Par scores v scores

Why run par scores?

 

Because they cost you pretty much nothing in terms of space and give a quick glimpse of how tough a course is playing.

Seeing a Masters leaderboard (or scores list) that includes . . .

Woods +1
Johnson +3
Furyk +4
Harrington +5

. . . tells me a lot more about the tournament than simply seeing the individual scores followed by . . .

Woods 217
Johnson 219
Furyk 220
Harrington 221

 

My question would be, why run straight scores? For the exact reasons BT mentioned.

+8 tells you a lot more about the golfer's outing than 296.

 

The only time running par scores is tougher is on Monday, when the earnings and FedEx points make it impossible to fit in one of our agate columns. So we just go 2 on 3 for golf and all is well.

 

That's true, but there are a couple of ways around it:

1. Don't run FedEx points. We edit copy; we can (and should) edit agate.

2. You can still run Monday golf scores with FedEx points in one column (or even a little less) if you do it like this:

-12 ($900,000)
Tiger Woods, 4,500......72-68-68-68-276
-10 ($450,000)
Phil Mickelson, 4,000....72-70-68-68-278
Fred Funk, 4,000.........69-69-71-69-278
-7 ($250,000)
Sergio Garcia, 3,650.....72-72-70-67-281
Retief Goosen, 3,650....69-74-71-67-281
Jim Furyk, 3,650..........72-71-66-72-281
Jesper Parnevik, 3,650..68-73-71-70-281
+15 ($0)
Michelle Wie, 0............87-WD

The length will be longer, but it will still take up much less total real estate than running 2 on 3 (which is probably too wide, since the scores usually just barely break over in one regular column).

 

We run them 3 on 4 on Mondays, and it doesn't look too bad. It breaks them out of the regular agate and makes the golf fans happy because the scores look more important that way.

 

Why is it that people always refer to a poor outing in every sport other than golf as "sub par," when that is a good outing in golf, the sport where the term actually means something?

Not an acutal question. I just get a kick out that.

 

Nice format, I'm stealing your idea.