Course Testing

[Big Sexy JC]

Ian,

I do two things with my testing to maximize efficiency.

1. I only test the difficult pin position because those are the ones I use in my replays and those are usually the ones that will create weird results.
2. I play with no wind so that doesn't factor in to weird results.

See my JPG that I posted. This is of my test round at Ballyhack. All golfers are rated between 70-76. 70 is a "bad" good golfer and 76 is a good (not stupid good) golfer. Having 8 players in that range also maximizes efficiency in my opinion. Below 70 and they will just score bad and once you get above 76 you start to get super golfers that won't tell you much.

Go Bucks,

I play all my replay tourneys using one of the difficult pin positions and Moderate Challenging and Medium Challenging with no wind. The reason that I don't use wind is that I have 6 retro PC/laptops running in a room so I have 48 golfers playing at one time. The variance in wind between those 6 PCs would create unrealistic results so through a bunch of testing I went without wind. I used to just play with Moderate and Medium and no wind, but I found that didn't create enough of a putting challenge and the longer hitters had a big advantage because bad putters were still good putters with those settings.

I've never opened APCD in my life (although I think Sage just "hired" me to join his team so that might change) so I have no idea how drops work with course design. I wish the designer could setup drop zones, but I'm guessing that's not an option?

As for pin positions, I rotate between the difficult ones UNLESS a course produces too high of scores and then I use moderate. The old Augusta was a perfect example of this. I eventually used only the easy pin positions on that course and players still hovered around par. I put all the results for each pin for each season into a spreadsheet though so I have 40+ years of scores at different pin positions for all the courses.

Now let me explain the attached JPG and my findings.

I've now tested 10 of the recently created courses and the attached JPG is just an example of some potential issues with Ballyhack. Hole 9 is the obvious red flag and that's why I went back and watched to see what was happening and I posted about that in the Ballyhack thread. There is some obstacle in the way of the tee box that caused those scores. The other highlighted areas are just one offs so they don't cause me any concern on the playability with the course during my replays.

You can see from my Black Rock test that it played beautifully and I will definitely be using it in my future replays.

I went ahead and added the pin position results so you guys could see the data I keep on this stuff. I didn't think any of you thought I was full of SH*T, but just in case here is one tab on one spreadsheet. Each field has the pin position used and then average score relative to par for the 24 golfers that played the course. The green highlights mean the course is playing right where I want it. The yellow means it's borderline, the red means it's playing too difficult and the blue means it's playing too easy. The Don't Use/Use field is what I use to determine the rotation of pins for a given course based on results.

[Ian Wells]

JC,
Thank you for your description.
Ian

[Colin Jones]

Colin,

My 8 ani golfers (a mix of great and totally useless golfers playing off varying tees - 4 off the back, 1 each off the other tees) give me 8 different views of the course for just about every shot - that's the main reason I use them.

That sounds a very good way of testing which on future courses I will use. Thank you.
(How do I get a mix of "great and totally useless golfers"?)

Ian

Options > Players > Create New Player > Computer opponent
Walk through the following screens to create the player then Finish

Back to Players Menu, with your computer opponent selected:
Click Computer Skills
Use the sliders to set up their skills - there are some forums at LC that describes these settings.

Hope it helps Ian.

[Ian Wells]

Colin,
Thank you.
Ian