What Is Considered a Hard Golf Course Rating?

[GolfLug]

10 hours ago, iacas said:

Is a par 72, 67.5/136 course “difficult”?

Of the 15 or so times I've played courses slope rated at or above 135, I thought so. But then it's hard to know if it was because of the archer or the arrow. For eg. Sand Valley from the black tees was about all the difficultly, largely due to length, I would want to play. The slope is 134 from black tees. The orange tees we're almost 10 shots easier with slope dropping to 130.

Admittedly I don't pay much attention to the rating. 

I am curious though - what course has a 67.5/136 rating/slope? What would be the reason for the disparity?

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by GolfLug

[boogielicious]

12 hours ago, Pretzel said:

The hardest course I've played is TPC Colorado, which has a course rating and slope of 77.2/138 from the tips. From the Gold tees for ladies it is rated 78.6/151, with the slope being so high specifically because of forced carries and the "average" bogey lady golfer used for slope calculations not hitting it far enough to really handle that (plus it's still 6,875 yards from the Golds, very long for ladies).

A bit off topic, but why would anyone ever play there more than once, especially women? How much fun can it be to lose balls on every other hole? Hard for hard’s sake wouldn’t make me want to play it again. A course can be hard but also fun if it’s well designed.

[imsys0042]

36 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

A bit off topic, but why would anyone ever play there more than once, especially women? How much fun can it be to lose balls on every other hole? Hard for hard’s sake wouldn’t make me want to play it again. A course can be hard but also fun if it’s well designed.

Few different thoughts entered my head reading this.
first, where I used to play in PA, the pushing 150 slope place, there were a lot of single digit handicappers who belonged.   It was a place where they could do well.  However many of them were awful golf snobs and the course catered to them.  So there wasn’t much to soften the edges.  For people like that, it was fun.  They were such pricks though that they made a show of having a “low handicap group only” and gobbling weekend tee times.   Eventually you learned how to play the course, but at least two other people I played with there made the comment of “if there was another course within 20 minutes of my house, I’m quitting this place”.  I knew I wasnt going to be playing my golden years at that place.

second, there was a course in that area called Oak Tree that wasn’t overly hard, but for some reason would always beat us up.   It became a yearly thing to play there and see if we could do better.  The last time I played was the only time I scored well.  Something about the course was hard for us, but it wasn’t rated or sloped hard.   So it became kind of a challenge.   But it wasn’t over the top.

third, there was a place I’m NJ called Crystal Springs.  Deliberately set up to be as hard as possible.   Played once, maybe twice because someone else really wanted to go.   Fast greens, odd angles.   Really tight driving holes (there was one hole with a row of houses so close that when my buddy hit one, the guy in the yard just goes “don’t worry, happens every day”.)  there was a par three in the middle of the forest that the tree creatures from LOTR lived, I swear.   But the topper is that instead of leaving the earth as it was in fairways, they deliberately built tall moguls to mess with your fairway lie.   You’d hit a good shot and get a weird side hill/downhill lie.   They were several feet tall.   The score card proudly said “hardest golf course in NJ” at the time (or maybe the web site).  Ugh.

at least the Monster in the NY Catskills was a fair course.   It was ridiculously long, but not tricked up.  I enjoyed that.

 

[Bucki1968]

My home course has a back tee rating of 74.5/145. The white tees are 72/137. Thay may contribute to the 5 1/2-to-6-hour rounds on weekends. I have to say that I enjoy the challenge and when I play other courses, I tend to play well because usually they are easier than what I play on a regular basis. However, I really don't understand why anyone who is not at least a bogey golfer would want to play this course all the time? Golfers (myself included) are just gluttons for punishment?  

[iacas]

2 hours ago, GolfLug said:

Admittedly I don't pay much attention to the rating.

That was the point of my post. “Difficulty” isn’t just the slope. The slope of a line requires two points. You’re ignoring both.

• 67.5/136 = 89 for an 18 differential.
• 74.3/124 = 94 for an 18 differential.

If both are par 72 which course is “more difficult?”

[woodzie264]

20 minutes ago, iacas said:

• 67.5/136 = 89 for an 18 differential.
• 74.3/124 = 94 for an 18 differential.

If both are par 72 which course is “more difficult?”

