Does Course Rating & Slope really matter?

[OldandStiff]

I definitely look at ratting. I like to compare my score to the difficulty of the course and see how I did. So when I got to play Ballyhack and shot a 76 on a rating of 146, I was beyond stoked.

That's slope rating. Slope. The Blue Ridge tees at Ballyhack have a Course Rating of 71 (Par 72) and a slope of 146. They're both ratings, but it usually refers to the former. I assume (?) because you can say the slope is __ and have it make sense easier than you can say the course is __ . A slope of __ vs. a course of __. Lol I've never actually thought about that until now. So I could be wrong on the evolution of that golf vernacular, but it seems to make sense.

 

[Ludin]

While I do believe their is correlation of difficulty to slope and rating, however I think for me it's more about how the course suits my current playing. For example my home courses is rated pretty hard and slope moderately, however I find the course overall to be manageable due to the ability of having place to miss. While a similarly rated course I played league I found much harder because 9 of the holes were extremely tight and couldn't score the life of me.

 

[mantan]

That's how I understand it. Rating matters the most to good players. The slope matters the lesser good players.

Bingo. A course rating means a lot more meaningful to a low handicap/scratch/plus golfer.

A slope rating is much more meaningful to everyone else. IMO, it gives a bit more insight to how hard a course is than just raw yardage. Beyond that certain courses will set up better for certain players, but I've found it helpful when playing a course for the first time and trying to figure out the right tees/how difficult it is.

 

[BigMac]

Courses rarely publish it, but there's such a thing as "bogey rating" also, which may be more applicable/meaningful to mid/high handicap players. You calculate it by dividing the slope by 5.381 (4.24 for women) and adding it to the course rating. The result is the target score for a bogey golfer. To be a little more specific, Course Rating is what the average scratch golfer would expect to score; Bogey Rating is what the average bogey golfer would expect to score.

My home course is 68.1/118 from the tees we play, so the bogey rating is 90.02.

 

[darthweasel]

I’ll be honest, course rating and slope has always confused me. Maybe because it’s something I don’t look at when considering the course.

check out pope of slope, he does great job of explaining it.

You can also find how they do their ratings...looking at landing areas, trouble areas, where a player is likely to miss and how penal that miss becomes with some assumptions on the players carry distance and total distances...for most of the people I golf with, the slope is by far the better thing to look at as it takes these things into account.

When I play with the plus and single digits, they need to look at that bunker 250-280 out and consider their carry. When I play with the guys who don't know what a handicap is...slope matters far more. Those bunkers are not in play because they will be flown (or just as likely, rolled by) on the second or third shot for those guys.

Slope does great job of letting me know which boxes to pick for them to make the round more enjoyable.

 

[OldandStiff]

Slope does great job of letting me know which boxes to pick for them to make the round more enjoyable.

This is about the only time I look at it, and it's why I'll always love prairie links golf. Length, and hills, and wind, and natural grass and such can make them rate pretty high and play challenging, but the slopes aren't that high typically because anyone and everyone can run it up there in some way or another. And it makes for a lot of fun for pretty diverse groups.

 

[Architex]

Slope doesn’t matter, rating does.


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[rollin]

I think it likely matters less for those who have greater inconsistency struggles in general basic ball striking especially at the mid and higher cap levels.
Play an easer rated/sloped course but have a bad day failing at too many basic ball strikes and your going to score high. Play a harder rated course but fail only little that day and your going to score better.
In many our cases the ball striking success or failure rate itself will outweigh and dictate much more of our score than the difference between a harder vs easier course will (within reason).
But have the same/equal success/fail rate (good or bad) with our basic ball striking at both courses then the easier course should score a little better than the harder one.

On an other note, imo the rating system is not at all without flaw. From what i recall reading up on it some years ago , there is some subjective opinion involved in the process and also not all courses are rated by the same people. So rating/slope is not always as equally telling as we may think when comparing courses.

 

[Jimmy3864]

I never pay attention to course/slope rating.