Changing a course due to slope rating?

[Padraig Dooley]

With the World Handicapping System coming into place here in Ireland later in they year, some have mentioned that courses would look to change the course and make them more difficult as hey wouldn't want to be perceived as having a slope rating that's too low.
Is there any evidence to suggest this would happen? Have clubs done it in the past?

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I don’t think so. In the 90s it seemed en vogue to build and play “hard” courses. I think that’s softened considerably since.

I’m sure some courses may do a few things. I wouldn’t expect it to be widespread.

Plus for most the course rating is more “important” in assessing difficulty. The two are usually related, though. Tough to create a 68.3/146 or a 74.7/110 course.

[Jason Topp]

Anything is possible but I do not think there is an epidemic of courses chasing higher slope in the US.   My course's slopes have bounced around a bit but as many changes have had the effect of reducing slope as have increased it.


I also believe there is a lot of variation from region to region.  A 135 slope in Minnesota from 6600 yards is a pretty normal course.  In Florida or California a course with that type of slope will involve many risks of penalty strokes. 

[Tom_Doak]

I've had several clients who wanted to get their course ratings re-done because they thought the Slope was too low.  But I've never had one that wanted to make the course harder specifically to get the Slope up.

[John Chilver-Stainer]

I know that some of my clients talk of narrowing the fairways and growing the rough before the official raters come round to measure their courses.

[Thomas Dai]

Ego, vanity and marketing in golf. Something new every day!
atb

[Adrian_Stiff]

We lost a lot of points because we had width.

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

Padraig,

I'd say a huge majority (>95%) of golfers in Ireland and the UK don't understand nor care about slope ratings, and I can't see it changing with the introduction of the new handicapping scheme. Personally, I've never bothered to try to understand it. I always got the impression (from US sports on TV) that the US is more interested in numbers and stats. You hear a lot of this in baseball, American Football, etc. where they mention that so and so has a 0.135 average, or ran 876 yards. I haven't a notion what it means. US golf commentators always talk about how many dollars this guy has won this year or in his career. I don't think people on this side of the Atlantic are that interested in ratings, stats, ratios, coefficients, etc. in the same way as our North American friends, so I don't see it having any impact on the difficulty of courses. No doubt you will come across a few eejits that will boast about their course's tough slope rating.

[Tom_Doak]

It's worth noting that when the Slope system was introduced in the USA in the 1980's, developers of new courses equated a higher Slope with a better course.


Of course that was exacerbated at the time by Jack Nicklaus being the biggest name in design.  Hopefully thr focus is different today.

[Peter Pallotta]

It's worth noting that when the Slope system was introduced in the USA in the 1980's, developers of new courses equated a higher Slope with a better course.

Of course that was exacerbated at the time by Jack Nicklaus being the biggest name in design.  Hopefully the focus is different today.

Was maybe the Slope system introduced in the 80s precisely because developers wanted to market those numbers?
I know the answer is 'no'. But it's remarkable how often such initiatives seem 'synchronized' with the economic imperatives of the day.
 

[David_Elvins]

There needs to be education and re-education on slope.


Slope is a relative measure of how hard the course is for average and bad golfers relative to good golfers.


Courses should be aspiring to have a low slope rating, not a high one.  No one should want a course that is easy for good players and difficult for bad players.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Courses should be aspiring to have a low slope rating, not a high one.  No one should want a course that is easy for good players and difficult for bad players.

That typically doesn't happen.

Typically, the rating and slope are pretty closely linked. I imagine you'd see an R^2 value that's pretty high if you plotted the slope versus the course rating for a large number of golf courses.

Like I said earlier (with different numbers, likely), you won't find many 74.7/112 courses or many 68.6/146 courses out there.

In other words, good luck creating a course that's hard for a good player but relatively easy for a bad player. I'm not even sure it's possible given how the ratings work.

[Peter Flory]

Is there a master database.  I would be interesting to see which courses have the biggest spreads in their rankings between course rating and slope. 

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Is there a master database.  I would be interesting to see which courses have the biggest spreads in their rankings between course rating and slope.

Well I did a little digging. 772 rows of men's tees (I deleted any ratings below 65.0), and calculated the bogey rating for each course.

Then I took the bogey rating and divided it by the course rating.

A course that's 72.0/130 would have a bogey rating of (130/5.381+72.0) = 96.2. Then I took the Bogey Rating and divided it by the Course Rating to get the ratio. In this case, 96.2/72.0 = 1.34.

A CR of 74.4 with a Slope of 115 would be 1.29.

