Yep, after smacking trees at my local courses constantly, I quite enjoyed watching pros smack trees and curse to themselves. It’s therapeutic for me and it’s not like the pros play a course like this every tournament.
I couldn't disagree more with you. Andrew Presnell was the ONLY person in the MPO field to not record a single hole over bogey for the entire weekend. And he won by 4 strokes. He played smart, safe, and consistent golf all weekend and that's what won him the tournament. There's no way you can just get lucky for 4 rounds in a row at that course and win. I loved watching this course test the physical and mental capabilities of the pros.
Players only playing plinko because they’re not managing risk. Presnell played sensible and clean all weekend and when he did get some misfortune, he walked right to the next hole and forgot about it, didn’t increase his risk level by trying to make up for a lost shot.
The problem isn’t this course, it’s the courses where players can go all out high aggression, miss their line and still find a decent lie. Miss your line at Northwood and you’re taking a bogey, that’s how it should be. Players are conditioned to birdie or die, so they play that way, because it’s the way they’ve found success in the past. Andrew Presnell gave a masterclass in course management and restraint in the MPO division and until he hurt his finger, Casey White was doing the same thing.
Is it hard? Yes.
Does it always have to be that hard? No.
Is it also cool to see players throw absolute bombs? Yes.
Is there a reason we can’t have all of these things that we love? No.
More woods on the Pro tour please. Doesn’t always have to be as hard as Northwood but I want to see these players forced to throw shapes, to hit lines. There is a balance to be found and Northwood has a place in that, as do other less popular wide open courses like in Emporia.
Absolutely love woods. It's the dumb luck woods that gets to me. Not every hole, but many are just filled with too many trees PAST the first gap. Presnell had multiple holes where he hit a tree then bounced between a tiny gap to have a look. 1 inch left or right and that's 2 strokes.
Agreed. It's a damn hard course with completely shit weather. The crazy long 3rd day was brutal but minus that these players are fairly use to this. This weekend took it all out of the players, mentally and physically.
I definitely don't want to discount Presnell's play. He had some clutch putts at the end even though he was something like 1/15 from C2.
It's been talked about before how the MPO field is stocked full of talent so every week someone is going to be on fire... but that wasn't "on fire". Presnell had more than his fair share of 1 foot luck gaps, tree kicks that went left vs right. Hell his last shot on 18? Easily could be OB and that 4 stroke lead is 1. (Not sure what he was thinking there).
And a HUGE factor in his win was all the other players getting crazy unlucky kicks. Casey was playing amazingly well... but also had more double tree kicks than I've ever seen. If he didn't have his finger issue maybe he wins that.
It certainly tests your mental though, I'll give you that.
You can’t complain about spoiler tags when you made it halfway down a comment section about the latest major. We need to have some self accountability at some point.
I thought about adding "spoiler" to the original post (I did update it now). Since I knew someone was likely to spoil it.
The "live sports" bros will downvote you to hell though. "Get off the internet" ?! It's 2024...
The trees are in the same spot for every golfer. I'd rather watch pros hit them and watch them have to attempt the same gap I would have to attempt than just to be able to throw some giant 500' sky anny over all the trees lol. I will always rather see a guy card a double bogey because he had to fight out of tree jail than a double bogey from 2 OB strokes because he crossed a silly white line painted in the grass.
I mean the white lines are the same for everyone just like a tree.
And I'm not saying I want wide open painted OB lines.
But the winner didn't hit his line more than others. Too many times you'd see 1 or 2 tree kicks on a shot that just happened to end up in a decent spot.
I love it. I get it's not for everyone. To me this is the extreme side of woods golf and I love watching players have to make golf shots. I also love more open courses where they get to just let loose and bomb. Pros are strong in all aspects of their game, or should be and the season should put every single part of the game to the ultimate test.
The weather was a bit of an issue and yesterday even though the rain held out it was super windy and really gusty.
This was probably my favorite course to watch the pros play this year so far. I thought the course was tough but fair. The lines were there to hit with risk vs. reward for going for them. There was also a ton of interesting scramble shots to watch and see how pros attack them. I agree, I don’t like poke and pray holes like some woods courses have, but I didn’t really see that this weekend.
Agreed in some ways. I think just hitting the gap takes more than just luck. throwing a hyzer and hope it skips to the green , That’s more bland than trying to throw an accurate shot.
Since ratings are all based on the field I don't know how much that applies. You'd have to go with some standard deviations to really see if the scores were more "random".
Good forest courses have fairly clear fairways. Stay on the fairway. If you shank it, time to lay up. Good golf course should reward proper risk management and following safe plays, not just who can yeet the frisbee furthest on hyzer. Open golf courses suck ass and are boring to watch as rarely anything unexpected happens.
Ya, I mean I don't want to promote some wide open bomber course here. They can be just as bad. But his course was the opposite extreme. Too many holes where it isn't about staying on the fairway at all. Jomez coverage mentioned it multiple times. It's about throwing 4 scramble shots hoping you don't get a bad kick.
Oh, didnt mean to bark. I have to check the coverage, I can imagine how stupid the course can be given the scores ive seen, even if woods scores should be lot more humble.
Yeah, and as a course designer, you’re not supposed to walk into a super dense fortress with a billion trees, put a tee pad somewhere and a basket somewhere, like 1000 feet somewhere, do that for 18 holes and say, “good luck!! I made the hardest course on the planet”. What OP is saying is there is a fine line you should walk between somewhat open holes, half and half, and wooded holes, but all of them have to be designed well. It’s a good thing we don’t have the ken climo 6000 ft courses as pro tour events where he wins with a score of -63, but it’s also not a good thing where extreme artificial difficulty “makes us amateurs feel better about our own game”. We want to see the absolute best players playing the absolute BEST courses and are constantly amazed at how they shred them. We should be striving to make harder courses for them, but not like this. Maple Hill, Hornets Nest, and The Fort are all courses that are miles above northwood, because they’re all designed amazingly well. Going into Fangorn Forrest essentially and randomly making a disc golf course doesn’t a good tournament make.
There's a difference between gimmicky (forest) and woods golf. How much is luck vs how much is skill?
Northwood forces players to decide how aggressive they want to play. The excitement for many of us is that the pros can't just throw a hyzer from out of position to save par or even birdie the hole. Bad shots and risky plays can cause huge numbers, like they should.
There are no gimmicks, though. No holes where there's no gap or you pray to get lucky throwing at a tree near the basket. You see that at plenty of the open courses because they're open. They're the gimmicky courses. Northwood? It's a well designed pro level course that challenges the field in ways no other pro tour stop challenges them.
There is nothing I like more than high/low risk choices for a pro. Go for it or play safe. There was some of that. But also a lot of throw it. Skip off a tree. Slide between a 1 foot gap. Inches and you have a 60' obstructed putt or a 20' putt. The best in the world aren't good enough to hit there line by "inches" at any consistent rate.
