The hole averaged more than three strokes over par in FPO.
March 24, 2025 by Gabe LaBounty in Analysis, Opinion
You can say one thing about Sprinkle Valley’s Hole 18 at the Open at Austin: it certainly got people talking.
After most of the FPO field took triple bogey or much worse on the final hole of the first two rounds, players were reportedly expressing their disdain for the incredibly punishing finishing hole, and many viewers decried it as an affront to good course design and expressed their disbelief that the hole was even part of the tour. JomezPro commentators and touring pros Erika Stinchcomb and Madison Walker panned the hole, particularly in their coverage of round two.
On the other side, some, I’m sure, felt sadistic glee for the punishment meted out by a tight, OB-ridden approach to a postage stamp island green while most who even dared to express a differing opinion implored players to just “make the shot.”
I fall somewhere in the middle, but I’m still not hearing answers, or even the questions, I think are important amidst the outrage.
First, some stats: the hole played harder to par than anything on tour in recent memory. Last year, the most difficult hole for FPO was hole 6 at New London, averaging 1.65 strokes over par. The 2024 edition of Sprinkle Valley Hole 18 was the second hardest, averaging just below that at 1.61 over par. This year, the hole played 3.18 strokes over par on average, more than a stroke and a half more difficult. And it wasn’t much easier for the best players: 940+ rated players shot 2.75 strokes over par on average. It was also harder in MPO (+1.19) than any hole in 2024, just edging out New London Hole 6 (+1.18).
The difference this year was that the gap from the lower fairway to the green was turned into out of bounds with no opportunity to lay up short. Here are the two layouts for FPO from this year and last:
After the second round, Mint Discs, who installed the course in Austin, posted a Reddit response, since deleted, that was not quite an apology but expressed some remorse for putting the FPO players through it for two rounds.
It seems like this was avoidable. The Reddit post mentioned this being the plan for two years, but they could have taken a different tack after seeing how it played last year at USWDGC as the second hardest hole on tour. This begs the question: did the designers not talk with FPO after USWDGC? Did they talk to the players and just yell “MORE” like Kylo Ren ordering the bombardment of Luke Skywalker? This appears to be an example of feedback not being properly considered or applied. It does sound like they are listening to the feedback now: not great to make the adjustments after the tournament, but the second best time to plant a tree is now.
It seems clear from the stats that this hole was not fit for the FPO field (yet), though I don’t think we’ve even begun to scratch the surface of what elite FPO disc golf can look like with female disc golfers representing just 7% of the total player pool. A couple of designs over the past few years were touted as built for FPO five years from now but turned out to not be well-tuned for the current field. It’s as if the designers saw the ascendance of Kristin Lätt to 1000-rated shortly after Paige Pierce fell short of that mark and expected that curve to start extending upward instead of flattening out. In reality, it took the rest of the touring FPO field a year or two to catch up and actually start pushing the player who had raised her floor above much of the division. Sprinkle Valley’s Hole 18 falls into this same camp of FPO design too far ahead of its time.
However, I was confused when I saw a large portion of the FPO field, including the #1 player in the world, Kristin Lätt, who has what is considered the best approach game in the division, step up to what on paper sounds like a textbook but danger-ridden approach – blind, tight, 200-250′ slightly uphill, with OB woods on either side – and continue to miss the green short again and again from the same spot when, if anything, the optimal miss is long so you can at least progress to the drop zone.
While it’s evident from the numbers that the approach on 18 was not as textbook as it appeared (and from players’ reactions was demoralizing to play), I don’t hear anyone offering answers to the question of why specifically this hole was so punishing for FPO players. Why did they take such huge numbers over the MPO field when the only layout difference is a delta of 120′ from the tee shot to the first landing zone? All I see is people either being angry on FPO players’ behalf, suggesting design changes to soften the difficulty and calling the hole unfair, while others are doubling down on saying the best players in the world should just “get good.”
I’m not a fan of stroke and distance on any course (looking at you, Winthrop hole 17), but I don’t understand the “unfairness” argument. Everyone played the same hole. What makes it unfair to the entire field? Does the answer to that question also apply to MPO?
Sprinkle is dead-to-rights a Double Black Diamond difficulty course with both the MPO and FPO layouts averaging around 1000-rated golf for even par1, although the FPO layout rated slightly higher, likely due to how much higher 18 scored in aggregate. So what made the finishing hole average two full strokes higher for FPO over two rounds?
The answer to this question could point toward useful course design considerations, current and future, as well as what might be the next step in the evolution of the FPO field. Did this approach to 18’s green expose a hole in the FPO field’s physical skill set? Do FPO players not have this kind of stroke and distance tested elsewhere on tour, making it more of an unexpected mental challenge? Perhaps a bit of both?
While Sprinkle Valley’s hole 18 will definitely feed conversations and debates about what good design looks like for elite courses, I don’t think these are questions that many people can answer effectively. Still, there has to be a reason this was the outcome and I would be very interested to hear top-level FPO players and course designers who have been lauded for their FPO layouts seek to offer answers, particularly if this course is to appear on tour again in 2026.
Side note: when was the last time we saw this kind of rating parity between divisions on different layouts of a single course? ↩
