Course Lenghts - struggling

[bubbawatson]

Hi,

Newbie Saffer here. I moved to Pretoria a couple of months ago and being on the highveld (an area in South Africa in the North where the altitude is 1,339 m or 4,393 ft above sea level) the courses are all much longer and I have been struggling a bit.

Down in Cape Town a sealevel, all standard length courses hover around 6000 meters (6560 yards) from the club tees with the ocasional one a couple of hundred yards longer.

Since I have moved to the Highveld, the courses that i have played so far measured:

Wingate Park - 6514 meters (7124 yards)
Traditional parklands

Parkview - 6286 meters (6874 yards)
A very old, tree-lined course, very narrow.

Ebotse links - 6372 meters (6969 yards
A links kid of layout in an old mine quarry with tall grass and open rolling dunes. Fairly wide fairways but ball in rough is gone

Roodepoort - 6682 meters (7307 yards)
Made us play from the champs tees the day I played because it was a competition Saturday or sthing
Fairly open course

Irene - 6504 meters (7112 yards)
Stunning golf course, tree-lined, lots of water and lots of elevation changes

Up here, summer is the rainy season, so the fairways dont really run much. Now distance-wise, I certainly do hit everything a bit farther, for example I would normally use my 9 iron for something around 110meters, and up here I would go with pitching wedge.

Overall though, I have been finding the length very difficult. I am a 13 handicapper and would normall play around the 84-86 mark down in the Cape at sealevel. I have not broken 90 on any of the courses here at my new home at altitude.

The course I played today had a par 5 measuring 615 yards with wet fairways. The par 4 right after that was a stroke 1 516 yard monster.

Anyways you get my drift - I just wanted to ask - any folk on here who play at altitude? How long are the courses normally and how high above sealevel are you guys.

These lengths seem absurd and most of the folk I have hacked it around with so far have really struggled length-wise.

Thanks!

 

[Region3]

Welcome aboard

Most of us on here are in the UK, so some may play at 100' above sea level but I don't think that will help.

Do the courses in SA use the slope system, so you get an extra shot or so on your handicap?

We have an ex SA resident on here, maybe he can help. Having said that, he hits it miles at sea level.

The best advice I can offer is to NOT try to hit the ball harder. If you can't reach something or have to take an extra club then so be it.

 

[bubbawatson]

Thanks for the welcome!

We dont have slope ratings here in Safferland, but I have heard that they are in the process of calculating slope ratings for all courses to completely follow the usga system. Us saffers are are an inefficient bunch and this could likely take around 10 years to do that for our 400 odd golf courses :mmm:

What we use here is Stroke Rating that is between 70 and 72 for 99% of courses. If a course is long, like the ones I mentioned it will likely have an SR of 72, if it's around 6300 to 6400 yards it will have an SR of 70. What that means is basically that if I shoot an 84 on a course with an SR of 70, my 'Adjusted Gross' will be 86, 14 over. These 'Adjusted Gross' scores are what is used to calculate handicaps.

I suppose my issue is more to do with the actual length and enjoyability/practicality and time consumption of these long courses. I believe that shorter courses test the Driver, Long irons, scoring irons, short game, and putting just as well as the longer courses.

Also, I have never played with fairway woods or hybrids. Only a driver and then 4 iron and up in the bag, so it might be time to consider a hybrid and/or fairway wood

Saffer men do tend to have a bit of a macho attitude and it could well be to do with that as well tbh!

Thanks for the advice!