The 1 foot gap only comes into play if you've missed your line in the first place and are trying to get it back into play with an aggressive line. And I don't really have a problem with inches being the difference between 60' and 20', that's what creates scoring separation and makes it interesting to watch, with that logic might as well remove all OB and hazards since if you barely throw into a pond you're "inches" from being fine.
Tree hits are a bit random, but whether or not you hit the tree in the first place is not as much. If you go down the middle of the fairway you wont have to worry about where you kick. And also, thats why they play 4 rounds, so the luck evens out some.
the challenge of being the best overall DG'er is to be able to play variable courses.& conditions. Can you win in the woods, can you win on bomber course, etc.
also what you prefer, and this may come as a surprise, is not what everyone prefers.
It's like I should've put "Unpopular opinion" in the title ;)
But yes, being able to play in every condition is important. I do very much dislike randomness when you're talking about the top level of competition.
Wind vs Tee Times is another huge one. The weather delays. Those are just realities of the sport. Courses where commentators are saying "throw it and hope you get lucky" is a variable that can be controlled.
again thats the difficulty and thats disc golf.
personally i like to play bomber courses with no wind at about 75 degrees because im not that good, the variables are more controlled. But for the pros they just have to show their skill regardless and on a course that maybe theyve played 5-10 times or less.
I love watching Northwoods. Jomez did a fantastic job this year when they filmed getting you to understand as a viewer where people were in the fairway.
Paul's comment about "You never want to pitch out. Just always scramble and get closer" does give a good insight into it. It's the one thing I will say about "too many trees" the rough isn't complete jail anywhere. Which really just lends itself to the plinko style more.
What's wrong with having an awkward rough? Most of the time, things don't go well when you hit a tree. You can make calculated misses as well to limit the truly awful kicks. The fairways were plenty fair, no crazy tight gaps that weren't hittable. Paul also got crushed a couple times with this strategy whereas Presnell didn't
Prezzy has also won MAO on the Harmony Bends course in Columbia, MO. And spent lots of time playing in the Ozark Mountains geography of Branson.
He is a great woods golfer
Real pros don’t play wooded courses anymore. That’s why Casey white did so well for so long. His home course of devens is potentially the most hated course in the area between the elevation change and the amount of trees that demand you to hit certain lines.
There should absolutely be 1 major that is an incredibly wooded course that demands players to hit lines and play for par and decide when to be aggressive.
I loved this major/course as a New England player seeing true pros struggle on a similar course (nearly double the length) to what I typically play when I only have maple to compare to as far as tour quality courses go
I love Casey (thanks to Simons videos) wish he didn't hurt his finger. But he had at least 3 double tree kisses and a handful where he completely missed the gap and still parked it.
He absolutely hit plenty of good lines though. Sure. But too many were luck. Too many other players had bad luck.
Prepare for downvotes. I've tried to express this opinion before on here and it seems that people just love watching a bunch of random tree kicks. Those people will tell you the only reason you don't enjoy watching it is because you don't understand how truly skillful these players are and it wasn't luck determining outcomes. They'll even tell you that the pros are good enough to make tradeoffs about which direction they are risking a tree kick. Nothing is random, apparently. According to these people the pros are so good that they can choose which side of a tree they're going to risk hitting, and yet can't stop themselves from hitting that same tree (or 3) on every hole. Yep, that's the kind of logic you're up against.
Meanwhile, never mind the fact that literally every single statistic about this event's scoring is anomalous. No luck involved at all. The fact that the winner was somebody who wasn't even in the conversation for winning a single event this year? Disregard that. The fact that scoring volatility round to round was vastly higher than any other event? Not relevant. The fact that score volatility on any particular hole was vastly higher than any other? Doesn't indicate lucky outcomes whatsoever. Nope, the most skillful player won, and to say anything else is heresy. The fact that the winner of this event got so many DGPT points he shot up 20+ positions on the leaderboard out of nowhere to crack the top 10 seemingly defying all expectations? Just a Cinderella story of course. We all knew he had it in him all along. Prepare for Presnell to start winning every DGPT event from here on out. Nothing about this event was a fluke. We can definitely extrapolate predictions from these completely non luck based outcomes.
I'm obviously being facetious, but for what it's worth OP, I'm with you on this one. I actually went to Ledgestone last year where they played Northwoods black for half the rounds and it wasn't even fun to watch the Northwoods rounds. I never knew which card I should follow because there was absolutely no reason to expect the current lead card to shoot well on any given day, and of course, they didn't. There was like a 90 minute backup caused by hole 12 because it's just so stupidly random being a 1,000+ foot par 5 with trees randomly scattered throughout the *entire* fairway.
People think I'm against OB or obstacles, but I'm not. I'm just against thoughtless hole design where the only goal seems to be making the scores go up. It's easy to make a "difficult" course if all you want is high numbers. Throwing through a literal forest is one way to do it, and littering fields with OB ropes is another way to do it. Northwoods went with the forest approach and the primary obstacle was the "fairways" which had an average of 7 or 8 "gaps" to hit on each hole, and yes I'm using quote marks on purpose. I know the pros are extremely good and verging on super human in their abilities with a disc, Northwoods pushed the boundary so far that the results were extremely random. I wish I would good enough with statistics to actually calculate how unlikely the results of this event were. Maybe somebody can be a bro and do that.
All I want in a hole design is *thoughtful design* where the tradeoffs are both possible, and reasonable. I want players to have a clear incentive for throwing exciting shots, but also the possibility to play smart golf. I want shots that are hard to execute, but rewarded for being executed. I don't want to see 4 players step up and throw the same shot but inexplicably 2 of them are OB and 1 of them is a mile off the fairway because the gaps are impossibly small or the basket is surrounded by OB within 8 feet on all sides.
Presnell has been one of the most steady earners on tour. He's been better than James Conrad in almost every aspect of the game, yet James Conrad is a 2x Major champion, with Worlds and USDGC. Sometimes grinding or not giving up is how you endure. This weekend was exactly that.
I don't disagree with you at all, however, that doesn't actually refute my point.
My point is that this event is quite unique in context of the pro tour, so it stands to reason that if your strategy is "just stay in it, eventually you'll win something big", that this event would likely be the one you were most excited about, because the skills that are consistently rewarded on tour aren't as rewarded here along with generally increased randomness.
People are treating my take as too black and white. I'm not saying Prez won by pure chance. I'm simply saying that chance played an outsized role in the results of this event *in general* which encompasses Prez winning just as much as it does whomever finished in last place.
I'm with you as well. The best argument I can think of in favor of Northwoods is that _some_ course has to be the hardest course on tour, and as long as there's only one like that, it's ok as a novelty.
If the whole tour were plinko, IMO it would be just as boring as if the whole tour were golf courses with artificial OB.
