Do you play hard courses? Do give us your opinion. Stick to the facts.
You will find them printed on the scorecard, transmitted in two numbers: Course evaluation and Slope assessment.
You probably know these terms. You can also get a sense of what they measure. But just in case. . .
Clearly, the course rating tells you how difficult a course is for a scratch golfer. A rating of 71.4, for example, means that a scratch player is expected to shoot around 71 when playing well under normal conditions. Slope Rating, meanwhile, measures how much more difficult the course is for a bogey golfer relative to a scratch golfer. The greater the difference in their predicted scores, the higher the slope.
Together, these numbers help level the playing field. They are used to calculate your Handicap coursethe number that helps determine how many shots you have (or give) when you tee up against your friends.
Sounds simple enough. But those numbers don’t materialize out of thin air. Establishing them requires a year-long effort that involves trained volunteers, course visits, spreadsheets and a lot of math. Not Einstein-level math, but still math. There is more to the process than you might think. Here are 10 things to know about how it works.
It’s a numbers game
There are approximately 16,000 golf courses in the United States. That’s a lot of ground to cover, and it takes a lot of volunteers.
Those volunteers put themselves in the name of the USGA allied golf associations in the country, and their number varies from one region to another. The Northern California Golf Association, to cite an example, relies on 67 course grading volunteers. They spend about 50 to 60 hours of training and are expected to evaluate at least five courses a year. Most value much more than that.
The NCGA rates more than 50 to 55 green grass courses a year, part of a constant rotation that has raters coming back for updates. Courses are usually due for a new evaluation every seven to eight years. If a course is undergoing significant renovation, raters will return sooner.
No one works alone. Course assessors depart in groups, led by a staffer from the allied golf association.
Yardage does not equal distance
The top of his list of tasks is to measure the course. Not the yardage; the length of the effective game, which accounts for the factors that can make a hole longer or shorter than it measures.
Five factors come into play: roll, elevation, altitude, wind and doglegs or forced layups. A soft landing zone can make for a longer game. A downhill approach can take a while. At higher altitudes, the ball travels farther through thinner air. And so on. The wind is also made, based on typical conditions.
The result is a more realistic picture of how a hole is played, rather than how well it measures.
Evaluators look at 10 obstacles
From a distance, a group of raters can resemble a group of bird watchers, peering through devices into the near distance. They are not looking for the osprey. They check for obstacles.
The rating system considers 10 factors on each hole, each rated for its effect on scratch and bogey golfers:
Topography: slopes, uneven lies and elevation changes.
Fairways: The width and shape of the landing area.
Target green: The size and difficulty of the green relative to the approach shot.
Recoverability and roughness: How much trouble awaits after a tantrum.
Bunkers: Their placement, depth and difficulty.
Obstacles crossed: Dangers, such as water, and other unhappy places that must be carried.
Side Obstacles: Trouble running alongside a hole, including water and out-of-bounds areas.
Trees: Their size, their position and the potential of conflict.
Green surface: The speed and contours of the putting surface.
Psychological factors: A cumulative measure. Taken together, to what extent are these obstacles apt to blow a player’s mind?
Each factor is assigned a rating from zero to 10. A hole without bunkers, for example, receives a zero in that category. A water hole with calames along the edges and a large pond to carry can be rated as 10.
Quantitative measures, takes qualitative
The course evaluation system produces hard numbers. But those numbers often arise from lively debate. According to Jeremy Gray, assistant director of course grading for the NCGA, no category inspires more back and forth than green surfaces, whose speed and wrinkles can draw different reactions from different evaluators. As beauty is in the eye, so is the difficulty of reading a break. An experienced green reader might see a simple putt where another golfer sees a knotty puzzle. Reasonable people can agree to disagree, which is one of the many reasons why grading isn’t left up to just one person.
Playing the course is a part of it
There is an advantage at work. Volunteers who rate courses can play the courses they rate. But those shifts are not purely recreational. They are part of the process.
Walking the holes and experiencing the shots firsthand gives appraisers another opportunity to check their work. They can compare what they have measured and recorded with what they encounter in the actual game, making adjustments where necessary.
The process takes time
Unlike the scores you post toward your handicap, course ratings don’t appear immediately. Arriving at a final number can take two to five months, depending on the assessment and the work involved.
The NCGA, for example, releases updated ratings every quarter. And because courses are evaluated on a rotating schedule, there is always another batch of properties waiting for attention.
The direction of the wind was used to count
Before the introduction of the World Handicap System in 2020, the evaluators took into account the prevailing wind direction and speed when evaluating how a course was played.
This process has since been simplified. With so many courses in so many places, rated by so many different raters, sticking to a single metric—the average daily wind speed during the middle of the season—eliminates variables like the effect of wind direction on individual shots. The simpler method implemented with the WHS helps ensure that the wind as factor is applied consistently across the board.
Slope is about difference, not just difficulty
A high Slope Rating does not necessarily mean that a course is more difficult for everyone in the same way. It means the course presents a greater challenge for bogey golfers relative to scratch golfers.
To arrive at that number, evaluators also calculate something called a Bogey Rating, which estimates how a standard bogey golfer would play the course. This figure is compared with the Course Rating. The greater the difference between the two, the higher the Slope.
Why does this gap matter? Because some obstacles affect less accomplished golfers more severely. The same deep bunker that a scratch golfer easily escapes could be an eternal pit of despair for a high-handicapper. The same with forced transports. What a good player could clear with the ease of Evel Knievel, a short hitter could have little hope of crossing.
113 is the base number. And 155 is the ceiling
A Slope Rating of 113 represents a course of relative standard difficulty. It is the baseline used to convert your Handicap Index into a Course Handicap. A Slope above 113 means the course plays relatively harder for bogey golfers than for scratch golfers. Under 113, the opposite is true.
The scale goes from 55 to 155. It is the official range, meaning 155 is the highest possible Slope Rating. You’ll only see a Slope Rating at least 55 on a short course, not a full-length 18.
Course evaluation has no comparable fixed ceiling. It is expressed in strokes to one decimal place and reflects the expected score of a scratch golfer. On a brutally tough course, that number can climb well above par, even into the 80s. Unlike Slope, it’s not limited to a predetermined number range.
Evaluators do not decide which hole receives the No. 1 handicap
Here is a common misperception: While the allied golf associations determine the par for individual holes and for the course as a whole, they do not decide which hole receives the handicap designation No. 1. That is, the hole assigned the lowest number of stroke index for handicap purposes.
It is at the golf course itself.
So if you think the short par-3 with the flip wedge shouldn’t be the hardest hole on your course, don’t file a complaint with your local golf association. Take it with the club.