The second!  (I have to answer the few questions to which I actually know the answers) 

[mcanadiens]

It's kind of neat exercise to look up the ratings and slopes for your area courses and see if they match your experience. 

Sure enough. Community Dales is the easiest (65.9, 102). Kittyhawk's Eagle was harder (71.6, 125). My new home course is a fitting place for someone of my skill at 66.8, 112

Guess these course raters more or less know what they are doing.

[The Flush]

I never pay much attention to ratings.

My par 71 home course is 

Tees	TOTAL	Rating	Slope	Bogey Rating
Gold	6817	72.4	138	98.0
Blue	6504	70.6	134	95.5
White	6097	68.7	132	93.2
Red	5474	67.2	113	88.2

A nicer par 72 course I recently played is 

	Total	Rating	Slope	Bogey Rating
Blue	6701	71.0	117	92.7
White	6385	69.5	114	90.7
Gold	5643	66.1	102	85.1
Red	5643	71.0	116	92.6

The home course is certainly a little harder to play for me, a bogey golfer who plays from the white tees. While is has a lower par and is shorter, it has steep hills instead of rolling hills, woods with underbrush instead of just trees, blind landings, and more water. Neither is "difficult". Both are enjoyable, but I'd play the other course more if it were closer and costs were equal.

 

[boogielicious]

3 hours ago, imsys0042 said:

But the topper is that instead of leaving the earth as it was in fairways, they deliberately built tall moguls to mess with your fairway lie.   You’d hit a good shot and get a weird side hill/downhill lie.  

I used to think the same thing until I read Tom Doak’s book on course architecture. Those moguls are most likely piles of rocks that were removed from the fairways to clear it for soil to grow the grass. They covered the rocks with dirt to create odd lies. He states that the original course in Scotland rarely had flat lies due to undulating ground.

A quick way to determine course difficulty is to use your course handicap. When I play a new course, I use my GHIN app to calculate my course handicap. If I get extra strokes, it may be hard. This is what Erik was stating above.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, boogielicious said:

A quick way to determine course difficulty is to use your course handicap. When I play a new course, I use my GHIN app to calculate my course handicap. If I get extra strokes, it may be hard. This is what Erik was stating above.

Yes. A line has two points. And usually a high slope is paired with a higher rating but not always.

[mohearn]

13 hours ago, imsys0042 said:

at least the Monster in the NY Catskills was a fair course.   It was ridiculously long, but not tricked up.  I enjoyed that.

 

Which course is the Monster, (Aside: I was hiking in the catskills all day today)

[imsys0042]

1 minute ago, mohearn said:

Which course is the Monster, (Aside: I was hiking in the catskills all day today)

 Concord resort.  Fans of Ms. Maisel should recognize it.   Concord resort has two courses.  The Monster and the International.   When I played there, they also had an arrangement with the Grossinger golf club.   If you google “concord monster golf course” you will find it.   I want to go back some day.

[mohearn]

48 minutes ago, imsys0042 said:

 Concord resort.  Fans of Ms. Maisel should recognize it.   Concord resort has two courses.  The Monster and the International.   When I played there, they also had an arrangement with the Grossinger golf club.   If you google “concord monster golf course” you will find it.   I want to go back some day.

Closed in 2015,  but Rees Jones is redesigning it, I guess for 2021.   Rees Jones redesigning the monster

I guess I'd consider that a hard golf course!

 

[imsys0042]

12 minutes ago, mohearn said:

Closed in 2015,  but Rees Jones is redesigning it, I guess for 2021.   Rees Jones redesigning the monster

I guess I'd consider that a hard golf course!

 

They are cutting the distance.  Although from what i remember it’s not like they could have extended it any further.   I look forward to visiting it again after my MIL kicks the bucket and I get my life back. 

[Pretzel]

On 8/13/2021 at 5:06 AM, boogielicious said:

A bit off topic, but why would anyone ever play there more than once, especially women? How much fun can it be to lose balls on every other hole? Hard for hard’s sake wouldn’t make me want to play it again. A course can be hard but also fun if it’s well designed.

They have tees rated all the way down to 62.4/98 for men and 63.3/107 for ladies. The "standard" ladies tees (reds) are rated 66.9/114 at 4,801 yards and the "standard" men's tees (blues) are rated at 68.3/121 from 6,141 yards. From there they have 3 options for longer tees (gold, black, and tour), one option in between (white), and one option shorter (green).

