AAC today

[Dean Stokes]

To those of you who know this course.....what score do you think your regular low handicap golfer would score here today (just playing a regular 4some with friends), but with the greens hard and fast, playing long and with all that water. It looks to me like birdies would just be so hard to come by and doubles could be prevalent. Let's just say your club champ who regularly shoots around par at home club. Thanks.

[Brian Stewart]

Well, the rating/slope from the tips is 77.0/152 so you can do the math for what is expected under normal conditions:
Scratch-77 if they played to their potential, i.e. the course rating
5 index-Course handicap of 7 means 84 if they play well.
10 index-Course handicap of 13, so there's your bogey golf line of 90 (at the member's par of 72)
18 index-Course handicap of 24 which means the bogey golfer would have to play above their head to break 100

If you add a few strokes for difficult conditions then I would say that a scratch player would have a tough time averaging less than 80.  I know they aren't playing all the way back but at the same time it is also my understanding that the FWs are much more narrow than normal and I'm sure the pins are in difficult positions as well.  Then you add more speed and firmer fairways....  Anyway, it adds up to being a very difficult golf course from the back tees pretty quickly.   

Scorecard: http://atlantaathleticclub.memberstatements.com/tour/tours.cfm?tourid=53921

[Carl Nichols]

Brian,
I think averaging 80 is about right. Like you said, they're not playing it all the way back -- in addition to some of the up tees, 2 and 18 both usually play as par 5's -- but the setup has got to compensate for that and then some. (Is the 77.0 what a scratch is expected to average, or is it what a scratch should average in his best 10 out of 20 rounds?)

[ward peyronnin]

I will qualify this addition to the RSJ debate by saying that I did not care for much of what I saw on this AAC course from the broadcast.

One specific detail, for me, reveals that his design focus seems generally flawed. The margins of those very conspicuous bunkers were horribly artificial with sine curve stretches between silly looking slender grass lobes. Just altogether looking like something a grade schooler might draw to make things look cool. How can a site for a major be taken seriously with this look within your vision all the time?

[Brian Stewart]

Carl,

My understanding is that course rating is meant to identify the average of what a scratch player is expected to score under "normal conditions" when playing the course. 

From http://www.usga.org/handicapping/course_ratings/ratings_primer/Course-Rating-Primer/

USGA Course Rating:  A USGA Course Rating is the evaluation of the playing difficulty of a course for scratch golfers under normal course and weather conditions. It is expressed as the number of strokes taken to one decimal place (72.5), and is based on yardage and other obstacles to the extent that they affect the scoring difficulty of the scratch golfer.