TGC2019 Tour Division Suggestion

[LEO MODE]

*Just noticed that this post suited better for this forum so moved it here*

It looked like about 120 players on average participate on each tour.

If everyone's put into the same bucket regardless of their skill level, people who are not good will never get the joy in competing/winning even a small trophy. Something that people who always earn something will never understand. NET is also finicky due to people’s volatility in conditions in their environments/hardware/playing time and it may suit in real life better than the sim. I'm speaking on behalf of people who haven't or who do not have the luxury of playing the game they love everyday to up their golf skill. Therefore I suggest something called a TGC2019 Divison Tour based on Trueskill matchmaking.

This is actually fairly simple in a nutshell: Think of it as a English Premier League or anything European football divisions. Or even PGA/WEB and European/Challenge in golf term.
At the end of the season, top 15% of Division 2 will get promoted to Division 1 for dominating Division 2. At the same time, bottom 15% of Division 2 will get demoted to Division 3 to compete with people at their lower skill levels. Everyone will start at Division 3 for the first season and will build up handicaps there. Then next season top 30 goes to Division 1 and next 30 goes to Division 3. The inaugural Division 1 and 2 will get extra points so people won’t downplay just to win the tournament. The points earned from different divisions will obviously be differently structured, and NET allocation based on division will be different too, to prevent people sandbagging. There could be a pound-for-pound like national events happening such as Masters, US Open or Ryder Cups. The Trueskill is widely used ELO format that has a hidden skill level for each individual so it will be utilized for each tour schedule. You start off with a base point and depending on the opponent’s skill level and the final rank on the match your score will move up and down real time to truly encourage you playing with similar skill levels.

Ultimately, I would think there should be 3 types of division, or even 5 to encourage better skill level distribution. With people constantly playing on Tour I think it'll be still interesting to have 5 buckets of 20 people playing Tour, although due to volatility in participation I think 3 will be the most ideal.

I'm sure there will be people who like the system and who won't. I just would think it'll be fun for you to progress along which will encourage people to play more and compete against their own skill level so that you know each stroke will cost you. And I strongly believe TGC Tour just has enough people that can achieve this sort of system. The console TGC already runs a tour called TGCtours.com (thanks Chad for the info).

Last but not least - and perhaps most importantly - this will make it much more streamlined and easier for admins to moderate players/cheaters. You can make an extra tournament league that has no grading: i.e. Casual League tournaments with no rules on rewind, casual to be able to still participate in the tournaments for having fun and warm up before they commit themselves to be in the tournament. It might take some time to build up the API and the structure, but once it's set up I would think it'll be much easier to manage in the long run.

[JV17]

Hey Leo, as a previous player of the TGC video game and TGCTours participant, I can say the methodology definitely works, and makes things much more engaging and competitive for everyone. I had previously recommended to ProTee, that they simply try getting TGCTours to host a league. The metrics they pull are outstanding and the tournament formats are great. I thought they had started conversations with those guys at one point, but don’t know where it went from there. Definitely a good idea, simply comes down to number of regularly active players like you mentioned.

[LEO MODE]

Interesting to know. Hope it gets reviewed again.

[Gresh12]

I’m not on the current tour so feel free to discount my thoughts for lack of experience. Although I’m not on the tour for the reason below and I suspect others may not participate for a similar reason.

I think it depends how many people play as I’d think a field of at least 30-50 per flight would be desirable.

While skill is the obvious way to divide people up I wonder if driving distance is actually a better breakpoint (probably relies on more self selection and random audit though) If the decision was to have 2 or 3 tiers.

I suggest distance is important as I see lots of people commenting they found TGC courses too long as they only drive it 200-240. We now have different tee lengths but that doesn’t matter if your events pick tees that play long.

For transparency my perspective is coming as a guy that can only hit 5 iron on my sim due to ceiling height but my 5 iron goes about 200 yards. This is the lower end of some folks drivers so I can relate to their comments about courses above 6500 yards. I’ve found I can find a set of tees on most courses where my 5 iron off tee gives me distances in to greens that resemble what I’d get with driver from my normal tees.