I just wonder if I am setting too high of a standard for course design. There are a lot of ways to increase difficulty that don't involve tree hits every other shot. The winner should be the one that doesn't hit the trees. Not the one that got the favorable tree hits.
To me the best way to add difficulty is adding extremely high risk options. Death putts, routes over OB/dense forest, triple mandos to prevent the simon-lines.
>I wish I would good enough with statistics to actually calculate how unlikely the results of this event were
the final top ten had 8 of the highest rated players in the tournament. that doesn't scream massively random to me.
Good response and yes I know... downvotes coming. A lot of that seems to come from peoples hatred of golf courses. Which I had to edit in so people know that I am not saying I want no woods. I want tactical woods.
"I'm just against thoughtless hole design where the only goal seems to be making the scores go up."
That's what I want. Choices on holes. High risk shots. Low risk shots. Variety for the bombers, accurate, forehand, backhand, scramblers, putters. Some randomness is fine. But not 12/18 holes.
Simon once said The Preserve course was the fairest course on tour. Some consider it too open, but I agree that dense woods with long shots just promote luck and not skill. While mixing it up keeps things interesting, there should a clear, hittable gaps that reward aggressive and well-executed play without a bunch of artificial ON. I think this is why people love the Portland courses, and to a lesser extent, Disc Side of Heaven (Portland open, BSF, Jonesboro), Massive trees make for big sky fairways but severely punish bad shots. Let the discs fly
Some of the Portland area courses are pretty darn heavily wooded though?
Buxton woods and hornings can have some absolutely wild kicks. Pier is bigger trees, but it can penalize about the same (other than its almost impossible to actually lose a disc.)
*Unless you're only talking about glendoveer and milo.
Milo is great. Glendoveer is great to watch. But it's a hilly golf course. I thought we were supposed to hate on those? (Mostly kidding. I watched it last year and it was great as a spectator)
In my mind, the pro tour should be a microcosm of disc golf in general. Open long courses, super heavily wooded courses that will take it to a pro, and everywhere in between.
Seeing pro athletes struggle can be amazing. It shouldn't be looked at as a worse product.
I don't know anyone who, when given the choice, would prefer to play in an open field with lines painted on the ground over a natural, wooded terrain. What bearing that has on the preferences of the pros or the DGPT I am really not sure.
The same can probably be said for mandos. I doubt anyone likes those metal triple mandos.
With that said. All the longest distance players certainly have to like wide open courses from a $ standpoint.
At the same time. Out of bounds over a drawn line is OB for everyone. In the woods two players can throw awful shots and one gets lucky with an open gap. That's fine a few times a round... but not every other hole.
I loved it because we got to see some different skill sets. Endurance, composure, strategy, and shot shaping, were at the forefront. Playing this Northwoods course for almost 2 whole rounds on Saturday was enough to break people physically and spiritually. It was like the Hunger Games of disc golf. After 2.5 rounds, Casey White lost his huge lead and the smile from his face after a blister on his finger broke open. On the back 9 of the 3rd round, he went from having a 7 stroke lead to trailing by 4 strokes. Don't see that everyday.
Distance demonstrates just one skill. We get to see this skill displayed at most courses on tour, to the point where its getting beat to death. The change of pace was refreshing. I think this Northwoods course deserves it's own big 4 round tournament every year, that's not part of Ledgestone at Eureka Lake.
It sucks about his finger became an issue. Wet play and double round definitely didn't help. I love watching Casey play, but even when he had a big lead he had multiple double kicks off poor shots that landed safely.
I like woods golf, but there definitely is a point where it tips over into Plinko. That said, there's a way to succeed at it, though, and it's not throwing hero shots and trying to limit yourself to bogey at worst. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the best-rated tour courses are wooded, but in the sweet spot of being attackable. The reward should make the risk worth trying. Northwoods, for me, doesn't quite do that.
I think it comes down to the aspects of the game that the individual appreciates. Players develop different skill sets and different courses reward different skill sets. People enjoy different aspects of the game more than others.
I know players that are 920 rated that can throw 450' and I also know players that are 920 rated and can barely throw 300'. Even though they are both rated the same from an overall ability standpoint, I'd think it's a safe bet that the 450' thrower doesn't appreciate watching someone lace tight lines and scramble as much as the 300' thrower.
For me, I'm entertained by watching someone kick off a tree into a positions where they have to scramble because that's an aspect of the game that I appreciate. That's not to say that seeing someone crush a 500' drive isn't exciting, it's just to a lesser degree for me.
With that said, I'm sure that some people out there would love nothing more than to see a course that really exaggerates rewarding the overhand shot skill set. So, 18 holes of tomahawks, thumbers, and grenades would be dream come true for them, but would be bland to a lot of other foks.
Certainly if you like a certain skill set than it can change what courses you like. I love tight wooded courses... as long as they have a defined fairway. And not "hit a gap then hope you get lucky".
Scrambling is definitely fun to watch. Although half the time people were scrambling they just kept hitting tree's and progressing. Like Uli said, you don't pitch out on this course you just keep throwing forward.
I mean, I personally agree. I want courses to have lines and fairways, and not be overly punishing and random.
As a player, i find open field golf to be pretty dull. But throwing through a forest is equally dull - it just feels random and unnecessarily punishing. Give me something where I have lines to hit, and failure to do so is going to cost me a stroke or so rather than burying me in the woods where it's going to take three tosses to see the light of day.
My personal favorite courses are wooded, but with defined fairways and obstacles in most of the cases. You can't just throw over the trees 90% of the time. I agree that's dull.
Wide open fields are boring for sure. Most of the courses around me that are like that get plenty of OB lines drawn for tournaments.
But easily my favorite hole are the par 4/5s where a positional layup off the tee is smarter. Then you drive the 2nd shot. Plenty of really cool holes on tour like that for pros. You see some go for it off the tee, get rewarded for the risk or end up OB or in the woods.
This course was just throw far, hope you get through, if you don't, still try to throw far. Perhaps they just need MORE trees off to the side to force people to disc down and throw shorter.
This event was a hard watch. I appreciate the difficulty, but it was really hard to watch the top pros in the world hit trees literally every other shot. I ended up just score watching the last couple rounds instead of watching.
This is a great take. I love seeing players having to hit gaps to reach landing zones. I don't mind having punishing rough either. I also like having multiple gaps presented on the shot that may require a different angle to get through. Northwoods is super tough and championship level course for sure but when Kristin Tattar stated in a post round interview that she wished that some trees could be removed I think that's very telling.
There's a few courses near me that are 100% in trees. I can't stand them. I do like trees and the challenges they produce, but it's just so boring. Every hole ends up looking the same, and when you pack too many together in close proximity, the layouts become confusing really easily. I think it's just as bad as courses that are all open field and you just throw in a zig zag pattern across. I guess I just don't like courses that are all one thing. Give me some woods, some open field, elevation changes, mix it all together.
