Course/Slope ratings and border crossings

[David Davis]

What do you guys do when you go abroad? Do you pay any attention to the course and slope ratings of various courses or do you just play them all against par?

I have this habit of wanting to compare relative difficulty of courses to my home course I have to say. Since the Course and Slope rating are supposed to insure that a 5 hcp at one course could have an equal match against a 5 hcp at any other course I'd expect these to be consistent for the most part where ever you travel or play. However, crossing international borders I've found this is rarely the case. Europe outside of the UK and Ireland uses the USGA system which is not bad, except for the fact that the US doesn't have too many links courses and a place like Bandon is too new to have been able to influence the changes to the system to make up for the discrepancies in it. As a result a course like my home course which is a tough links course at 7000 yds from the back tees was ranked as the 24th most difficult course in the country, however, no matter who you asked here what the most difficult course would be they would all say my home course.

I did considerable research into this last year, spoke to the heads of the Scottish golf union rating committee and the head of the EGA rating committee and interestingly enough came to the conclusion that indeed links courses fall short in the course and slope rating system. After a meeting in January with the Dutch Golf Federation we changed this slightly. It immediately made a difference of 4 pt's in slope rating (however if they would of waiting 3 weeks longer until the rough started to grow back to normal it probably would of made a 10 pt difference.

I realize it's a long story but what are your experiences with this if you pay any attention to it at all and with traveling to play other courses nationally and internationally. Do you normally play your hcp?

[Dan Herrmann]

Honestly, I've never worried about this - I just go out, try to have fun, score well, and check out the GCA.

Last year, I played two wonderful courses without a course rating or slope (Dismal River and Sand Hills).  Thinking about CR/Slope was the last thing on my mind

PS - How often does anybody play to their handicap?  10-15%?

[Wayne_Kozun]

The other thing to keep in mind is that most decent courses haves slopes in the 125-140 range on the USGA system.  That means that your handicap is pretty much always 1.1 or 1.2 times your index so if you are a 12 at your regular close you are probably 12 +/- 1 shot unless the course is really easy or really hard.

But comparing the relative difficulty of the course isn't very meaningful when the wind can have a drastic effect on the score.

When I am abroad I find that my scores are pretty much when I shot back home.  I have a 8.6 index and my scores are generally from 78-90 or so whether I play in Canada/US or Scotland, with the exception of gale force winds.

[Dan Herrmann]

And, trust me, slope tells ZERO about the quality of the golf course.  Some of our greatest golf course have lower slopes.  For example, Aronimink is a 133 from the tips (of course, it does have a CR of 74.

[David Davis]

Dan,

Thanks for your comment. I completely agree that slope doesn't have anything to do with quality of a course and certainly did not infer that it did.

Just curious about everyone's experience as to the consistency of these things in country or out. Perhaps because during national team competition this year it had a noticeable impact. Perhaps these things have more influence on club hcp's here as they do in other countries. My home course was just re-rated at 140 slope and CR of 74.6. However, that was with little rough and low wind. but from May - Oct the main playing months we have extreme ball losing rough and high wind almost all the time. Hence I make my break 80 bet with all guests regardless of how low their hcp's are.

I only pay attention because I find it interesting how tough courses are perceived to be. In Sweden for example courses seem to have very high ratings. At Bro Hof Slot where they played the Scandanavian Masters I get a ridiculous amount of shots, something like 15 playing from a 6.5 hcp from the white tees, yet I've never shot above 80 there:

http://www.brohofslott.se/source.php/1155307/BRO%20HOF%20SLOTT%20GK-STADIUM-HandicapTable.pdf

At my home course breaking 80 might happen one out of every 20 rounds for me. And your right, it doesn't matter in the end it's just about perception and consistency and difficulty in applying these kinds of systems internationally.

BTW: tough does not always = fun either and in many cases does not at all.

[Tom_Doak]

My home course was just re-rated at 140 slope and CR of 74.6. However, that was with little rough and low wind. but from May - Oct the main playing months we have extreme ball losing rough and high wind almost all the time. Hence I make my break 80 bet with all guests regardless of how low their hcp's are.
 

David:

The slope rating is supposed to be based on the average speed of greens, height of roughs, and average wind through the primary golf season -- not the day that the raters visited, although there is always some degree of bias introduced that way.  However, on a course like yours, the limitations of the Slope system become obvious -- there are days when the course plays much easier or much harder than the official average.

[David Davis]

Tom,

Thanks, so they have informed me and I know this to be true as well. Just when the average, throughout the club, doesn't experience any of these easy days when the course plays below the average rating then you'd question the average right?

