HCC Summer 12 stats

[Jay Ducharme]

I've compiled some statistics from the recent singles tourney, with 80 shots thrown over all divisions in both rounds. Because of the extreme conditions (the heat and humidity), I expected an increase in scores during round 2, but that didn't happen. And none of the holes favored a particular division. (In other words, Pros didn't do noticeably better on any particular holes than Ams).

The toughest hole in the tourney was #10, with a whopping 59 bogies (or greater). That was followed closely by hole 12 with 52 bogies. Hole 15 had the least number of bogies (16). The most-birdied hole was 9 with 23. The least-birdied (understandably) was hole 10 with zero. The second-most birdied holes with 17 of them each were 1 (which surprised me) and 11 (which did not). Hole 3 had the most pars (59) but only 2 birdies and the second-most bogies (19). The second most-parred hole was 15 with 58. I was surprised it gave up only 6 birdies. The least number of pars, unsurprisingly, was on hole 10.

Overall, the front nine saw 38 pars, 9 birdies and 33 bogies. The back 9 had 37 pars, 7 birdies and 36 bogies. So the back 9 plays just slightly tougher than the front. But in general the course is proving to be a real challenge -- and this is after an enormous amount of clearing for the tourney and better footing with the FlyPads on the back 9.

Some other interesting factoids:
-- All six of the birdies on hole 13 occurred in the first round.
-- Hole 4 surprised me by producing a whopping 43 bogies and just one birdie.
-- Picturesque hole 5 saw 39 pars, 39 bogies and just 2 birdies. The pin placement might have something to do with that.
-- Even though the course produces more pars than any other score, it's by a very slim majority, nearly the same as the number of bogies it produces. Meanwhile, birdies number one-fifth that amount. While I'm not advocating a birdie-happy course, I think some more work needs to be done to make the course a bit more fair to the average player.

[Will Raich]

Great break-down, Jay. Regarding being more "fair to the average player," I think the main difficulty is all of the OB. The holes aren't too long, the fairways aren't too tight, and the hills aren't too steep (usually). The difference, I would guess, between HCC and most courses is the vast amounts of OB. I wouldn't call all of the OB "unfair," and it definitely adds a new dimension to the course, but I would guess it is a huge factor on why you saw so many bogeys. I went OB 6 times the second round, which predictably killed my round. Obviously it is my decision making and execution that leads to ending up OB, but I had some pretty crappy rolls and bounces on holes where I thought I had my best drives.

Do you have an idea on how many holes OB is realistically in play? Also, I am surprised that you said the second round didn't see an increase in scores across the board. I only looked at Am2 but I believe I saw 11/16 scores increased, and only one or two people did better. The other 3-4 individuals repeated their round one scores. I will have to go back and look at the standings.

[Jay Ducharme]

Good points, Will. There are actually only five holes (1, 2, 3, 5 and 9) where the extra O.B. rules for tourneys become problematic. On holes like 2, if you go completely across the road into grass, you *should* be O.B. But it's a touchier issue when you're near the basket and skip over to the grass opposite the sidewalk.

As for the second round, I really thought I would see higher scores across the board (mainly due to heat exhaustion), but that wasn't the case. Some people scored higher and some people scored lower. Out of the entire Pro and AM1 divisions, only one person scored higher in the second round. In AM2, many people scored higher but some didn't. Kevin cut ten strokes off his score! AM3 scored slightly higher, but only by a few strokes. For many players, it was their first time at HCC. Perhaps they got to know the course a bit better by the second round and that offset much higher scores they might have had.