I am suspecting that they (those inscrutable they) grab several golfers off of the street, have them play, and average out the strokes.
No, it’s strictly distance. I don’t know the cutoffs
offhand, though.
If it’s Putt Putt golf, they just paint a little 3 on each wood border.
IIRC, it’s 1, 2, or 3 shots to the green, depending on distance, like Bup said, then 2 putts to get in.
There are guidelines by distance, but they are only suggestions. Depending upon your skill level, a par 5 may be a par 4.
You mean I’m only supposed to take 2 putts on the green. That must be why I always shoot 120.
That and the five shots it seems to take to get to the green.
And the penalty strokes for hitting OB.
Like posted before, it usually depends on the number of shots to the green, then allows for two putts. A general rule of thumb was par 3’s are usually 240 yds max and less (one tee shot, two putts), par 4’s are 240 to 450 (one tee, one approach, two putts) and par 5’s are 400 to 700 yds (one tee, second shot, third approach, two putts). Par 6’s are rare, but out there and are usually 700+.
The course rating is determined by what the average a scratch golfer (0 handicap) would shoot over a number of rounds in ideal conditions (nice weather, no wind, etc.). I used “was” above because the USGA will change a course setup like they did in the US Open, converting a 502yd par 5 into a 482 yd 4 to increase the difficulty of the course.
The PGA Tournament in Atlanta this weekend features Par 4 holes which are 471, 469, and 463 yards long.
For nearly everybody on this board who plays gold, those would be par 5 holes. But for pros, it’s a 300-yard drive followed by an 8-iron to the green.
Par 3’s are upto 250 yards, those are a pain, lucky I don’t play that course much.
Par 4’s are 251 to 472, but sometimes they will make them longer for the pros. There’s a par 5 at the Kemper open that’s 47x yards and is normally a 5 but for the pros it’s a 4, at one time it was the hardest hole on the circut.
Par 5’s are anything over 473 yards, though you can have par 6’s and I think there is even one par 7 somewhere. never played anything more than a 5.
As was stated before par is the number of shots to the green plus two putts.
Course can and do change par based on the course, I’ve seen 430 yard par 5s that are really up hill etc.
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Yeah, there’s a course near my mom’s house called Cherry Creek that has a Par 6. It’s a monster. The one time I was scheduled to play golf there, we got rained out, so I never got a chance to play the hole, but I will before the summer’s out.
BTW, here’s a related question… What do you call 4 under par? In other words, let’s say you managed to drive 350 yards on your Par 6 tee shot, then you smashed a 3-wood 350 yards and it went in the hole? Is that a triple eagle? Not even the folks in the pro shop at Cherry Creek knew what the “official” name for that was.
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Sorry for the hijack.
Par always includes two putts, which is why you never see any par 2 holes.
Par is an entirely arbitrary number. At one time, the USGA included in the Rules guidelines on the yardages which should be used as cutoffs for determining par, but I can’t find such in the Rules anymore, suggesting they have been deleted.
Given that a competition consists in general of each player playing the same holes the same number of times, a score in relation to “par” is not needed to determine a winner, with one exception: use of modified scoring systems such as the Stableford system, where the relationship of “par” to “birdie” or “bogie” is not equivalent to the stroke difference.
DSY is correct. Par is a completely arbitrary number assigned to a hole of golf, and subsequently the course. The Par number is assigned by the course designer, owner, or governing body. Golf tournaments routinely alter Par numbers as well as the holes themselves. There is no standard. It is simply a judgement call by whomever has the authority at the time. The only real standard to which they are held is that standard at which the players and fans will accept, with the obvious exception that all designs and Par numbers of PGA courses must be approved.
A comparison is in baseball, as long as the league OKs a field layout a team can build its ballpark to whatever standards they choose. Their driving factors are creating a park in which players will feel comfortable playing in and a park in which fans will enjoy watching games. It doesn’t matter if its 380 to center or 460, as long as the competitiveness of the game doesn’t suffer.
As to the actual OP, I’m sure that some course designers probably have the clubhouse pro, and some typical golfers come out and play the course when its new and take opinions of what the Par numbers should be. This is by no means a standard of practice, and I imagine the vast majority of Par numbers are assigned with no scientific methodology at all. Its most likely a “hmmm, this looks about right” attitude. And if the golfers bitch about a hole, they change it.
In fact there were standards, as DSY suggested. The USGA recommended distance ranges for par for various tees, and explicitly stated that they were guidelines only, and that a number of factors should be taken into account including terrain and design of the hole.
In reality, it’s not difficult to figure out the par on most holes. Par-3s are especially easy. The only real difficulty would be with a 440-480 yard hole (from the regular tees). And as others have said, par is essentially meaningless; in fact, golf was played long before par was established (on the order of three centuries, I believe).
There is only one PGA stop that doesn’t use stroke (aka medal) play and that’s The International, played outside Denver. There they use something called the Modified Stableford System, which subtracts points for bogeys and double bogeys. The regular Stableford system can be found in the Official Rules of Golf and the worst you can get in that is a zero and that’s for a double bogey and over.
It should be noted that the USGA (and its equivalents in other countries) use volunteers to rate courses. A team of experienced golfers, often ones who work as pros or course managers, will play a course and survey it to rate its difficulty. They don’t demand hole pars be changed - hey, the course doesn’t belong to them - but they WILL assign handicap scores to the course for the purpose of calculating official player handicaps.