Here's an example, we had our club strokeplay championships a few weeks ago. 3 rounds from the back tees. We are known to have a strong club in terms of players in NL (course that's all relative I know). We have several plus hcp'ers at the club. The wind was not especially hard windforce 5-6 (29 - 49 kmh or 18-30 mph) and only one guy, shot 3 rounds in the 70's. He is +3 and one of the better amateurs in the country. Personally I shot 89, 87, 86 and tied for 6th place, with scores that bad. The last 3 qualifying matches have been rendered non-counting because the average was +5 above the course average with 2-5 people actually playing in their hcp buffer (out of 100).

How many clubs have those kinds of numbers during their club matches? I don't know the answer to be honest.

[Wayne_Kozun]

@David - Sorry if this end up hijacking the thread, but why are there so few Dutch golf professionals?

Looking at the leaderboard of The Open Championship I noticed that there is one Dutch golfer, Joost Luiten ,and that he made the cut on the number.  And I don't really remember many Dutch professionals in the past, at least not at the highest level such as to qualify for the Ryder Cup team.

Look at Denmark - they have several players in this event and often have Ryder Cup players with a much smaller population.  Italy has had several top European players, Belgium has a top player right now, Sweden and Norway have had very good golfers.

Does the Netherlands not have a developmental program for elite players?  Is there any good reason that you can think of?

[David Davis]

Wayne,

Let me preface my answer by saying that I'm an American that's made The Netherlands my home and lived in Europe for the last 20 years, so my answer is slightly tainted and I can't speak for The Netherlands. So you get purely my opinion for what it's worth.

There are 3 decent players now competing on the European Tour. Robert-Jan Derksen, Maarten Lefeber, Joost Luiten. Both Derksen and Lefeber are getting on in years and have won on the European Tour. Not an easy task I might add. I know them both as we share the same coach. Robert-Jan is a great guy. However to your point, The Netherlands is a tiny little place, population 16 million, football (soccer) is the main sport and the most talent goes in that direction. Golf is not open to everyone really but has been improving in the last years. What's really affected the Dutch golfers is putting. Honestly, they suck at putting. Why? The main reason is the lack of excellent greens in this country. There are many reasons for that, climate doesn't help, although that being said the UK and Ireland manage with similar climates.

That leaves one big point which is quality and skill of professional green keeping and course maintenance. Could it really be as easy as an architectural issue? Well it depends on who you ask I suppose.

So just to summarize my argument...

The Netherlands has roughly 300,000 golfers in the talent pool, in total. Of this maybe 125,000 are active and from this less than 1% have single hcps. Add to that there may be 15 great to decent courses in the entire country, 200 in total but most of you wouldn't consider anything outside of the top 15-20 worthy of walking your dogs.

Sweden on the other hand has 600,000 golfers. Denmark I'm not certain but I will take a guess and say they do so well because the golfers are surrounded by some of the most beautiful women in the world. Trust me that helps. 

Holland has poor greens. A couple weeks ago there was a group visiting us from the US and the feedback they gave me was that my club had by far the best greens in the country and they played all the top courses. I admit ours our good for a links course in The Netherlands but probably running at 9-10 on the stimp max. That won't get you ready for putting at 10-12 on the tour.

Lastly yes it just comes down to talent. There is some good upcoming talent and I'd say for such a small pool to draw from the Dutch are doing pretty darn good. Don't you think?

[Jason Topp]

I have found two big flaws in the system:

1.  It is useless for courses with a lot of wind because there is never a typical day; and
2.  The system underrates the difficulty of courses that have big numbers lurking with water or lost balls.

If you play a 135 slope course in Florida you will have a much more difficult time than a 135 slope course with the same course rating in the midwest.  I have seen many people who have handicaps 3 strokes higher in Florida in the winter than they do in Minnesota in the summer.

I would love to see course ratings and slope set using actual scores and a regression analysis.  I think it would be relatively straightforward to do the calculations with 5 days of competition scores at each course.

[Wayne_Kozun]

I would love to see course ratings and slope set using actual scores and a regression analysis.  I think it would be relatively straightforward to do the calculations with 5 days of competition scores at each course.

But how would you adjust for the skills of the golfers playing the course in those five days, or are you assuming that all courses would have golfers with a similar distribution of skill.  Otherwise you would have to adjust given the handicaps of the golfers, which requires a slope and course rating so you get into a circular argument.

[Jason Topp]

I would love to see course ratings and slope set using actual scores and a regression analysis.  I think it would be relatively straightforward to do the calculations with 5 days of competition scores at each course.