Here's what I found:

• One course had a 68.2/108 set of tees that came out to 1.29. All others were 1.30 or higher, and only 8 were 1.30.
• The median value (386/772) was 1.34.
• The highest value was 70.0/143, which came out to the only 1.38 on the chart.

Here's a count. As you'll see… most are pretty much in the middle.

Code: [Select]


1.29    1
1.30    8
1.31    36
1.32    101
1.33    184
1.34    229
1.35    153
1.36    45
1.37    14
1.38    1


Three examples of 1.34 courses:

• 74.0/134
• 66.1/120
• 72.7/132

[archie_struthers]

 




Eric I've got a racing form and lots of info on trainers jockeys and track variants, can you create an algorithm for me to plug in!


I think Tommy Naccarato will go partners with me


lol that's quite impressive

[Thomas Dai]

We lost a lot of points because we had width.

Sad to hear that a system has been adopted that can give give such a outcome.
atb

[Erik J. Barzeski]

lol that's quite impressive

Just some Numbers (spreadsheet) plugging. GHIN lets you export course rating info as a CSV file. The 772 rows were just within one associations region - it's not across the entire U.S.

Sad to hear that a system has been adopted that can give give such a outcome.

Why? Width = easier to hit the fairway, which means the course plays "easier" overall.

Course rating and slope measure difficulty, not "quality of design" or something like that. Just as a course with 3" rough will be more difficult than a course with 2.25" rough, a course with less rough will be easier than a course with more rough even at the same height.

[A.G._Crockett]

We lost a lot of points because we had width.

Adrian
Are you referring to the panel that did your course and slope ratings, or to raters coming from one of the magazines?  If you mean the former, I'd be really surprised and disappointed.  If you mean the latter, I'd be curious, but not surprised.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

If you mean the former, I'd be really surprised and disappointed.

Why? That's how the math works.

[Kyle Harris]

I mean, slope rating is essentially how easy it is for the bogey golfer to be.... a bogey golfer. Shouldn't the ideal be a high course rating with a low slope rating?

[jeffwarne]

We lost a lot of points because we had width.

Sad to hear that a system has been adopted that can give give such a outcome.
atb

I'm sure I don't understand why "losing a lot of points" matters when establishing a rating for handicaps.
A course rating or slope isn't a measure of quality
If your CR or slope was arbitrarily made higher ( by perhaps arguing width didn't make it easier ) your members would travel poorly with their handicaps.

[Jeff_Brauer]

In theory, Tom Doak's Memorial Park in Houston, where he eliminated a lot of sand in favor of other grass hazards that challenge pros a bit better, should be as good an example of a relatively higher course rating with a relatively lower SLOPE rating.  Has it been rated yet?

[Bob Harris]

We lost a lot of points because we had width.

Sad to hear that a system has been adopted that can give give such a outcome.
atb

There has to be more to it than that.  The change in the Course Rating/Slope by adjusting fairway width in the landing zones from 25 yard to 50 yards would be minimal.  I re-calculated the CR/Slope for a number of courses with average fairway widths of 25 yards, changing the widths to 50.  The CR dropped by .3 and the Slope by 3 points.

[Bob Harris]

In theory, Tom Doak's Memorial Park in Houston, where he eliminated a lot of sand in favor of other grass hazards that challenge pros a bit better, should be as good an example of a relatively higher course rating with a relatively lower SLOPE rating.  Has it been rated yet?

Yes:


Blue      74.2      128
White    71.1      121
Gold      68.0      115

[Tom_Doak]

In theory, Tom Doak's Memorial Park in Houston, where he eliminated a lot of sand in favor of other grass hazards that challenge pros a bit better, should be as good an example of a relatively higher course rating with a relatively lower SLOPE rating.  Has it been rated yet?

I'm going back down there in a few days.  I haven't heard if the course has been given a rating and Slope yet, but would assume it's forthcoming as all those public golfers need to know what their handicap is.


My guess is that the Slope for Memorial will be HIGHER than for many of my other courses.  Memorial's fairways are considerably narrower than a lot of my courses, and there is considerably more water in play.  [On the other hand, the greens are less sloping, and there are fewer bunkers, so it will probably be a wash.  And the rough density, which will have a major effect on scoring, is anyone's guess at this point.]


I said here years ago that Bunkers are Overrated, and I'd guess that goes for how they factor into the Slope System, too.  People just don't hit into fairway bunkers that often, and I've never been one to surround my greens with sand, even well before Memorial Park.  So, bunkers may indeed cause problems for golfers on a psychological level, but if you're only in 2-3 bunkers per round I don't think they will directly add very much to your score.