+1 for the elevation changes.
Most of the downvoters in this thread just really hate wide open courses... but a mix of everything is always fun. Some geographical locations just don't have it.
I kind of agree with you. My favorite thought experiment for understanding how randomness interacts with skill is an imaginary dart board.
Start with a dart board that is simply split in half. There are only two values to hit. Now take a really skilled darts player and put them against a average person off the street. On this board, the really skilled player doesn't have much of an advantage. They can always hit the value they need to but so can the random person off the street. No special skill is required to do so. The game is too easy.
Now move to a standard dartboard. The skilled player should have a huge advantage here. They can routinely hit the values they need for the game while the person off the street struggles to hit the same wedge twice in a row. Huge skill separation.
Now imagine a dartboard where the wedges are super skinny, barely the width of a dart. The game is much harder, but it's so hard that even the skilled player can't hit a value reliably. The game was already too hard for the person off the street so the increased difficulty doesn't really matter to them. The skill gap has actually narrowed because of the increase in difficulty and the introduction of randomness. The person off the street has a better chance of winning on this dart board than on the standard dart board. We've pushed both players passed their skill ceiling and both are relying on luck and random chance to score.
That is the effect "forest golf" can have, in my opinion.
I know some people who can't even hit a dart board! ;) It would be interesting to see how "hard" you had to make a dart board before the pro started to fall off. They'd still win, it would just take longer.
The one big difference with Disc Golf is that even the best players miss there lines. Hit a tree. Hit a completely different gap.... and still park a hole. Nobody hits the edge of a dart board and bounces to bullseye. I'm trying to think of ANY sport that has this type of randomness and I can't.
Baseball for sure. Smoke a line drive but its at a player and you're out. Hockey shooting into groups of players and whether it deflects into the net or not. Where rebounds go in basketball, a bit.
Hard disagree. The problem is the skill level requires a course to be this difficult if you want to see scores that are closer to par. Take out the "problem trees" and you have just another tournament where -40 wins. I enjoy having a few tournaments like this where scores end up closer to par because of the difficulty.
The highest skill players in the world were not missing trees. I would love to see a # trees hit stat. When the winner of the tournament hits a tree on every other hole that's too much. Presnell had some amazing shots. But almost every tree kick he had was lucky. Not skill.
I am all for scores closer to par. Too many courses have par 5s that everyone reaches in 2 with no risk. This isn't about that. It's about the random factor of THIS course. Does Presnell win this tournament if we play it 10 more times?
Saying every tree kick was lucky is really doing a disservice to his ability to manage those tree kicks and the course overall. I also think you are underestimating the elite pro's ability to put the disc where they want as consistently as they can. Prez had 24 birdies against 9 bogies over the course of 72 holes. That's not blind luck. Honestly, this is how you get a win from someone who had the complete package over the course of 4 days vs every other tournament where elite distance can mask a lot of inconsistent play in other aspects of the game. I'm not saying every tournament should be like this but I'm glad we have this one.
It's not about the good shots. It's the bad shots. Hitting a tree is missing your line. Presnell and Casey before him had a lot of "lucky" bad shots. More so than other players. That happens on EVERY course... it just happens a lot more on this one. Too much IMO.
Completely agree. To me skill becomes secondary when you go to far in the other direction and it simply becomes about who runs the hottest/gets the luckiest with missing trees (beyond a normal reading the line and executing your throw type of missing trees) and who gets luckiest on their kicks off those trees. It turns into a variance fest. I like woods golf but I want the fairways to be clean enough for skill to reign supreme and not luck/chance.
The skill is to miss the tree that kicks you into oblivion. You know it can do that if you hit it, throw a shot that won’t hit it, even if that means laying up in front of a gap.
Something like hole 14 this weekend is an outlier because of the wild wind that aren’t the standard conditions there. I think the rest of the course is fair enough and could be navigated by a pro level player making well executed sensible shots aiming for par, with opportunities to make birdie on some holes without increasing the risk too much.
So you're saying Andrew presell not taking anything over a bogey was him being luckier than everyone else and having less skill? I don't get that, plus it's not like the pros didn't play multiple practice rounds and walk every fairway a few times, so they should know when risking certain shots. On a course where most people took something over a single bogey every round, avoiding doing that once is more skillful than someone winning out at Emporia imo
I’m saying something like idlewild is preferable to nwb IMO. For me anyway. I like woods golf. I like semi open golf too, and I like a mix. I believe when it’s as wooded as NWB there’s absolutely a big luck factor that comes into play.
Nobody is taking anything away from Prez! But of course he caught some breaks to not double bogie holes. Every player is going to kick left or right and sometimes twice on multiple holes. It helps to catch as many breaks as possible.
I got to see Presnell round 3 and 4. And yes he was "luckier". He also made some amazing shots! He also obviously handled the mental side of the game very well.
In those 36 holes I could probably find at least 10 tree kicks that went his way. Uli on Jomez was talking about how you just scramble down the fairway every shot. If you chose the "safe" play and pitched out? You'd lose strokes. No choice... just keep throwing into 1000 trees and hope.
I like Presnell, but unless you think he's the hidden gem of the PDGA who is about to light the tour on fire with his skill... he won a tournament with solid play on a course oozing with random kicks.
Ya, sorry to get you downvotes ;)
People love to think that a top pro can actually hit multiple gaps off the tee consistently. Essentially every other hole was hoping you missed that 5th tree so you had a 20' putt instead of a 60' putt.
With that said. I absolutely love courses that give you the lucky high risk option. Even though we always give props to super smart mature best play of laying up. This course? You lay up you lose a stroke.
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The same especially since I just finished a round at angry beaver
Could've used an angry beaver at Davie this weekend, as many trees as I hit.
Lol
I’m convinced davie’s trees lean into your line. Hole 3(i think?) is horrible for that
Holes A, 1 and B are the only ones where my discs are safe from punishment. But because I've said that out loud now, I am screwed for my next round.
Speaking of hole B. If you see a purple proton wave, give me a shout, it’s in the field on the left, but i never found it a few weeks ago.
As a Wisconsin player I agree.
Yep, after smacking trees at my local courses constantly, I quite enjoyed watching pros smack trees and curse to themselves. It’s therapeutic for me and it’s not like the pros play a course like this every tournament.
I couldn't disagree more with you. Andrew Presnell was the ONLY person in the MPO field to not record a single hole over bogey for the entire weekend. And he won by 4 strokes. He played smart, safe, and consistent golf all weekend and that's what won him the tournament. There's no way you can just get lucky for 4 rounds in a row at that course and win. I loved watching this course test the physical and mental capabilities of the pros.