But how would you adjust for the skills of the golfers playing the course in those five days, or are you assuming that all courses would have golfers with a similar distribution of skill.  Otherwise you would have to adjust given the handicaps of the golfers, which requires a slope and course rating so you get into a circular argument.

You would definitely need to adjust the numbers for expected ability.  Probably by taking existing handicaps and comparing what you would expect those handicaps to shoot vs what they do shoot and adjusting accordingly.  I don't know enough about statistics to tell you how it would be done but I am pretty confident it could be done pretty easily,

[Ed Brzezowski]

Five days of folks playing their own course under "tournament" conditions??  Why do you think this will lead to a valid number?

What about green speeds? Higher during these five days? Would you re run the figures every five years to adjust for changing conditions?
 How would you get your bogey rating? Since a fair amount of the rating is generated by length how would you handle that issue?


Differing fairway widths for different landing areas would have to be addressed.

I would love to see how you get these numbers, maybe it could generate an average for a handicap range but thats it.

Please show me i am interested.

ed

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

I just enjoy the round of golf or if I was rating the course, then I worried about slope etc as a small part of the course evaluation.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Denmark I'm not certain but I will take a guess and say they do so well because the golfers are surrounded by some of the most beautiful women in the world. Trust me that helps. 

Can you please elaborate on this?  I would think that this would be a distraction to one's golf game, and with what happened to Elin one would thing that Scandinavian women would avoid golfers at all costs!

[Ben Kodadek]

I have found two big flaws in the system:


2.  The system underrates the difficulty of courses that have big numbers lurking with water or lost balls.

If you play a 135 slope course in Florida you will have a much more difficult time than a 135 slope course with the same course rating in the midwest.  I have seen many people who have handicaps 3 strokes higher in Florida in the winter than they do in Minnesota in the summer.

 

Just go ahead and name names...

[David Davis]

@Wayne,

Don't we men always play better in front of a crowd (of beautiful women, with little to no understanding of golf?). Or is that just me? Heck given those conditions I think I'm almost pro ha ha, ok as far as the unknowing are concerned, after all we all have our own reality don't we? In fact, I was only trying to draw a conclusion about Denmark knowing exactly what I know about Denmark and not any more. That was my best guess and unless there are some Danish golf pros here I bet it's as good as any ;-)

As to Elin, why would you think the prospect of an 800 million USD settlement would discourage Scandinavian women from going after golfers? In fact, not only do I assume that the opposite is true, I've strongly considered switching teams myself for a couple years.

[Jason Topp]

I have found two big flaws in the system:


2.  The system underrates the difficulty of courses that have big numbers lurking with water or lost balls.

If you play a 135 slope course in Florida you will have a much more difficult time than a 135 slope course with the same course rating in the midwest.  I have seen many people who have handicaps 3 strokes higher in Florida in the winter than they do in Minnesota in the summer.

 

Just go ahead and name names...

Shockingly, you were not the first name that came to mind for me

[Doug Siebert]

David,

While the criteria for USGA ratings may be pretty consistent inside the US, and even (hopefully) when used outside the US, there are different types of courses and different types of players, so it's applicability to courses with which you are unfamiliar is limited on that basis.  Obviously there are the usual caveats about how not all 5s are created equal, but let's assume you are a pretty typical 5 without any area of the game where you are much better or worse than most 5s.

When playing overseas, the types of courses one finds there versus those that are typical in the US plays a big part.  There is a lot of local knowledge on links courses, with blind shots, knowing what areas that are good/bad misses that may not be obvious at first glance, the penalty for missing into bunkers or the rough is often far more severe than on the typical US course.  It doesn't matter what your handicap is, when you play a hole where your only information is what is on the Strokesaver and a pole out in the distance meant to be your line off the tee, you will not do as well as you could with more information (i.e., on a dogleg, that pole can't indicate the correct line for both the guy who hits it 200 yards and the guy who hits it 300 yards)

Personally, I haven't ever looked at USGA ratings, SSS scores, or anything else when I'm determining where to play overseas.  I'm more concerned with what people whose opinion I trust think of the course, or what I thought about it if I've been there before.  I'm a 5 like you, and my home course plays at 74.6/134, so I'm used to having to play really damn well to break 80.  My scores in the UK have ranged from mid 70s, even in some fairly difficult conditions on a couple of occasions, to one nice 102 at Prestwick which, while in some quite strong wind, still required quite the nifty combination of poor shotmaking and bad decisions to achieve a number I hadn't touched since I was a kid.  I actually still had fun despite that, because fortunately I don't really care all that much what I shoot