The argument will be that short hitters will normalize out by a higher handicap which is true but the game (sim or real life) isn’t fun playing tees where you hit a good tee ball and are left with 200 yards in on a par 4.

[aja]

I'd chime in about the distance being a big factor. It definitely is the reason I hardly ever play the TGC tour. The courses are too long for my liking. The current handicap system gives me a reasonably fair "break" but if the course itself is going to sap all of my strength just to reach the green in regulation after I drive 220 - 245, then thanks, but no thanks.

I get pounded by everyone that drives 50 yards more...

Sandbagging - that's easy - after x number of victories, top 5, top 10 finishes, whatever, you get promoted to the next level.

[LEO MODE]

Again, that could be handled for a different league not necessarily the division based on skill level I’m talking about.

[Gresh12]

Agreed different leagues could solve this. I’m just thinking “the official tour” should aim to include the widest audience possible. I may not understand how this is likely to play out having not been involved in the tour so far but having the population spread over a whole bunch of leagues isn’t what I was envisioning.

[cooke23]

It’s double the work but maybe have a “Web Tour” that can play shorter tees. Other software has went to that approach and while they don’t have the number of players that TGC does, it was generally well received.

[cooke23]

I think we're aiming to solve different issues/gripes. I've not really read into your full calculation up top but seems you are just after a better pseudo HCP calculation to better align with sim golf. I'm all good with that for sure. My 2 Tour suggestion was merely to address the issue of some folks having to play courses way too long on the current Tour to even have fun at. Having a secondary WEB Tour with shorter tees could offer those folks a much more fun and realistic experience. Obviously if a dude is playing the WEB tour and we see he's bombing 330 yard drives we'll strongly advise he move up to the PGA Tour no matter his HCP. I like what you're doing with the divisions suggestions though. Could be good to run a pilot and see how it shakes out.

[Gresh12]

Sorry if I derailed the discussion with my post. I took the concept of dividing people more as the point than flights which probably wasn’t fair.

I’ve never played in a flighted ongoing league. When I was younger I was a 2 handicap and accepted I was competing gross and now I’m an 8 and assume I’m competing net. To me winning low gross of a flight isn’t super exciting as I didn’t shoot the lowest score of the tournament so calling myself a gross winner seems illogical (this would apply to IRL). That said events I’ve played in over the years tend to have people with proper handicaps so if sandbagging is a problem then I see where Leo is going.

Reason I liked distance is there will be some weeks I decide to move my setup outside and can hit driver so I could move up to the big event that week whereas under the flighted system I’m sitting in the wrong flight when I pull out driver those weeks (i would also be a sandbagged those weeks).

My limitations may ultimately just mean I stay off the tour but I’m looking for a way to participate that also solves some other people’s challenges.

[LEO MODE]

I think you guys are making valid points, and they shouldn't be ignored. Thus I suggested them to play on a different extra league created (i.e. Casual League where limitations are accommodated whether it's the distance or launch monitor). Tour Division I'm suggesting is purely reflecting how competition is handled in real life based on skill level. And in fact my Tour Division depending on Division 1,2 and 3 can even offer different tee also (1 = black, 2 = blue, 3 = white). At the end of the day as I mentioned above, distance doesn't really correlate with skill levels. If you think about it from black tee to blue tee to white tee, it's mostly about 15-20yds each tee in which if you think about it one bad shank of a player can easily be apprehended.

And by the way, nor I hit far or play good so I understand from either spectrum

[LEO MODE]

TrueSkill 2's publication is as per below, with an improvement over the accuracy of predicting winner.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/03/trueskill2.pdf

[JV17]

The great thing about TGC 19 is the societies. We could always start a short hitters society, using shorter courses or shorter tees, and if it gains traction, we could ask ProTee to make it an official tour when they start carving that out for 2019 later this year. I’m a terrible golfer and definitely a short hitter myself, so shorter courses are more fun for me.