Ketket1: But until such time as they reach saturation point, bad scores DO count and the more bad scores, the longer it takes them to get good scores that offset those bad scores.
Nope. This is linear thinking (of average), but saturation makes it non-linear.
Of course, bad scores do count to the momentary average. I confess that I quit a few early Legend rounds because I knew that they would make my average look bad for ages!
Alas, they are irrelevant to tier promotion.
Robert1893: Actually, the opposite is true. By withdrawing, a person is taking longer to get to saturation. The longer it takes to get to saturation, the longer it takes to reduce an average.
By withdrawing to "protect the average," the person has just wasted a round that would have helped move them toward saturation.
That's not the point, Robert.
You describe tier promotion as two tasks, 1) becoming saturated and 2) lowering the average. In fact, it's only one task: To collect a <saturation no.> pool of scores forming the necessary average. This is all that matters.
If you look at at the pool of scores contributing at the moment of tier promotion, the bad scores are gone, they have been excluded. Thus, they are non-existent in this array, as if they had not even been played. This is the non-linear part of the story.
Robert1893: In other words, if a person only completes "good" rounds and not all rounds, it will take the person longer to reach saturation, which ultimately impacts tiering up.
I agree, except for the marked phrase.
Players who quit bad rounds will miss to practice the last holes of the courses, and more on the psych side of the game (hint: patience, resilience...). THIS will have a a negative impact on the time it takes!