[Ben Hollerbach]

In response to the conversation within my 6,400 yard PGA Tour course thread, I created the following challenge exploring what a tournament on a short PGA Tour course would actually look like.

I’ve composed 2 different 18 hole routings made up of holes from regular, non major, PGA Tour venues. The first routing includes holes played during the first half of this calendar year's schedule and the second routing includes holes played during the second half of the schedule. Both routings will play less than 6,600 yards and will historically average over par.

The challenge to you will be to estimate what the actual scoring performance on these courses will be as if it was a normal event.

Below is the early season routing, a Par 70 that will play 6,502 yards. The 18 hole routing is made up of holes from 7 different tournaments.



I’d like you to estimate what the scoring average will be in relation to par for the following classifications:

• Total Field Average
• Top 25 Scoring Average
• Top 10 Scoring Average
• Lowest Scoring Average

Each composite course will be made up of holes from around 7 different courses. Based on past history, within the pool of PGA Tour players who will enter these events, 60% of them will play in 4 or more events and 40% will play in 5 or more events. Even if a player plays in every event, they may not always make the cut at those events. Both factors will create discrepancies in the statistical averages in the challenge. To mitigate that I will calculate 2 sets of averages, one for all players available and one for all players who have played in at least half of the available holes within the routing. (For example, through Bay Hill players would have had the opportunity to have played 10 holes in the routing a total of 34 times. Any player who has played at least 16 holes at that point would be scored in the second set of averages.)

I’m not asking you to estimate both sets of averages, just one. Think of the two sets as being similar to Gross vs. Net scoring.

To participate, post a reply with your predictions for the Early Season routing. You’re post should look like the following example:

• TFA (+1.20)
• T25A (-0.75)
• T10A (-1.40)
• LSA (-3.20)

The first 2 holes in the routing are at Waialae Country Club, so all entries for the early season are due by midnight EST Wednesday, January 13th. Prior to the first round at the Sony Open.


Each week I'll post a leaderboard of both how the PGA Tour players are fairing against the routing and how well we are predicting their performance.

The early season challenge will conclude following the RBC Heritage on April 18th. The routing for the late season routing will be posted on April 18th and the late season challenge will begin at the Valspar Championship on April 29th.

Good Luck

[Tom_Doak]

Ben:


I will be interested to see your results, though I have no interest in trying to predict them.


One question:  what do you mean by Lowest Scoring Average?  Lowest by a single player?  And, if so, a different player for each hole or the same player for the whole 18?

[Ben Hollerbach]

Tom,


Lowest Scoring Average relates to the specific player who's score is lowest in relationship to par. This would take place across all 18 holes in the routing, for as many of the holes that have been played.

[Ronald Montesano]

How does this correlate to short courses standing up against PGA Tour players? It's a lot of mathematics.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Ronald,


For a more in-depth discussion on the topic take a look at the thread Could a 6,400 yard course hold up to the PGA tour?.


In general, there is quite a number of shorter holes currently played on the PGA Tour that hold their own against the competition. Within the discussion I posted, there was a significant amount of back and forth in regards to how a short course could actually hold up and what the winning score would be.


This challenge was born from those discussions. The course I posted in this thread will act as the experimental control for which people have the opportunity to propose their scoring hypothesis. As the season goes on, I'll be able to calculate the scoring on these select holes to determine if a tournament was played over just these holes what the scoring would actually look like, who would win and what their winning score would be.

[AChao]

Thanks for creating Ben ...


So assuming we are just taking score from what is shot and top 25 means top 25 playing in the field that week and not players in top 25 in the field that week (which can be significantly fewer) ... also assuming fields will be similar to previous years ... what pops-out at me is these 18 holes play very different from the 18 you created earlier ... at any rate ... here are my best guesses, i.e. not optimized, not top players trying to play their best, etc ...


Field Average +0.4 or +1 to +2 for four rounds
Top 25 -0.8 or around -3 for four rounds
Top 10 - 1.4 or around -5 to -6 for four rounds
Lowest  - 4.5 or around -18 for four rounds


I think max theoretical on this course if optimized is closer to -7 ish or -30 for four rounds on this course because of make-up of holes and how many offer scoring variances on the higher side but not on the lower side.  Par 5 differences are significant.  Par 4 composition and holes are significant.  3 of the par 3s have water as a factor and all 4 have potentially difficult winds.  Your earlier course had different factors.  (Weak fields in some and non-optimization factors.)