It's a difficult course, but it's completely fair to the golfer. You have options to make the course much safer, but the safe option makes the course play longer. Conversely you have options to make the course play much shorter, but those options expose you to a lot more risk (water hazard, native grasses, and deep pot bunkers). The course can play as long as 7,991 yards or as short as 4,157 yards, it is by far the most versatile course I have ever played. If the forced carries on some holes are too long for you to make, you are playing from the wrong tee boxes. They have 7 different tee boxes with an additional 5 USGA rated teebox blends, for a total of 12 different options so they quite literally have options for every golfer out there. 

The reason the course is so long and difficult from the hardest rated teeboxes is because it was specifically designed to host PGA/LPGA tournaments, but they did a fantastic job of making a design that works and is fun to play for golfers of all skill levels. It's legitimately my favorite course of all time because they just got it so perfect with the risk-reward aspects on so many different holes. From the same tee boxes I can play a course with generous fairways and very little risk, but plays every inch of 8,000 yards or even longer in practice, or I can play a course that feels 500 yards shorter than the scorecard number but has hazards present every step of the way. I've been fortunate enough to play there around a dozen times so far and I've played the course differently each time just because it presents so many options to the player.

BACK ON TOPIC

Course difficulty is primarily related to the course rating, but slightly impacted by the slope for a higher handicap golfer. Even for high handicap golfers, however, course rating has a larger impact than slope.

By definition, the slope rating has to change by 5.381 points to create a difficulty difference equivalent to just 1 point of course rating (for men, anyways) - slope is calculated by multiplying the difference between scratch and bogey rating by 5.381 for men (or 4.240 for women). This means that courses rated 71/120, 72/115, and 73/110 would all be nearly identical in difficulty to a bogey golfer. If those 3 courses were all Par-72 then the middle course would be dead average difficulty (course rating = par with slope of nearly 114), the first course would be slightly easier for scratch golfers than bogey golfers, and the last course slightly easier for bogey golfers than scratch golfers. 

Slope is a very useful tool for handicapping purposes, but it's also very misunderstood by the general public. Higher slope courses aren't necessarily harder, they're just easier for a scratch golfer than they are for a bogey golfer. A course can be easy but still have a very high slope rating because bogey golfers can't tear up an easy course in the same way a scratch golfer might. Similarly a hard course might have a low slope rating because it's difficult in ways that specifically target the scratch golfer. A great example of this is hazard or obstacles placed that specifically limit the distance advantage a scratch golfer might otherwise have, like narrow fairways in the landing zone for scratch golfers or hazards/obstacles that prevent a scratch golfer from hitting their tee shot any longer than the average bogey golfer. Those courses are no harder than usual for a bogey golfer because the obstacles and hazards never come into play for them, but they're very much in play for a scratch golfer and requires them to either take greater risks or sacrifice their distance advantage.

In summary, the best way to think of course rating and slope is as follows:

Course Rating: A general measure of a golf course's difficulty. Tracks with higher course ratings are more difficult than courses with lower ratings for golfers of any skill level.

Slope A general measure of who the golf course is most difficult for. Tracks with higher slope ratings are more difficult for bogey golfers, while courses with lower ratings are more difficult for scratch golfers.

 

[Sandy Lie]

On 8/12/2021 at 9:33 AM, tadpole87 said:

Hi,

what is a considered a hard golf course rating? The course I normally play is on a rating 72.8/149 and course yardage is 6711. I struggle to break 90 and only manage to do it twice 89 and a 87. I am not a long hitter and average between 230-240 drives. My average scores are in the mid 90s and its been my mission to break 90 consistently. I have been trying to break 90 for the last 10 games and only manage to hit 91. It is so frustrating and I feel depressed playing this golf course. 

Just because your friends play the tips doesn’t mean you have to.  But just to ask, what scores do they shoot from those tees. Play whatever tees are at 6100 yards or so. Play them until you get better. Have fun out there rather than feeling depressed. Gain confidence in you game then stretch out and challenge yourself.  

[Vinsk]

56 minutes ago, Sandy Lie said:

Have fun out there rather than feeling depressed.

Huh? 😃

[Sandy Lie]

5 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

Huh? 😃

His words not mine, re-read his post.