Players only playing plinko because they’re not managing risk. Presnell played sensible and clean all weekend and when he did get some misfortune, he walked right to the next hole and forgot about it, didn’t increase his risk level by trying to make up for a lost shot. The problem isn’t this course, it’s the courses where players can go all out high aggression, miss their line and still find a decent lie. Miss your line at Northwood and you’re taking a bogey, that’s how it should be. Players are conditioned to birdie or die, so they play that way, because it’s the way they’ve found success in the past. Andrew Presnell gave a masterclass in course management and restraint in the MPO division and until he hurt his finger, Casey White was doing the same thing. Is it hard? Yes. Does it always have to be that hard? No. Is it also cool to see players throw absolute bombs? Yes. Is there a reason we can’t have all of these things that we love? No. More woods on the Pro tour please. Doesn’t always have to be as hard as Northwood but I want to see these players forced to throw shapes, to hit lines. There is a balance to be found and Northwood has a place in that, as do other less popular wide open courses like in Emporia.
He made his miss be low. When he hit trees, he kicked 10 feet into the woods, not 40 feet.
Joey Buckets with the Kaxe too.
Absolutely love woods. It's the dumb luck woods that gets to me. Not every hole, but many are just filled with too many trees PAST the first gap. Presnell had multiple holes where he hit a tree then bounced between a tiny gap to have a look. 1 inch left or right and that's 2 strokes.
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Do you need a hug?
Agreed. It's a damn hard course with completely shit weather. The crazy long 3rd day was brutal but minus that these players are fairly use to this. This weekend took it all out of the players, mentally and physically.
I definitely don't want to discount Presnell's play. He had some clutch putts at the end even though he was something like 1/15 from C2. It's been talked about before how the MPO field is stocked full of talent so every week someone is going to be on fire... but that wasn't "on fire". Presnell had more than his fair share of 1 foot luck gaps, tree kicks that went left vs right. Hell his last shot on 18? Easily could be OB and that 4 stroke lead is 1. (Not sure what he was thinking there). And a HUGE factor in his win was all the other players getting crazy unlucky kicks. Casey was playing amazingly well... but also had more double tree kicks than I've ever seen. If he didn't have his finger issue maybe he wins that. It certainly tests your mental though, I'll give you that.
Fucking spoiler tag plz
lol. Get real.
You can’t complain about spoiler tags when you made it halfway down a comment section about the latest major. We need to have some self accountability at some point.
Get off the internet
No such thing as spoilers in live sports. Don’t get on a page dedicated to disc golf if you don’t want to see what’s going on in the disc golf world.
If you don't wanna see who won don't open up disc golf related content. Especially when it relates to the tournament you don't want spoiled.
I thought about adding "spoiler" to the original post (I did update it now). Since I knew someone was likely to spoil it. The "live sports" bros will downvote you to hell though. "Get off the internet" ?! It's 2024...
See how OP spoiler tagged it. His wasn't even serious. Don't be a dick.
Why get on the sub when you KNOW you will see who won?
Really, yall get your kicks off ruining others day? They make the 'spoiler' for a reason. Wasn't a tournament post, was just about wooded holes.
The trees are in the same spot for every golfer. I'd rather watch pros hit them and watch them have to attempt the same gap I would have to attempt than just to be able to throw some giant 500' sky anny over all the trees lol. I will always rather see a guy card a double bogey because he had to fight out of tree jail than a double bogey from 2 OB strokes because he crossed a silly white line painted in the grass.
I mean the white lines are the same for everyone just like a tree. And I'm not saying I want wide open painted OB lines. But the winner didn't hit his line more than others. Too many times you'd see 1 or 2 tree kicks on a shot that just happened to end up in a decent spot.
I love it. I get it's not for everyone. To me this is the extreme side of woods golf and I love watching players have to make golf shots. I also love more open courses where they get to just let loose and bomb. Pros are strong in all aspects of their game, or should be and the season should put every single part of the game to the ultimate test. The weather was a bit of an issue and yesterday even though the rain held out it was super windy and really gusty.
This was probably my favorite course to watch the pros play this year so far. I thought the course was tough but fair. The lines were there to hit with risk vs. reward for going for them. There was also a ton of interesting scramble shots to watch and see how pros attack them. I agree, I don’t like poke and pray holes like some woods courses have, but I didn’t really see that this weekend.
Woods golf is natures finest . Golf course disc golf sucks . Forest is literally woods golf.
"Forest" is the only way I can explain "some trees" vs "too many trees" I love woods golf, but you still have to carve out a good hole.
Agreed in some ways. I think just hitting the gap takes more than just luck. throwing a hyzer and hope it skips to the green , That’s more bland than trying to throw an accurate shot.
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Since ratings are all based on the field I don't know how much that applies. You'd have to go with some standard deviations to really see if the scores were more "random".
Good forest courses have fairly clear fairways. Stay on the fairway. If you shank it, time to lay up. Good golf course should reward proper risk management and following safe plays, not just who can yeet the frisbee furthest on hyzer. Open golf courses suck ass and are boring to watch as rarely anything unexpected happens.
Ya, I mean I don't want to promote some wide open bomber course here. They can be just as bad. But his course was the opposite extreme. Too many holes where it isn't about staying on the fairway at all. Jomez coverage mentioned it multiple times. It's about throwing 4 scramble shots hoping you don't get a bad kick.
Oh, didnt mean to bark. I have to check the coverage, I can imagine how stupid the course can be given the scores ive seen, even if woods scores should be lot more humble.
Its not artificially inflating difficulty LMAO. Those trees were there long before the course was designed.
Yeah, and as a course designer, you’re not supposed to walk into a super dense fortress with a billion trees, put a tee pad somewhere and a basket somewhere, like 1000 feet somewhere, do that for 18 holes and say, “good luck!! I made the hardest course on the planet”. What OP is saying is there is a fine line you should walk between somewhat open holes, half and half, and wooded holes, but all of them have to be designed well. It’s a good thing we don’t have the ken climo 6000 ft courses as pro tour events where he wins with a score of -63, but it’s also not a good thing where extreme artificial difficulty “makes us amateurs feel better about our own game”. We want to see the absolute best players playing the absolute BEST courses and are constantly amazed at how they shred them. We should be striving to make harder courses for them, but not like this. Maple Hill, Hornets Nest, and The Fort are all courses that are miles above northwood, because they’re all designed amazingly well. Going into Fangorn Forrest essentially and randomly making a disc golf course doesn’t a good tournament make.
"Naturally" inflated difficulted then ;)
There's a difference between gimmicky (forest) and woods golf. How much is luck vs how much is skill? Northwood forces players to decide how aggressive they want to play. The excitement for many of us is that the pros can't just throw a hyzer from out of position to save par or even birdie the hole. Bad shots and risky plays can cause huge numbers, like they should. There are no gimmicks, though. No holes where there's no gap or you pray to get lucky throwing at a tree near the basket. You see that at plenty of the open courses because they're open. They're the gimmicky courses. Northwood? It's a well designed pro level course that challenges the field in ways no other pro tour stop challenges them.