Thanks for creating this!  Should be interesting to see what happens.

In response to the conversation within my 6,400 yard PGA Tour course thread, I created the following challenge exploring what a tournament on a short PGA Tour course would actually look like.

I’ve composed 2 different 18 hole routings made up of holes from regular, non major, PGA Tour venues. The first routing includes holes played during the first half of this calendar year's schedule and the second routing includes holes played during the second half of the schedule. Both routings will play less than 6,600 yards and will historically average over par.

The challenge to you will be to estimate what the actual scoring performance on these courses will be as if it was a normal event.

Below is the early season routing, a Par 70 that will play 6,502 yards. The 18 hole routing is made up of holes from 7 different tournaments. 



I’d like you to estimate what the scoring average will be in relation to par for the following classifications:

• Total Field Average
• Top 25 Scoring Average
• Top 10 Scoring Average
• Lowest Scoring Average

Each composite course will be made up of holes from around 7 different courses. Based on past history, within the pool of PGA Tour players who will enter these events, 60% of them will play in 4 or more events and 40% will play in 5 or more events. Even if a player plays in every event, they may not always make the cut at those events. Both factors will create discrepancies in the statistical averages in the challenge. To mitigate that I will calculate 2 sets of averages, one for all players available and one for all players who have played in at least half of the available holes within the routing. (For example, through Bay Hill players would have had the opportunity to have played 10 holes in the routing a total of 34 times. Any player who has played at least 16 holes at that point would be scored in the second set of averages.)

I’m not asking you to estimate both sets of averages, just one. Think of the two sets as being similar to Gross vs. Net scoring.

To participate, post a reply with your predictions for the Early Season routing. You’re post should look like the following example:

• TFA (+1.20)
• T25A (-0.75)
• T10A (-1.40)
• LSA (-3.20)

The first 2 holes in the routing are at Waialae Country Club, so all entries for the early season are due by midnight EST Wednesday, January 13th. Prior to the first round at the Sony Open.


Each week I'll post a leaderboard of both how the PGA Tour players are fairing against the routing and how well we are predicting their performance.

The early season challenge will conclude following the RBC Heritage on April 18th. The routing for the late season routing will be posted on April 18th and the late season challenge will begin at the Valspar Championship on April 29th.

Good Luck

[Ben Hollerbach]

AC,


The field will be all players within the PGA tour. So the top 25 would reflect the 25 best players across just these 18 holes at the 7 events. For example, after the Sony next week, I'll post an update that will show the 25 players who played just the 2nd and 15th the best across the week. Performance on all other holes at Waialae will be ignored.


Thanks for playing

[JESII]

Good stuff Ben, interesting! Thanks for putting together.


My guesses are:


Total Field: +1.5
Top 25: -0.25
Top 10: -0.40
Lowest: -1.25


Kind of tough to think through without looking at prior year stats on each hole...

[Thomas Dai]

The field will be all players within the PGA tour. So the top 25 would reflect the 25 best players across just these 18 holes at the 7 events. For example, after the Sony next week, I'll post an update that will show the 25 players who played just the 2nd and 15th the best across the week. Performance on all other holes at Waialae will be ignored.
Thanks for playing

Be interesting to also establish what clubs the various players used in playing the holes. Drivers, fairways from the fairway, etc etc etc.
Atb

[Ben Hollerbach]

Be interesting to also establish what clubs the various players used in playing the holes. Drivers, fairways from the fairway, etc etc etc.
Atb

Totally! This is where I wish I still had access to the ShotLink database. We may not be able to look at club selections, but we would know the distances for tee shots and approach shots, which would tell us a lot about their strategic choices.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Just a few days left to post your scoring estimations...

[Ben Hollerbach]

I'm a bit surprised at y'all.


There were so many posters who were convinced that a PGA tour event played on a short course would lead to winning scores below -30 that I expected more of you to "put your money where you mouth is" and participate in this challenge.


I guess its easy to throw out claims about what has been or what might have been, but when the results are actually going to be tabulated previous levels of confidence drops down a few pegs.


For those who have put out predictions, thank you. For others watching from afar I still encourage you to play. Either way I'll be posting the progress standings on a week by week basis so we can track the actual results.

[Kalen Braley]

Ben,

While I think this is an interesting exercise, and certainly fun to speculate on player scores...at the end of the day it remains a cherry picked list of "short" holes that play relatively difficult to par.  Given the Tour plays approx. 50 courses per year (some events with multiple courses), that gives 900 holes to select from, of which its inevitable to find a few that break the general rule of "shorter is easier" for these guys.

