Course Rating

[mikejohnchapman]

Appreciate what you are saying. Personally, I’d find it interesting to see the “breakdown” of each hole on its challenges merit. I bet most golfers don’t even realise what hazards come in play when/where. Could be great to see the course you play from the rater perspective.

Be careful what you ask for!

There is an input sheet for each tee on each hole for men and women. The last course we rated had 40 sheets of input. These generate a number of summary totals for different aspects of the hole (fairways, greens, bunkers, topology, landing zones, etc). These are factual but meaningless in isolation. It's only when they are input into the central system that the CR & SR are calculated.

The raters don't play the course but the team is usually a mix of abilities so hopefully different perspectives are considered.

 

[AussieKB]

Be careful what you ask for!

There is an input sheet for each tee on each hole for men and women. The last course we rated had 40 sheets of input. These generate a number of summary totals for different aspects of the hole (fairways, greens, bunkers, topology, landing zones, etc). These are factual but meaningless in isolation. It's only when they are input into the central system that the CR & SR are calculated.

The raters don't play the course but the team is usually a mix of abilities so hopefully different perspectives are considered.

Would love to see raters play the course and submit their scores, and then explain why the course is easy but they could only manage 30 stableford points in good conditions.

 

[Swango1980]

Would love to see raters play the course and submit their scores, and then explain why the course is easy but they could only manage 30 stableford points in good conditions.

Why would you love to see something that is so normal and easy to explain?

The short answer, they played rubbish.

Why would you assume it's the fault of the course ratings, when at least 60% of our rounds will always be considered poor.

If it worked the other way around, they scored 30 points and they gave the course very hard ratings, I'd love to hear their justification for that, when at the same time some other person managed 45 points.

 

[AussieKB]

Why would you love to see something that is so normal and easy to explain?

The short answer, they played rubbish.

Why would you assume it's the fault of the course ratings, when at least 60% of our rounds will always be considered poor.

If it worked the other way around, they scored 30 points and they gave the course very hard ratings, I'd love to hear their justification for that, when at the same time some other person managed 45 points.

I was only 6 points under handicap....but you 9 points over, I wonder why ?

Course rating system is designed for US courses, does not easily move over to courses in OZ, one example at a course I play, is that it has little to no grass rough but dirt when off the fairway. The course rater said that because there is no high grass rough then it is easier to hit the ball. I challenged him to hit out of footprints in the dirt to show me how simple it was, guess what he would not except the challenge. And adding bunkers that do not come in to play raises the rating but the cost of maintaining is crazy.

We can have this discussion forever, but might be time to let it go, would love to see you visit OZ and see the difference for yourself.

 

[DickInShorts]

91 members played in a Seniors Stableford at my course yesterday - 2 players shot 43 points.
The lowest score was 18 points with many around the 30 - 33 point mark.

The conclusion I came to was that even though the first cut of rough is lush and the fairways relatively soft was that 2 guys had their rounds of the season(1 had 5 birdies) off 12 CH a lot of guys found the curse played longer than would be ‘normal’.

Some will undoubtedly say the rating is too high whilst others will say it is too low!!!

 

[wjemather]

Would love to see raters play the course and submit their scores, and then explain why the course is easy but they could only manage 30 stableford points in good conditions.

Aside from the fact that one round of golf doesn't prove anything, 30 points is at the lower end of the expected range of scores in normal conditions if ratings and handicaps are accurate.

Your expectation seems to be that players should be averaging near 36 points, which is right at the top end of (or even above) what is actually expected, especially with the 0.93 multiplier.

 

[wjemather]

Course rating system is designed for US courses, does not easily move over to courses in OZ, one example at a course I play, is that it has little to no grass rough but dirt when off the fairway. The course rater said that because there is no high grass rough then it is easier to hit the ball. I challenged him to hit out of footprints in the dirt to show me how simple it was, guess what he would not except the challenge. And adding bunkers that do not come in to play raises the rating but the cost of maintaining is crazy.