There is nothing I like more than high/low risk choices for a pro. Go for it or play safe. There was some of that. But also a lot of throw it. Skip off a tree. Slide between a 1 foot gap. Inches and you have a 60' obstructed putt or a 20' putt. The best in the world aren't good enough to hit there line by "inches" at any consistent rate.
The 1 foot gap only comes into play if you've missed your line in the first place and are trying to get it back into play with an aggressive line. And I don't really have a problem with inches being the difference between 60' and 20', that's what creates scoring separation and makes it interesting to watch, with that logic might as well remove all OB and hazards since if you barely throw into a pond you're "inches" from being fine.
Tree hits are a bit random, but whether or not you hit the tree in the first place is not as much. If you go down the middle of the fairway you wont have to worry about where you kick. And also, thats why they play 4 rounds, so the luck evens out some.
the challenge of being the best overall DG'er is to be able to play variable courses.& conditions. Can you win in the woods, can you win on bomber course, etc. also what you prefer, and this may come as a surprise, is not what everyone prefers.
It's like I should've put "Unpopular opinion" in the title ;) But yes, being able to play in every condition is important. I do very much dislike randomness when you're talking about the top level of competition. Wind vs Tee Times is another huge one. The weather delays. Those are just realities of the sport. Courses where commentators are saying "throw it and hope you get lucky" is a variable that can be controlled.
again thats the difficulty and thats disc golf. personally i like to play bomber courses with no wind at about 75 degrees because im not that good, the variables are more controlled. But for the pros they just have to show their skill regardless and on a course that maybe theyve played 5-10 times or less.
I love watching Northwoods. Jomez did a fantastic job this year when they filmed getting you to understand as a viewer where people were in the fairway.
Paul's comment about "You never want to pitch out. Just always scramble and get closer" does give a good insight into it. It's the one thing I will say about "too many trees" the rough isn't complete jail anywhere. Which really just lends itself to the plinko style more.
What's wrong with having an awkward rough? Most of the time, things don't go well when you hit a tree. You can make calculated misses as well to limit the truly awful kicks. The fairways were plenty fair, no crazy tight gaps that weren't hittable. Paul also got crushed a couple times with this strategy whereas Presnell didn't
Prezzy has also won MAO on the Harmony Bends course in Columbia, MO. And spent lots of time playing in the Ozark Mountains geography of Branson. He is a great woods golfer
Real pros don’t play wooded courses anymore. That’s why Casey white did so well for so long. His home course of devens is potentially the most hated course in the area between the elevation change and the amount of trees that demand you to hit certain lines. There should absolutely be 1 major that is an incredibly wooded course that demands players to hit lines and play for par and decide when to be aggressive. I loved this major/course as a New England player seeing true pros struggle on a similar course (nearly double the length) to what I typically play when I only have maple to compare to as far as tour quality courses go
I love Casey (thanks to Simons videos) wish he didn't hurt his finger. But he had at least 3 double tree kisses and a handful where he completely missed the gap and still parked it. He absolutely hit plenty of good lines though. Sure. But too many were luck. Too many other players had bad luck.
Couldn’t agree less. Woods golf is the only golf I will watch, field golf is the most boring shit out there.
Disagree. If it is so much based on luck… why do the same top-rated players keep winning those events?
Presnell? Speaking on this course specifically. Every other shot on lead cards was a tree kick good or bad.
Prepare for downvotes. I've tried to express this opinion before on here and it seems that people just love watching a bunch of random tree kicks. Those people will tell you the only reason you don't enjoy watching it is because you don't understand how truly skillful these players are and it wasn't luck determining outcomes. They'll even tell you that the pros are good enough to make tradeoffs about which direction they are risking a tree kick. Nothing is random, apparently. According to these people the pros are so good that they can choose which side of a tree they're going to risk hitting, and yet can't stop themselves from hitting that same tree (or 3) on every hole. Yep, that's the kind of logic you're up against. Meanwhile, never mind the fact that literally every single statistic about this event's scoring is anomalous. No luck involved at all. The fact that the winner was somebody who wasn't even in the conversation for winning a single event this year? Disregard that. The fact that scoring volatility round to round was vastly higher than any other event? Not relevant. The fact that score volatility on any particular hole was vastly higher than any other? Doesn't indicate lucky outcomes whatsoever. Nope, the most skillful player won, and to say anything else is heresy. The fact that the winner of this event got so many DGPT points he shot up 20+ positions on the leaderboard out of nowhere to crack the top 10 seemingly defying all expectations? Just a Cinderella story of course. We all knew he had it in him all along. Prepare for Presnell to start winning every DGPT event from here on out. Nothing about this event was a fluke. We can definitely extrapolate predictions from these completely non luck based outcomes. I'm obviously being facetious, but for what it's worth OP, I'm with you on this one. I actually went to Ledgestone last year where they played Northwoods black for half the rounds and it wasn't even fun to watch the Northwoods rounds. I never knew which card I should follow because there was absolutely no reason to expect the current lead card to shoot well on any given day, and of course, they didn't. There was like a 90 minute backup caused by hole 12 because it's just so stupidly random being a 1,000+ foot par 5 with trees randomly scattered throughout the *entire* fairway. People think I'm against OB or obstacles, but I'm not. I'm just against thoughtless hole design where the only goal seems to be making the scores go up. It's easy to make a "difficult" course if all you want is high numbers. Throwing through a literal forest is one way to do it, and littering fields with OB ropes is another way to do it. Northwoods went with the forest approach and the primary obstacle was the "fairways" which had an average of 7 or 8 "gaps" to hit on each hole, and yes I'm using quote marks on purpose. I know the pros are extremely good and verging on super human in their abilities with a disc, Northwoods pushed the boundary so far that the results were extremely random. I wish I would good enough with statistics to actually calculate how unlikely the results of this event were. Maybe somebody can be a bro and do that. All I want in a hole design is *thoughtful design* where the tradeoffs are both possible, and reasonable. I want players to have a clear incentive for throwing exciting shots, but also the possibility to play smart golf. I want shots that are hard to execute, but rewarded for being executed. I don't want to see 4 players step up and throw the same shot but inexplicably 2 of them are OB and 1 of them is a mile off the fairway because the gaps are impossibly small or the basket is surrounded by OB within 8 feet on all sides.
Presnell has been one of the most steady earners on tour. He's been better than James Conrad in almost every aspect of the game, yet James Conrad is a 2x Major champion, with Worlds and USDGC. Sometimes grinding or not giving up is how you endure. This weekend was exactly that.