Is there any course the pros play year in and out that plays tougher than Pebble?

[Ben Hollerbach]

Kalen,


One of the main focuses of my last post, and the basis of this exercise, is that while the PGA Tour plays so many holes in a season there are select short holes that do give them fits. It may be a curated list of holes that I'm portraying, but the ultimate question is what can we learn from this list that should be better integrated into course design and maintenance to present a fantastic challenge to the players. These holes show that additional length is not the only way to test the modern player and there are other options.


Ignoring that fact is simply accepting the problem is out of "our" hand. In the context of the game of golf and architecture, there are few better places in the world for that discussion to be had but right here on Golf Club Atlas. I hope that through this challenge peoples eyes will be opened to the idea that courses do not need to be long to be challenging.


To your final question, there are 4 or 5 courses the consistently have a higher stroke average than Pebble Beach, not factoring in strength of field, with each of those courses playing at least 600 yards longer than Pebble.

[Kalen Braley]

Ben,

Those are all good points and I agree with them.  I was specifically responding to your 1st paragraph where you reference -30 for a winning score.  There are certainly plenty of courses the Pros can eviscerate overall, yet still have 1-2 difficult holes like TOC with hole 17.  I'm curious how well TPC Sawgrass would have held up if Pete's original version was still intact, i'm guessing it would be short by todays standards.

P.S.  I also should have clarified any other short course aka under 7000 yards with respect to PB.

[Pete_Pittock]

Round One
Waialae  # 2  3.997      #15 4.021


I think these are right. The PGA website for the Sony Open lists 1.997 and 2.021
 

[JESII]

Ooh...and Vaughn Taylor birdied both of them...


Now I'm confused

[Ben Hollerbach]

For reference, Here are the results for the 2020 Sony Open:

                 All Players    4 Round Players   
Leader           -2.00           -2.00                       
Top 10           -0.80           -0.70                       
Top 25           -0.28            0.20                         
Tour Avg.        1.86            1.74                         



Interestingly, Hole 2 played ~0.7 strokes easier yesterday than it did in the first round of 2020 and hole 15 played ~0.3 strokes easier .

[JESII]

With zero proof, I'd guess that's a hole location difference.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Good point Jim,


The pin they used yesterday on 2 was the same as the 3rd round last year (4.15 avg) and the pin on 15 was the 2nd round last year (4.26 avg)


During no round last year did any of the holes play under par, The 2nd played easiest during round 3 and the 15th played easiest during round 4 (4.05 avg)


Last year during round 1 the wind was much higher than it was yesterday.


Yesterdays play better lines up with the first round of 2017 or 2018.

[Tom_Doak]

I'm a bit surprised at y'all.

I didn't participate because the process was a bit convoluted and hard for me to understand.  Plus, the results are all that matter, most of what's on here is unimportant.   


Since we started consulting at Waialae 5-6 years ago, the green chairman has complained to us that the tournament hasn't had the winds they used to get, because of changes in the weather pattern.  Last year was the first time in a while they had a bunch of wind, and the scoring was much higher:  both #2 and #15 played directly into the wind and that put them on your list.  This year, no wind so far, so Waialae will probably not be the best course to have as part of your difficult short course.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Tom,


When putting together my routing of 18 holes I used scoring data from the last 5 years of play. Scoring for 2020 at Waialae was higher than average, but even if you remove last year the 2nd and 15th still average par +/- 0.05 strokes. For holes of comparable length, you'd expect them to average ~0.25 strokes easier.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Scoring update from the Sony Open:



Considering the scoring average on Saturday was the lowest on the PGA tour in nearly 2 decades, I'd say the 2nd and 15th held up reasonably well. Interesting that the leader Morikawa parred both on Saturday.


The next event on the list is Pebble Beach coming up in a few weeks. With no Am in the field, I wonder if that will impact course setup and scoring. Its possible this week in the desert will give us a clue.

[JESII]

Thanks Ben!


So that I have this correct, those numbers equate to;


Lowest = -1.25
Top 10 = -0.95
Top 25 = -0.8
Avg = -0.115  or is this -0.15 based on 4 Rounds?


Correct?




Curious how this plays out as the events move around.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Play is away on the next 3 holes of the challenge.


Hole 1 played lower than expected, but Holes 8 and 18 followed their recent averages. As for individual rankings, Cantlay birdied all 3 holes yesterday, I would expect that no one did any better.

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