You think you hit the ball better out of 6" rough than off uneven dirt where you may or may not have a clean lie? Good luck with that.

 

[mikejohnchapman]

Would love to see raters play the course and submit their scores, and then explain why the course is easy but they could only manage 30 stableford points in good conditions.

They don't play on the day because there isn't time - a full rating often takes 4 hours plus.

Most have played all the courses over the years so know them quite well. However, it's a different perspective if you are rating a women's set of tees rather than the ones you would normally play and also looking at different shot lengths.

So taking your point how would you play a course and submit a score off the forward tees hitting it the distances a women's bogey player would?

 

[Banchory Buddha]

OK, so to all those who tell me that CR isn't overwhelmingly dictated by length.
I just checked the lengths and CRs of a number of courses in my general area. Here's a plot of them:

View attachment 54906

That looks very close to a linear correlation to me. Of course it's not a perfect straight line, but the variance is very small.

That is the point, courses ARE overwhelmingly rated by length, which is why it is such a poor "science"

 

[Banchory Buddha]

I assumed the conversation here is about the course rating in the more general sense, ie including both numbers: CR and Slope. Indeed, it’s only logical to see higher CR number for longer courses as it was before with SSS.

My understanding is though that the difficulty indication is the Slope number. Which is why Hotchkin is now billed as the most difficult in England (Slope 152).

No. It shows the difference in difficulty between a low and high handicap and affects the amount of strokes they will play off on that course, but CR shows the difficulty to par and is used to calculate your score differential for handicap index adjustment

 

[doublebogey7]

No. It shows the difference in difficulty between a low and high handicap and affects the amount of strokes they will play off on that course, but CR shows the difficulty to par and is used to calculate your score differential for handicap index adjustment

No it does not it, it shows the score a scratch player would be expected to get on one of their better days and has nothing to do with par.. BR shows the same but for a 20 handicapped golfer. So it can be argued that CR shows the diffuclty of the course for a Scratch player and the BR for a bogey golfer. The SR shows how difficutly changes across the handicap ranges. Both CR and SR are used to calculate the score differential.

 

[tobybarker]

You have my sympathies. I believe we spoke when I refereed at your course. Our course is also in Wales, and our director of golf is currently crapping himself, and our 10 yearly review is due next year, and will probably be done by the idiots that did your course. Its a terrible state of affairs that these ratings are not subject to review. So obviously a mistake at your course.

Yes we did chat. The fact that the cut at the halfway stage of the youths comp where we met was something like 20over makes us think the kids thought it was a tough course too!

An appeal has been raised. We shall see ...

 

[AussieKB]

They don't play on the day because there isn't time - a full rating often takes 4 hours plus.

Most have played all the courses over the years so know them quite well. However, it's a different perspective if you are rating a women's set of tees rather than the ones you would normally play and also looking at different shot lengths.

So taking your point how would you play a course and submit a score off the forward tees hitting it the distances a women's bogey player would?

We have had our course rated for the Men to play off the Women's tee, so for your information I have played under par from both, a lot different from the Red markers, did not hit a lot of drivers as we have a few doglegs, no place to land them.

We have had our course rated twice, both times by someone who has never played it before.

 

[rulie]

We have had our course rated for the Men to play off the Women's tee, so for your information I have played under par from both, a lot different from the Red markers, did not hit a lot of drivers as we have a few doglegs, no place to land them.

We have had our course rated twice, both times by someone who has never played it before.

It’s probably better that they have not played the course- leads to a more unbiased rating, strictly according to the rating process and procedures. The rating system needs to be universal and consistent across all courses.

 

[Banchory Buddha]

No it does not it, it shows the score a scratch player would be expected to get on one of their better days and has nothing to do with par.. BR shows the same but for a 20 handicapped golfer. So it can be argued that CR shows the diffuclty of the course for a Scratch player and the BR for a bogey golfer. The SR shows how difficutly changes across the handicap ranges. Both CR and SR are used to calculate the score differential.