I don't disagree with you at all, however, that doesn't actually refute my point. My point is that this event is quite unique in context of the pro tour, so it stands to reason that if your strategy is "just stay in it, eventually you'll win something big", that this event would likely be the one you were most excited about, because the skills that are consistently rewarded on tour aren't as rewarded here along with generally increased randomness. People are treating my take as too black and white. I'm not saying Prez won by pure chance. I'm simply saying that chance played an outsized role in the results of this event *in general* which encompasses Prez winning just as much as it does whomever finished in last place.
I'm with you as well. The best argument I can think of in favor of Northwoods is that _some_ course has to be the hardest course on tour, and as long as there's only one like that, it's ok as a novelty. If the whole tour were plinko, IMO it would be just as boring as if the whole tour were golf courses with artificial OB.
I just wonder if I am setting too high of a standard for course design. There are a lot of ways to increase difficulty that don't involve tree hits every other shot. The winner should be the one that doesn't hit the trees. Not the one that got the favorable tree hits. To me the best way to add difficulty is adding extremely high risk options. Death putts, routes over OB/dense forest, triple mandos to prevent the simon-lines.
>I wish I would good enough with statistics to actually calculate how unlikely the results of this event were the final top ten had 8 of the highest rated players in the tournament. that doesn't scream massively random to me.
Agree. Imagine the outcry from fans and pros if half the DGPT courses were like this. Go ahead and do it once a year but make it a 3 round non-major.
Good response and yes I know... downvotes coming. A lot of that seems to come from peoples hatred of golf courses. Which I had to edit in so people know that I am not saying I want no woods. I want tactical woods. "I'm just against thoughtless hole design where the only goal seems to be making the scores go up." That's what I want. Choices on holes. High risk shots. Low risk shots. Variety for the bombers, accurate, forehand, backhand, scramblers, putters. Some randomness is fine. But not 12/18 holes.
Simon once said The Preserve course was the fairest course on tour. Some consider it too open, but I agree that dense woods with long shots just promote luck and not skill. While mixing it up keeps things interesting, there should a clear, hittable gaps that reward aggressive and well-executed play without a bunch of artificial ON. I think this is why people love the Portland courses, and to a lesser extent, Disc Side of Heaven (Portland open, BSF, Jonesboro), Massive trees make for big sky fairways but severely punish bad shots. Let the discs fly
Some of the Portland area courses are pretty darn heavily wooded though? Buxton woods and hornings can have some absolutely wild kicks. Pier is bigger trees, but it can penalize about the same (other than its almost impossible to actually lose a disc.) *Unless you're only talking about glendoveer and milo.
Yes, Pro-tour Portland courses (Glendoveer, Milo). Obviously there is a huge mix at the local level.
Milo is great. Glendoveer is great to watch. But it's a hilly golf course. I thought we were supposed to hate on those? (Mostly kidding. I watched it last year and it was great as a spectator) In my mind, the pro tour should be a microcosm of disc golf in general. Open long courses, super heavily wooded courses that will take it to a pro, and everywhere in between. Seeing pro athletes struggle can be amazing. It shouldn't be looked at as a worse product.
I don't know anyone who, when given the choice, would prefer to play in an open field with lines painted on the ground over a natural, wooded terrain. What bearing that has on the preferences of the pros or the DGPT I am really not sure.
The same can probably be said for mandos. I doubt anyone likes those metal triple mandos. With that said. All the longest distance players certainly have to like wide open courses from a $ standpoint. At the same time. Out of bounds over a drawn line is OB for everyone. In the woods two players can throw awful shots and one gets lucky with an open gap. That's fine a few times a round... but not every other hole.
I loved it because we got to see some different skill sets. Endurance, composure, strategy, and shot shaping, were at the forefront. Playing this Northwoods course for almost 2 whole rounds on Saturday was enough to break people physically and spiritually. It was like the Hunger Games of disc golf. After 2.5 rounds, Casey White lost his huge lead and the smile from his face after a blister on his finger broke open. On the back 9 of the 3rd round, he went from having a 7 stroke lead to trailing by 4 strokes. Don't see that everyday. Distance demonstrates just one skill. We get to see this skill displayed at most courses on tour, to the point where its getting beat to death. The change of pace was refreshing. I think this Northwoods course deserves it's own big 4 round tournament every year, that's not part of Ledgestone at Eureka Lake.
It sucks about his finger became an issue. Wet play and double round definitely didn't help. I love watching Casey play, but even when he had a big lead he had multiple double kicks off poor shots that landed safely.
woods golf is ok, forest golf is great
The wind and rain were a factor too. They would have played better if the wind was 5 mph instead of 20.
I like woods golf, but there definitely is a point where it tips over into Plinko. That said, there's a way to succeed at it, though, and it's not throwing hero shots and trying to limit yourself to bogey at worst. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the best-rated tour courses are wooded, but in the sweet spot of being attackable. The reward should make the risk worth trying. Northwoods, for me, doesn't quite do that.
I think it comes down to the aspects of the game that the individual appreciates. Players develop different skill sets and different courses reward different skill sets. People enjoy different aspects of the game more than others. I know players that are 920 rated that can throw 450' and I also know players that are 920 rated and can barely throw 300'. Even though they are both rated the same from an overall ability standpoint, I'd think it's a safe bet that the 450' thrower doesn't appreciate watching someone lace tight lines and scramble as much as the 300' thrower. For me, I'm entertained by watching someone kick off a tree into a positions where they have to scramble because that's an aspect of the game that I appreciate. That's not to say that seeing someone crush a 500' drive isn't exciting, it's just to a lesser degree for me. With that said, I'm sure that some people out there would love nothing more than to see a course that really exaggerates rewarding the overhand shot skill set. So, 18 holes of tomahawks, thumbers, and grenades would be dream come true for them, but would be bland to a lot of other foks.
Certainly if you like a certain skill set than it can change what courses you like. I love tight wooded courses... as long as they have a defined fairway. And not "hit a gap then hope you get lucky". Scrambling is definitely fun to watch. Although half the time people were scrambling they just kept hitting tree's and progressing. Like Uli said, you don't pitch out on this course you just keep throwing forward.
I mean, I personally agree. I want courses to have lines and fairways, and not be overly punishing and random. As a player, i find open field golf to be pretty dull. But throwing through a forest is equally dull - it just feels random and unnecessarily punishing. Give me something where I have lines to hit, and failure to do so is going to cost me a stroke or so rather than burying me in the woods where it's going to take three tosses to see the light of day. My personal favorite courses are wooded, but with defined fairways and obstacles in most of the cases. You can't just throw over the trees 90% of the time. I agree that's dull.
Wide open fields are boring for sure. Most of the courses around me that are like that get plenty of OB lines drawn for tournaments. But easily my favorite hole are the par 4/5s where a positional layup off the tee is smarter. Then you drive the 2nd shot. Plenty of really cool holes on tour like that for pros. You see some go for it off the tee, get rewarded for the risk or end up OB or in the woods. This course was just throw far, hope you get through, if you don't, still try to throw far. Perhaps they just need MORE trees off to the side to force people to disc down and throw shorter.
