to scoring. As a result of it's low numerical values, it is my opinion that many people believe from the outset that they SHOULD shoot a low score. When they don't, they often get very upset.

I wonder how many people would enjoy it more if there was no par...

Tom_Doak

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #14 on: January 25, 2007, 07:43:41 PM »
Jim Sweeney:

I've seen the USGA plan in action, Stonewall collected cards and used all the data to handicap the original course there.  The results were quite odd.  The #1 handicap hole turned out to be the fourth, a 345-yard par 4 with trouble all around (lateral hazard on the right, trees left, forced carry second shot, tiny green).  It produced a lot of double and triple bogeys from the high handicapper ... but their stroke wouldn't help them much.

Andy Troeger

Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #15 on: January 25, 2007, 07:50:49 PM »
Are there any golf courses with no set par? Just a score card with hole numbers, handicaps and yardages?

Adam -

This was the case at Notre Dame's course (Coore/Crenshaw) when it opened, iirc.  Don't know (doubt it) whether it has remained thus.

alas, I believe they do list par for each hole now

I actually worked at Warren when there was no par, and may have still been there when they put it in. The thing was...everybody knew what the par was on every hole anyway. There were a couple of tweeners, but quite frankly the one was 460 with a huge green (#2) and the other was 480 uphill with a tiny green (#17). You certainly could make either hole (or #10) a 4 or 5 for your given situation, but you can still do that...putting the par on the scorecard doesn't change anything. It worked to me either way.

Greg Murphy

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Re:Course with no par?
« Reply #16 on: January 25, 2007, 08:11:30 PM »
I’m a fan of tweener holes and I once thought par was irrelevant, even unfortunate, but I’m not sure anymore. I do know par will not go away so it may be better to think of ways it can be used to make rounds more enjoyable and memorable rather than pretend it shouldn’t make any difference (because it does). My thinking is affected by a recent board of directors planning exercise at the Katepwa Beach Golf Club. One question board members were asked was to identify their favorite and least favorite holes at the course. There was no clear winner or loser, but the most often mentioned hole was the seventh and the responses were far from unanimous. Half listed it as one of their favorite holes. Half of the rest identified it as their least favorite hole.

From the back tee, the hole plays as a right to left dog-leg par 4 of 270 yards, but if played directly to the green it shortens to 255 yards. To get to the fairway one must carry a ravine. The safe play is a 170 yard tee shot to a semi-blind but generous landing area, followed by a 100 yard pitch over a shallow bunker to a low profile green that slopes Redan-like slightly away and from right to left. There is fairway left of the safe 170 yard landing area angling all the way to the green, but it becomes narrower and hump-backed as one gets closer to the green and the further left one goes off the tee (more directly at the green), the more danger comes into play on the left hand side with slight misses getting punished by bush, long grass or a collection bunker about 30 yards before the green. There are two other tees on the hole, one at 165 yards, on the green-side of the ravine, and one at 215 yards that must carry the ravine but at an angle more perpendicular to the green and fairway than the back tee. For men, the hole has played as a 270 yard par-4 from the “regular” tees and a 215 yard par-3 from the “back” tees. At least 90% of our rounds are played from the regular tees. Probably 90% of those playing the regular tees are going for the green rather than laying up, but no more than a third of these have the slightest chance of actually reaching the green. Carnage ensues.

Divergence of opinion over the hole I suspect is due to the following: (a) it is a non-traditional length—It doesn't fit some player's preconceived notions of what a par-3 should be or what a par-4 should be; (b) it slows play; and (c) it frustrates those who cannot bring themselves to lay up and find themselves nine times out of ten losing balls or hacking out of long grass or blasting out of a nasty bunker from that no-mans length of 30-40 yards or so. There are more 6's and worse on this hole than there are on the next hole even though the next hole is a couple hundred yards longer!

So guess what some players clamor for? What is the solution to frustration and slow play? Play to the fairway? Nooo—take the trouble away between tee and green—that's the ticket. All you have to do is fill in a bunker, re-grade the fairway to kick balls right or forward instead of left and bring in fill to create a fairway area extending back from the green on a line toward the back tee. Arrgghhh! The result would strip the hole of all its strategic interest and unique and distinct personality. A bit like J-Lo getting plastic surgery to make her fanny flatter.

Another suggestion is to have the hole play from the regular tees as a 215 yard par-3 and from the back tees as a 255 yard par-3. It would create instant notoriety, as it would be the toughest par-3 within a days drive. But here is where I find myself succumbing to the "Power of Par" and the “Fun Factor”. Par is of course objectively irrelevant to a hole. A hole is a hole and a score is a score. Whether it's labeled a 3 or a 4 does not change the playing characteristics of a hole. But—an eagle is not a birdie. Reaching the green on a par-3 is meeting expectations while reaching the green on a par-4 is a thrilling exception to expectations. Putting a par number on a hole can without question affect how fun (subjectively) the hole is to play by transforming it (in the player’s mind) into a penal rather than a heroic test of golf.

Intellectually, it should make absolutely no difference to me. I often play the hole as a par-3 of 215 yards. But from the back tee, if I am honest with myself, I know I would rather play the hole as a par-4 as would all the other lower handicap players I’ve talked to. I lay up about half the time now, which is the smart thing to do especially as the hole plays into the wind much of the time. But if it was labeled a par-3 I think I'd be going for the green on the tee shot 9/10ths vs. 5/10ths the time (and my average score on the hole would climb). The hole wouldn't have changed, but somehow my manliness would be challenged by the thought of laying up on a par-3. Then again, if there was no par assigned to the hole, I’d be back to playing it “smart”.

Ironically, the only players who would like to see the back tee labeled as a par-3 are higher handicap players who find themselves unable to play the hole smart, regardless of whether it is assigned a par or not, so they want to be moved off the tee altogether. They simply cannot get themselves to aim anywhere but at the green or somewhere between the green and the safe layup area. They even say they find it easier to lay up from 215 yards than from 255 yards. They repeatedly make such foolish choices relative to their ability, the extra stroke relative to par (at the cost of a mere 40-50 yards) is of no use to them. The dimensions and angles of the hole itself makes them play stupid, irrespective of par. On the other hand, my stupidity is revealed only after assigning a par to the hole.

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