Yes it does, it literally shows the difference between what "par" is for a scratch player versus the course par, hence why folks then go "it's an easy/hard par"

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Just spotted that my place is getting re-rated today…well the 1.5hr 1st tee booking refers to Front Nine. Don’t know what’s happening to the back nine. Guess it’s also being done….either today or in coming days.

Interesting when it’s all done to see if there are any changes given our new bunkering is done - and for the typical handicap player that adds more risk to our approach shots and tee shots on par 3s, plus we have made a significant change to one hole that some say makes it easier, some say makes it tougher. A 544yd par 5 that now has a ditch across the fairway (previously no ditch) about 80yds from the centre of the green.

Previously from a good tee shot us normal handicappers simply hit our 2nd as far down as we could…threading our ball (fairly easily) towards and, if long enough, between two widely set fairway bunkers around the same 80yd mark. Now we have to choose whether or not to lay up short of the ditch. If we lay up we now have a (much) longer approach 3rd - and few of us will be going to go for the green in two when previously we could quite safely. I’m thinking the scratch and better lads can probably fairly easily carry the ditch…but there is definitely more hazard and risk for them.

 

[doublebogey7]

Yes it does, it literally shows the difference between what "par" is for a scratch player versus the course par, hence why folks then go "it's an easy/hard par"

I disagree players have taken another step to draw that conclusion. CR remains only relevent to scratch golfers in terms of difficulty for them. Slop and CR combined for everyone else.

 

[wjemather]

Yes it does, it literally shows the difference between what "par" is for a scratch player versus the course par, hence why folks then go "it's an easy/hard par"

On it's own, i.e. without Par, CR doesn't provide any such information.

 

[wjemather]

A 544yd par 5 that now has a ditch across the fairway (previously no ditch) about 80yds from the centre of the green.

Previously from a good tee shot us normal handicappers simply hit our 2nd as far down as we could…threading our ball (fairly easily) towards and, if long enough, between two widely set fairway bunkers around the same 80yd mark. Now we have to choose whether or not to lay up short of the ditch. If we lay up we now have a (much) longer approach 3rd - and few of us will be going to go for the green in two when previously we could quite safely. I’m thinking the scratch and better lads can probably fairly easily carry the ditch…but there is definitely more hazard and risk for them.

For rating purposes, assuming the hole is reasonably level and the ditch is fairly narrow, the ditch isn't going to have much of an impact on your ratings, if any. The model men's scratch golfer will have a forced layup short of it in 2 adding minimal yardage (so not affecting the green target rating) and leaving a small carry for their 3rd shot (zero obstacle rating), and the model men's bogey golfer has a 90-100 yard carry with their 3rd (a low obstacle rating). The model women's scratch golfer has <75 yard carry for their 3rd (zero obstacle rating), and the model women's bogey golfer has about a 50 yard carry with their 4th (a low obstacle rating).

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

For rating purposes, assuming the hole is reasonably level and the ditch is fairly narrow, the ditch isn't going to have much of an impact on your ratings, if any. The model men's scratch golfer will have a forced layup short of it in 2 adding minimal yardage (so not affecting the green target rating) and leaving a small carry for their 3rd shot (zero obstacle rating), and the model men's bogey golfer has a 90-100 yard carry with their 3rd (a low obstacle rating). The model women's scratch golfer has <75 yard carry for their 3rd (zero obstacle rating), and the model women's bogey golfer has about a 50 yard carry with their 4th (a low obstacle rating).

Thankyou…BIB…Correct assumptions. I’ll keep that excellent explanation tucked in my back pocket for use as and when.

On the bunkering…generally a lot tougher to get out of and in many instances tighter to the green or moved with additional ground shaping, to catch or gather mishit shots, especially when hit short.