Steve Dodge has done lots in disc golf.
If you don’t recognize the name, he’s the founder of the Disc Golf Pro Tour (DGPT).
Ever heard of it?
After serving as its tournament director for many years, he co-founded Boda Brothers Games. They’re the guys who make BIRDIE Pro, the disc golf board game. And if that weren’t enough to cause jealousy to course through your veins at the speed of light, the guy co-owns Maple Hill and heads the MVP Open every year. He was even partially responsible for Vibram Disc Golf.
Puffy, ego-boosting introduction aside, I tell you all this, because the dude recently shot me an email about an interesting topic I’d never before considered covering on Green Splatter …
The most boring FPO course on the Pro Tour.
And not according to the “eye test” or anything like that: Dodge thinks he’s come up with a quantitative, data-backed way to identify the courses that bore fans of FPO disc golf to death. The nexus of this off-the-cuff system was a conversation he had with a buddy a few weeks ago.
During it, his friend claimed FPO disc golf had greatly improved its course design on the Pro Tour, citing Kensington Toboggan as a prime example. Dodge was blown away by this, as – in his opinion – the Toboggan Course produced little more than a snoozefest on the FPO side.
This led to some impromptu research.
Dodge’s method-guiding premise is this:
- Birdies are super fun to watch in FPO disc golf.
- However, watching women card the same score isn’t.
For Dodge, right off the top of his head, barring an incredible shot or a mind-numbing mistake, the Discraft Great Lakes Open (DGLO) and the Toboggan Course it features seems like the epitome of an event where most FPO golfers do just that – perform somewhat similarly.
But would the data support his hunch?
Here’s what he did to find out …
According to Steve-O’s formula, DGPT holes in 2023 on which the vast majority of the FPO field reported the same number of throws get points. If at least 60% of the field carded the same score, the hole gets one point. If at least 70% of the field carded the same score, the hole gets two points. And if at least 80% of the field (ouch) carded the same score, the hole gets three points.
The lower the course’s final score, the more entertaining the course was for FPO viewers.
Capeesh?
* Note: Dodge’s calculations only take into account the first round of each FPO event.
Behold …
The results.
Contrary to Dodge’s initial thoughts, DGLO was NOT the worst of the FPO lot – but it was close. The most boring FPO course the Pro Tour had to offer in 2023 was Harvey Penick Golf Campus in Austin, Texas. This was the location of the Open at Austin, an Elite Series event, if you can believe it. This year, the Pro Tour will be back. Along with Kensington Toboggan, Harvey Penick had 10 holes with at least 60% of the FPO field reporting the same score.
Yikes.
In Dodge’s own words, here’s the BIG takeaway:
“If you want perceived success, just raise par. If you want an entertaining disc golf round, decrease your Weighted Boring Score.”
Will Steve’s analysis be enough to change the way FPO events are scheduled? Or, perhaps the way the division’s courses are designed, at least? For now, probably not – but it’s a sizable step forward. At this point, all that’s left to do is the exact same experiment for the men’s tracks.
In due time.
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Steve got it right. If all for players birds the same hole it to easy. I personally hate it when they sread a course. The pro tour definitely needs to look for better quality course.
See, that’s where things get tricky …
Remember: TV crews, vendors, fans, etc.
It’s hard to make all of that happen in the woods.
Finding the right balance is key.
Have you considered what the women want courses to look like and what the growing female audience actually likes? Honest question. That might be a good place to start from. Or at least consider. There is no female voice being represented here as far as I can tell and I think that’s maybe a bigger part of the problem than how much of the field is grabbing the same score.
Thanks for your input, CK!
If you’d like to pitch me a piece for the site, I’m all for it …
It’d be nice to have a woman’s perspective.
Here’s my email address: [email protected]
Thanks!
Cool analysis by Dodge! I think there a few further steps that could be taken to look at this in different ways that might capture more of the boredom/excitement.
1). Including more than just the first round (but maybe weighting the first round more?)
2.) Looking at closeness of the leaderboard, particularly in the later rounds. It’s more exciting when lots of athletes are competing for the top spots, compared to a runaway leader who can’t be caught.
3.) Accounting for his first point, about birdies being excitinf. With his current method, 70% of the field getting a double bogey is scored the same as 70% of the field getting a birdie. But I think most viewers would agree the latter is more exciting.
4.) OB throws and penalty strokes. This one I’m not sure what most people like/dislike. Is a par 3 hole with a small island (high risk / high reward drives) more exciting than a par 3 with no real OB in play?
All great ideas, Thomas!
If it helps, Dodge told me he only did the first round of each Pro Tour event out of “laziness.”
I can understand that … haha.
Going through everything is LOTS of work.
I think he wanted to prove the concept before further sinking his teeth into it, you know?
That makes total sense! It can be a lot of manual work to put something new like this together.
I’ll pester him, though …
No worries 😉
(and for the MPO side, too)
I really like the general idea here.
I’d love to see a similar analysis that focused on the contenders rather than the entire field. I think the idea if a pro competition — an exciting pro competition! — is to see lots of scoring variation among the *contending* players. If a hole has good variation among non-contenders but not much variation among contenders, it might be a boring hole for the audience.
I see what you’re saying …
And I’m not really a “numbers guy,” so for all I know, you might very well be right.
But if the contenders had too much scoring separation amongst them, wouldn’t that lead to a lack of drama on Sunday afternoon?
Just spit-balling here …
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
Thanks for reading, Leonard!