"Potential, not average."

[msd3075]

The US handicap system is ridiculous. It seems so arbitrary.

I'm not really sure if this is entirely true, but I've always assumed that the term "Bogey Rating" wasn't meant to mean someone that bogeys every hole but instead someone that looks at bogey the same way a scratch (or near-scratch) golfer looks at par. I've also always assumed the 113 is just a byproduct of how the the Slope relates to how the Bogey Rating and the Course Rating are calculated; they determined the Course Rating and the Bogey rating based upon the formulas and methods they use while walking the course, and then after they examined the data they saw that the "average" course corresponded with a 113 slope.

One thing too is that many people look at the Handicap/CR/Slope process backwards from how it really is determined. CR/Slope/etc are all determined by a specific method in which a USGA official walks the course and determines its difficulty based upon a number of criteria (yardage, hazards, course layout, etc). They don't have a "scratch golfer" go play the course to see what he shoots. That "scratch golfer" might be a 0.0 at that course, but he might play to a 1.5 at a course up the street and a +2.0 at a course across town depending on how his game fits that particular course.