This is similar to "grade inflation" in colleges today. The "respectable C" of 40-50 years is now the "respectable B."

I recently played my former club and was shocked, just shocked to see the slopes increased to:

Black tees:152, 74.7 @ 7084y

Blue tees: 148,73.3 @ 6743y

White tees: 138,71.4 @6301y

Nothing has changed since the days of a 131 slope from the whites. Perhaps GAP/USGA has changed rating criteria. It is a "manly" course  however.

Second!

Quantifying with a formula the mysteries of the sport seems futile.

With examples like this, the perception of impropiety is plenty of evidence that the USGA should remove it.

Given the importance of handicaps, ratings and slopes to a process that allows competition among different classes of golfers, there would have to be a rigorous formula to come up with the numbers.  If 20 different course raters rated the same course on the same day, how much variation would there be in their numbers if they work independently?  

I've only once seen raters at work.  There was a group of four playing Sunnehanna one day.  Do they confer and come up with one number or each work alone?  Just how does it work?

I also think there is politics in the slope.

I mean, I've played resort courses with super wide fairways (and sure, plenty of sand) with slopes of 134.

Then I'll play a parkland muni that maybe only 5800 yards but it's awfully narrow.  So narrow that if a drive leaks even a little it's a lost ball in the woods -- stroke and distance penalty.  And it'll have slope 107.

That never seemed right to me given that many high handicappers (for whom Dean Knuth designed the slope) spray the ball off the tee.


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Given the importance of handicaps, ratings and slopes to a process that allows competition among different classes of golfers, there would have to be a rigorous formula to come up with the numbers.

I am a statistician by trade and course rating could be done so much simpler to me.  Someone doesn't "rate" courses.  Rather with GHIN it seems quite easy to let the players' scores rate courses.

By this I mean I've played 15 different courses this year. I'm sure many of you have played more than that.  And we report our scores.  To a statistician this means plenty of "mixing".  If we all just played one course, this wouldn't work.  But we each play a variety of courses each year.

Therefore the USGA is sitting on a goldmine of data that can be used to tell me how my 13.3 will play at Pebble Beach or the muni I'll play when I visit my uncle next weekend.  

 If 20 different course raters rated the same course on the same day, how much variation would there be in their numbers if they work independently?  

Which would you trust more, a 4 guys with a clipboard playing & walking a course "rating" it 72.8 / 128 or thousands of rounds each year by players with various handicaps who play that course and many other courses contributing to a fair, unbiased assessment of how difficult it plays?

A collaborator and I have repeatedly asked the USGA for handicap data because we think we can construct a better system.  But of course we've never been privy to such information.

Wayne,

the few times I have observed the process, a group (usually about a dozen) of State Golf Association raters play the course with the slope guide in hand (which has pretty rigorous definitions of when to add/subtract points) and then compares notes right after the round to make sure that no one is way off base on any  particular item. They then average the scores and make the rating.

For those that don't know, the slope guide has about a dozen factors that they look at.  I think the hole rating starts with the course rating, which is based primarily on distance.  Then, specific factors like fw width, hazards, green contours can add points.

I have seen ratings change with mowing patterns, etc. and I have seen high ratings being marketed.  However, I have also seen courses ask that their slope rating be decreased, thinking that a high rating is a turn off.  Its not inconcievalbe that a different panel going out to re-rate a course could see things differently than the first, esp. if there was any pressure from the course to subtly adjust, or if they addressed the issues that caused the rating heartburn in the first place.

I think the biggest driver of requests for re-rating come from competition committees at clubs, who get concerned as to whether their handicaps travel well.