Slope Rating

[thenextnumber1]

hi,

 

is there a way to work out a slope rating for a course, because in britain we dont have slope ratings for courses and I need a slope rating to be able to add a course to the website im useing to track my stats. At the moment im useing the course par as the slope rating lol.

 

Any help?

Rick

[MTM]

This is a topic of discussion with some British friends of mine.

 

It's difficult to assign a slope rating to a course you've never seen. Slope is supposed to be a measure of difficulty for a bogey golfer. So if your course has a lot of OB and/or water hazards that cost strokes the slope is going to be higher than a course of equal length but that is wide open with little or no trouble.

 

113 is considered "average" for lack of better term.

 

My home course is about 6800 yards and our slope rating is 125. The easiest course I play with regularity is about 6000 yards and it's slope is 109.

[acrazygolfer]

On your own, the answer is most likely that you cannot do so. Here is an excerpt taken from the USGA as to how the slope rating is to be calculated:

 

"When the USGA course rating system was improved in 1987, the slope rating became a second dimension to the existing course rating. Many golfers know that a course rating is an evaluation of a course's difficulty for scratch golfers under normal course and weather conditions. But those same golfers are unaware of the bogey rating, which isn't posted on a layout's course handicap tables or its scorecard. The greater the difference between the course and bogey ratings, the higher the slope.

 

The two ratings are determined by course raters, who work in teams on behalf of a state or local golf association. Rating teams prepare a course and bogey rating for each set of tees on a course. While yardage is the primary determinant, there are 15 other factors taken into account, such as water hazards, trees, out of bounds, prevailing wind and altitude above sea level.

 

Picture a tough-as-nails par-4 that bends to the left, the No. 1 handicap hole on the course. From the middle tee, a male scratch player would boom a drive that carries the bunker at the dogleg's corner. He would hit a crisp approach shot over the lake fronting the green, landing the ball beyond the gaping greenside bunker. The shot would stop within reasonable birdie range of the hole. This is the golfer the rating team would use as its criteria when determining the course rating is 71.5.

 

Now envision a male bogey golfer attacking the same hole. That person is defined in the USGA handicap system manual as a man having a handicap index of 17.5 to 22.4 (about a 20 average), hitting an average drive of 200 yards and able to reach a 370-yard hole in two shots. The bogey woman has an index of 21.5 to 26.4, hits a 150-yard drive and reaches a 280-yard hole in two. The bogey golfer puts up a game fight, but a birdie would be this player's best hole of the entire year. The rating team uses this player as its criteria to set the bogey rating at 96.3, which means the bogey golfer is predicted to average 96.3 on the better half of his scores on this set of tees.

 

Once the rating team verifies its calculations, the state or local association computes the slope. The formula is the difference between the bogey rating and the course rating, multiplied by a set factor (5.381 for men, 4.24 for women). For the tees outlined earlier, the calculation is 133.45 for men, which is rounded to 133 since slope is expressed as a whole number."

[AirTime23]

So, if I understand correctly Britian's handicap system doesn't use slope in its calculations.

Then it shouldn't matter what slope you input into your stats software, as slope won't affect how many strokes you get on that particular course.

 

If the stats software does it's calculations using the slope value however, you might want to deduct the slope value using this formula:

 

SLOPE = strokes you get * 113 / (Hcp - CR + Par)

with Hcp being a negative value (e.g. -5,1)

 

Hope this helps!

[larrybud]

hi,

 

is there a way to work out a slope rating for a course, because in britain we dont have slope ratings for courses and I need a slope rating to be able to add a course to the website im useing to track my stats. At the moment im useing the course par as the slope rating lol.

 

Any help?

Rick

 

The USGA Handicap manual outlines the way they go about this. You might also want to see

 

http://golf.about.com/cs/rulesofgolf/a/hfaq_determine.htm

 

But without training, you're probably guessing.

 

If I were you, I would make the slope 113 for what you're doing, since that's the baseline the USGA uses. I.E. 113 won't affect your handicap or differential one way or another.