We've launched the new forums! Read more here

Choosing Tees: Yardage or Slope?

Yardage is what I base my tee box choice. Once I know the course, I will vary tees according to forced carries. I know my limits, but I do not mind challenges. I really like courses with combo tees to give me challenges.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
Neither, I get the bogey rating for the course and try to play the tees which are around 90.0
 
Both. If slope is very low i'm more inclined to play back, and conversely if its a beast of a course I'm not going to stretch myself at all on the yardage.
 
Yardage first but will consider rating then slope.

Often though it is whatever the group wants to play.
 
Yardage. The only time I have ever taken slope into consideration was when we got "assigned" to the Black course at Tiburon when we were expecting the Gold. The guys had played it once before and really did not enjoy it - "John it's like 6 feet wide - you're the only one who will enjoy it".

The group normally likes to play as close to 6000 as possible. For some reason I looked at the slope/ratings for the other tees and after a couple of holes suggested we move up a set. Fast forward to a half-dozen holes later, and the boys were preaching "this isn't as tough as I remember it being". I just grinned to myself and played on.

It's hard to get an older group who has always played 6000 but can't reach par 3s or 4s in regulation anymore to move up a set of tees. The tees in Florida are all just colour anyway, nobody cares what "colour" you played.

Wait a minute, did I just talk myself out of the slope argument? 🙃
 
Short knocker here, so yardage first. I look at slope and course rating just to get an idea of what to expect in terms of difficulty. I can be a mixed bag on an easy or difficult course, but if it's too long I'm going to struggle all day no matter what the slope/CR are.
 
Due to the slope/rating only being recently introduced here ni the UK, it has never been something I have looked at, so I guess my answer is yardage

My home course is rated as follows for the 2 sets of tees that I use

Grey - Par 72 6,131yds, Rating 70.3, Slope 130 (Usually casual rounds)
Black - Par 72 6,462yds, Rating 72, Slope 134 (Most competitions played from these)

No idea how difficult that would be considered for you guys?
 
Never worried about slope , nor yardage l play the course from where the tees for green fee players / social golfer / associates are. And play it as I find it , playing a course off particular tees , because I am a certain handicap range , is a strange and foreign concept to me .
 
Snowman said:
Short knocker here, so yardage first. I look at slope and course rating just to get an idea of what to expect in terms of difficulty. I can be a mixed bag on an easy or difficult course, but if it's too long I'm going to struggle all day no matter what the slope/CR are.
Click to expand...
Honestly, I think this is where the vast majority are.
 
Yardage. I think slope is a terrible rating system or at least, those doing the ratings do a poor job. Length doesn’t bother me at all but put me on a tight course and I’m going to have a harder time regardless of the tees I play when compared to a course with room to breathe.
 
I start with yardage and if I’m kind of on the limit or like the looks of two tees I will check out the slope for additional info. Love me a well thought out combo tee!
 
Last edited:
Yardage almost exclusively. My typical target range is in the 6000-6500 yard range roughly (for a par 72 - subtract 100-200 yards for every stroke less). Less than that is typically a lot of less than driver off the tee or short approaches to greens, longer and the par 4's start to play like 4.5's for me - which is interesting sometimes, but too often and it can be demoralizing.
 
I don't ever look at the slope. I will ask what tees others want to play with me because it doesn't matter much to me unless I am there for a practice round for an event.
 
i think it can all be flawed.
Firstly,..slope on its own without rating doesnt tell us all that much. I mean a slope of 130 on a course rated 70 vs a course rated 73 are two different animals. Plus the fact that the entire rating system does include some subjective pinion in the formula. Not to mention all rating are not done by the same folks so their subjectivity is only relative to what the specific group has rated.

Total yardage is what i usually go buy but that too can be very misleading or ot nearly as telling as we think. . Any one of or a combo of things like number of doglegs, elevations, prevailing winds, par 3's, and a couple oddball holes can really skew total yardage. Many courses can play significantly longer or shorter than what the total yardage suggests.
 
Yardage for me. Honestly don't really pay any attention to the slope until I put in my score after the round for handicap purposes
 
This thread has me wondering if some people here play with pops, or gamble, as much as I thought they did.
 
Yardage. Never really figured out how to interpret slope lol
 
I need to be better about not choosing solely based on yardage. But I play with guys who generally struggle to break 100, so we pretty much play the front men’s tees.
 
OldandStiff said:
This thread has me wondering if some people here play with pops, or gamble, as much as I thought they did.
Click to expand...

I find slope to be all over the place. 4 of my last 5 rounds have had a slope of 136/137 on all different courses. The course I found to be the hardest of the 5 had a slope of 124 and I scored the worst on it.
 
Yardage, and slope hopefully below 130
 
Yardage. If I’m honest, I don’t know what the slope means as I’ve never really paid attention to it.
 
MWard said:
Slope for me. Sub 6500 from the tips would make me think it’s gonna be a fun day. The slope and index is 71.5/144. Not a monstrosity from the back tees, but absolutely brutal hard.

6250 is 70.3/137.
Click to expand...
Just some interesting thoughts.
Baed on what you said here and based on my opinions and or knowledge about course ratings.......Whats interesting or strange to me about course rating/slope is that as a 7capper such as you are (assuming your hc is up to date) I would think you should find the difficulty in the rating number to be much more telling than the slope. My theory here is that the closer to scratch one is, the more the rating (69, 71, 73 etc) is what most determines the difficulty. Where as the further from scratch one is, the more its a combo of both rating and of course a lot more of the slope into it as well.

Slope is (as you and most here likely know) a suggestion of how much harder the course plays for the bogey (90-ish) player vs the scratch player. So in this mindset I would think the 71.5 shouldnt be so brutal for you regardless the 144. Not easy (and i beleive you when you say it is brutal) but just that it should seem not all that brutal given what it all means. To me (both the 71.5 and the 144) would imo make this much more brutal for someone like myself (or others being mid teens capper or higher).

Your thoughts? or anyones thoughts? Just find it interesting is all
 
Nearly always based on distance. The difficulty from that distance may change Burt comfort makes sense for most playing a new course
 
rollin said:
Just some interesting thoughts.
Baed on what you said here and based on my opinions and or knowledge about course ratings.......Whats interesting or strange to me about course rating/slope is that as a 7capper such as you are (assuming your hc is up to date) I would think you should find the difficulty in the rating number to be much more telling than the slope. My theory here is that the closer to scratch one is, the more the rating (69, 71, 73 etc) is what most determines the difficulty. Where as the further from scratch one is, the more its a combo of both rating and of course a lot more of the slope into it as well.

Slope is (as you and most here likely know) a suggestion of how much harder the course plays for the bogey (90-ish) player vs the scratch player. So in this mindset I would think the 71.5 shouldnt be so brutal for you regardless the 144. Not easy (and i beleive you when you say it is brutal) but just that it should seem not all that brutal given what it all means. To me (both the 71.5 and the 144) would imo make this much more brutal for someone like myself (or others being mid teens capper or higher).

Your thoughts? or anyones thoughts? Just find it interesting is all
Click to expand...

For me, I've noticed the course rating is usually the indicator on how hard the course is, not so much the slope. The 71.5, I've always taken that to say that there's not holes that are overly long, and difficult, but fair. I see the higher rating and I'm like waaaaait a minute. What's going on here? The course in question has very little rough if you miss the fairway, and "forest" and hazard if you do. The second hole for example is about 450 as a par 4, with forest/hazard right. So, if you miss it right, you're dropping pretty far back and now you're hitting your third from well over 250 out or more, depending on where you went in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top