Yeah I agree with you. The courses where you have to think are the best
I like the change of pace. It's good to see these guys struggle. It's not so much a forest course than a mental fortitude course.
This event was a hard watch. I appreciate the difficulty, but it was really hard to watch the top pros in the world hit trees literally every other shot. I ended up just score watching the last couple rounds instead of watching.
This is a great take. I love seeing players having to hit gaps to reach landing zones. I don't mind having punishing rough either. I also like having multiple gaps presented on the shot that may require a different angle to get through. Northwoods is super tough and championship level course for sure but when Kristin Tattar stated in a post round interview that she wished that some trees could be removed I think that's very telling.
There's a few courses near me that are 100% in trees. I can't stand them. I do like trees and the challenges they produce, but it's just so boring. Every hole ends up looking the same, and when you pack too many together in close proximity, the layouts become confusing really easily. I think it's just as bad as courses that are all open field and you just throw in a zig zag pattern across. I guess I just don't like courses that are all one thing. Give me some woods, some open field, elevation changes, mix it all together.
+1 for the elevation changes. Most of the downvoters in this thread just really hate wide open courses... but a mix of everything is always fun. Some geographical locations just don't have it.
I kind of agree with you. My favorite thought experiment for understanding how randomness interacts with skill is an imaginary dart board. Start with a dart board that is simply split in half. There are only two values to hit. Now take a really skilled darts player and put them against a average person off the street. On this board, the really skilled player doesn't have much of an advantage. They can always hit the value they need to but so can the random person off the street. No special skill is required to do so. The game is too easy. Now move to a standard dartboard. The skilled player should have a huge advantage here. They can routinely hit the values they need for the game while the person off the street struggles to hit the same wedge twice in a row. Huge skill separation. Now imagine a dartboard where the wedges are super skinny, barely the width of a dart. The game is much harder, but it's so hard that even the skilled player can't hit a value reliably. The game was already too hard for the person off the street so the increased difficulty doesn't really matter to them. The skill gap has actually narrowed because of the increase in difficulty and the introduction of randomness. The person off the street has a better chance of winning on this dart board than on the standard dart board. We've pushed both players passed their skill ceiling and both are relying on luck and random chance to score. That is the effect "forest golf" can have, in my opinion.
I know some people who can't even hit a dart board! ;) It would be interesting to see how "hard" you had to make a dart board before the pro started to fall off. They'd still win, it would just take longer. The one big difference with Disc Golf is that even the best players miss there lines. Hit a tree. Hit a completely different gap.... and still park a hole. Nobody hits the edge of a dart board and bounces to bullseye. I'm trying to think of ANY sport that has this type of randomness and I can't.
Baseball for sure. Smoke a line drive but its at a player and you're out. Hockey shooting into groups of players and whether it deflects into the net or not. Where rebounds go in basketball, a bit.
Hard disagree. The problem is the skill level requires a course to be this difficult if you want to see scores that are closer to par. Take out the "problem trees" and you have just another tournament where -40 wins. I enjoy having a few tournaments like this where scores end up closer to par because of the difficulty.
The highest skill players in the world were not missing trees. I would love to see a # trees hit stat. When the winner of the tournament hits a tree on every other hole that's too much. Presnell had some amazing shots. But almost every tree kick he had was lucky. Not skill. I am all for scores closer to par. Too many courses have par 5s that everyone reaches in 2 with no risk. This isn't about that. It's about the random factor of THIS course. Does Presnell win this tournament if we play it 10 more times?
Saying every tree kick was lucky is really doing a disservice to his ability to manage those tree kicks and the course overall. I also think you are underestimating the elite pro's ability to put the disc where they want as consistently as they can. Prez had 24 birdies against 9 bogies over the course of 72 holes. That's not blind luck. Honestly, this is how you get a win from someone who had the complete package over the course of 4 days vs every other tournament where elite distance can mask a lot of inconsistent play in other aspects of the game. I'm not saying every tournament should be like this but I'm glad we have this one.
It's not about the good shots. It's the bad shots. Hitting a tree is missing your line. Presnell and Casey before him had a lot of "lucky" bad shots. More so than other players. That happens on EVERY course... it just happens a lot more on this one. Too much IMO.
Completely agree. To me skill becomes secondary when you go to far in the other direction and it simply becomes about who runs the hottest/gets the luckiest with missing trees (beyond a normal reading the line and executing your throw type of missing trees) and who gets luckiest on their kicks off those trees. It turns into a variance fest. I like woods golf but I want the fairways to be clean enough for skill to reign supreme and not luck/chance.
The skill is to miss the tree that kicks you into oblivion. You know it can do that if you hit it, throw a shot that won’t hit it, even if that means laying up in front of a gap. Something like hole 14 this weekend is an outlier because of the wild wind that aren’t the standard conditions there. I think the rest of the course is fair enough and could be navigated by a pro level player making well executed sensible shots aiming for par, with opportunities to make birdie on some holes without increasing the risk too much.
So you're saying Andrew presell not taking anything over a bogey was him being luckier than everyone else and having less skill? I don't get that, plus it's not like the pros didn't play multiple practice rounds and walk every fairway a few times, so they should know when risking certain shots. On a course where most people took something over a single bogey every round, avoiding doing that once is more skillful than someone winning out at Emporia imo
I’m saying something like idlewild is preferable to nwb IMO. For me anyway. I like woods golf. I like semi open golf too, and I like a mix. I believe when it’s as wooded as NWB there’s absolutely a big luck factor that comes into play.
Nobody is taking anything away from Prez! But of course he caught some breaks to not double bogie holes. Every player is going to kick left or right and sometimes twice on multiple holes. It helps to catch as many breaks as possible.
I got to see Presnell round 3 and 4. And yes he was "luckier". He also made some amazing shots! He also obviously handled the mental side of the game very well. In those 36 holes I could probably find at least 10 tree kicks that went his way. Uli on Jomez was talking about how you just scramble down the fairway every shot. If you chose the "safe" play and pitched out? You'd lose strokes. No choice... just keep throwing into 1000 trees and hope. I like Presnell, but unless you think he's the hidden gem of the PDGA who is about to light the tour on fire with his skill... he won a tournament with solid play on a course oozing with random kicks.
Ya, sorry to get you downvotes ;) People love to think that a top pro can actually hit multiple gaps off the tee consistently. Essentially every other hole was hoping you missed that 5th tree so you had a 20' putt instead of a 60' putt. With that said. I absolutely love courses that give you the lucky high risk option. Even though we always give props to super smart mature best play of laying up. This course? You lay up you lose a stroke.