How to Fix the PDGA Ratings System

DISClaimer: Please read this before proceeding with the article:

https://www.pdga.com/files/pdga_ratings_guide_2017.pdf

Professional disc golfers tend to disregard player ratings entirely, with the exception of personal milestones. At this point, ratings hardly even resemble a player’s performance at any given tournament and even when it does, it doesn’t matter because it has no bearing on anybody’s performance. The PDGA Ratings System is essentially a fun way to try and predict performances that does an atrocious job of doing just that. Here’s why:

The ratings algorithm is largely based on a tournament director submitted “Scratch Scoring Average” which determines the score a 1000 rated player would shoot on the course. With the SSA comes a direct correlation between ‘score’ and ‘deviation from the SSA’; totally computing your rating for that round. With this comes a larger standard rating distribution for a ‘low’ SSA (~44) and a smaller standard rating distribution for a ‘high’ SSA (68). Pretty easy system to wrap your head around, especially considering that you can manually calculate an entire ratings array with a phone calculator and a TD report. The current ratings system gets the job done. Nothing more and nothing less.

Largely, where I think the ratings system could be improved is specificity. It is clear that McBeth and Wysocki are not to be touched in the woods, it’s also clear that Eagle now rules the wide open courses… So I riddle the reader this; Why do we not have ratings based on performance at certain genres of courses? There is no reason for the PDGA not to give a rating for wooded, open, tight OB, windy, etc… and that appropriate rating would be displayed at each appropriate tournament. Now, with these categories (wooded, open, windy, tight OB), you can describe every hole on every course. It would hardly require more effort (seeing as ratings are calculated with a macro, not manually), there’s no economic downside, and it would give a far more accurate prediction of who was going to perform at what level at any given tournament.

Now, clearly, an issue could be implementation because of reasons such as: one tournament could be at 3 very different courses or some courses are split with a wooded and open section. For this, I offer remedies: Use whichever category best describes the majority of holes or courses, or, analyze the course and use the mean rating of each player’s applicable ratings. That was a big thought so let me give an example:

Last year, Wysocki played GBO and Masters Cup. Here are his ratings:

GBO: 1074, 1032, 1081 (AVG: 1062)

Masters Cup: 1069, 1028, 1040 (AVG: 1045)

Now, the averages above are his tournament ratings, obviously, but in this proposed system, they would be divvied up into the four categories, each round being used once MAX in each category. De La is a wooded course, so the first and second rounds would be entered into ‘wooded’ because that is the only fitting category, where the final round (De La Golf) would be entered into ‘windy’. GBO is entirely ‘windy’ and ‘open’ so all 3 rounds would be entered into both those categories leaving Ricky with these ratings:

Wooded: 1069, 1028 (AVG: 1049)

Windy: 1074, 1032, 1081, 1040 (AVG: 1057)

Open: 1074, 1032, 1081 (AVG: 1062)

Based on this small sample size, we can clearly see that Ricky is better in the open by about 2 strokes. Now, based on these averages, we can calculate Ricky’s rating for the tournament he’s about to play, MVP Open. Maple Hill is both windy and wooded, so Ricky’s rating on that tournament page would be the average of all of his ‘wooded’ and ‘windy’ rounds (barring repeats): 1054; his rating going into LVC (windy, open) would be 1056.

The other potential issue could be who determines what course applies to each category. An addition would be made to the TD Report stating which rounds qualified as what, based on the course and conditions.

I firmly believe a more specific ratings system could help with publicity, function, and popularity of the game. Providing an accurate representation of who is most likely to win what could help the sport tremendously. It could potentially influence betting: an integral factor in the economy of every sport, which could in turn, heighten viewership and grow the sport. It could change tiered registration for every individual player and tournament. It could also generally make disc golfers better due to their inexplicable attachment to this odd number that entirely quantifies their disc golf game.

This is only a hypothesis. I hope you enjoyed.