AZ GOLF Q&A: What is a Course Rating?

As golfers we are familiar with seeing ratings on our scorecards. But what exactly do those numbers mean? And where do they come from? 

AZ GOLF sat down with its Director of Handicapping and Course Rating, Mike Mason, to get some insight on why Course and Slope Ratings are important. 

Mason, a 10-year staff member with AZ GOLF went through introductory education, collected on course experience and ultimately passed the USGA test to receive his Handicapping and Course Rating certification. He gave us the inside scoop.

AZ GOLF: What does a course rating mean for a golfer looking at their scorecard before a round? 

Mike Mason: When you get to the course and you look at the scorecard and pick the tee you are going to play from for that day, 99% of the time there is going to be a couple numbers right next to that tee. What you are looking at, from a course rating and handicapping side of things, is the difficulty of that tee. 

We rate for a scratch golfer and a bogey golfer. We are rating for two separate skill sets out there. That number on the left, is the course rating. On a regulation golf course, that number is typically going to be anywhere from the mid-60s to mid-70s. It is what we expect a scratch golfer to shoot. 

So how do you prepare for a rating? 

First thing I do after getting a rating officially scheduled is to take volunteer sign ups and put together any paperwork needed for the day of the rating(Form-1 is the technical term for our measurement paperwork). If the course is unsure of or wants to double check things like yardage I may schedule a preliminary visit to GPS the course and tees while taking a few other pertinent measurements to streamline our efforts on the day of the rating. 

We have a great volunteer team, I obviously couldn’t do it all by myself. Typically 8-12 people head out on the golf course.  

The USGA has set guidelines for us for each one of those players — scratch and bogey — and we rate scratch and bogey for both male and female. They hit at pre-determined distances for us, so we are not going out there and having to guess how far a certain player is hitting it. We are given guidelines for how far that player is going to hit the golf ball and each rater's paperwork is set up to show hole distance and our pre determined landing zones. 

And what aspects of the course are you looking at? 

Yardage is the number one thing that affects the rating. We like to say that’s the one thing you can’t get away from on the golf course. You select a set of tees, so you’re dealing with that yardage regardless of where you hit the golf ball. We can try to avoid the other obstacles a little bit, but you have to play how far you are playing. 

After that, we rate any obstacle you could possibly think of:

• Roll — Distance the ball rolls after landing when compared to our baseline(uphill or downhill landing zones). 

• Wind — This is prevailing wind that can be factored into the rating. Very rarely used in AZ. 

• Altitude — The course’s height above sea level which affects our player's baseline yardages.

• Topography — The lay of the land from the tee to green and green surrounds.

• Fairway — How wide the fairways are at the pre-determined landing zones.

• Green Target — How far the shot to the green is and effective diameter of the green.

• Rough & Recoverabilty — The nature of the rough and recovery areas if we miss the fairway or greens. 

• Bunkering — Existence of and how penal the fairway bunkers are and the nature of greenside bunkers and percentage of green surrounded by bunkering. 

• Crossing obstacles — What obstacles will be crossed off the tee: desert, water, brush, etc…

• Lateral Obstacles — Outside the fairway and the rough, how far the lateral desert, water, out-of-bounds, etc… go from the line of play.  

• Trees — Large pine trees in northern Arizona especially come much more into play but less of a factor at our desert courses. 

• Green Surface — Green stimpmeter reading and severity of slope. 

What about Slope Rating? What does that measure?

The slope rating is derived from what we expect our scratch player to shoot compared to what we expect our bogey player to shoot from a given tee set. The variance between our scratch rating and our bogey rating in literally terms would produce a "slope" on a metaphorical graph. The steeper the line(variance), the higher the slope. 

The slope rating is a good representation of how difficult the golf course is, but we need to understand that it is relative. Slope is a relative difficulty for our skilled player versus less-skilled player. We see a lot of very high slopes out here because if you get off the grass in Arizona, a lot of times you’re not even finding your golf ball and if you are finding it, you’re standing in a cactus for your next shot. 

And Slope Ratings are NOT comparable from course to course? 

From one golf course to the next, we are not starting at the same baseline. That’s where the slope can be a little deceptive if we’re just using it as ‘oh this course has a really high slope, it must be really hard.’ 

Yes and no. 

The golf course can be a shorter golf course where the scratch player is hitting their drives close to the green and chipping on most of the holes. Their rating number is going to be pretty low. 

However, the golf course could still play extremely difficult for the bogey player and the slope could be very very high. We have to think in terms of the player we are rating for, but again the baseline for each golf course is going to be different because of how our scratch player is going to play. 

We expect the scratch player regardless of where they play to hit it on the fairway, hit it on the green, one or two putts and be on their way. We need to remember that while the slope rating affects everyone, it is really focused on how much more difficult the course is for our bogey player. 

So you’ve collected your measurements on the course. What’s next?

After we take all our course measurements — yardage, fairways, green size, all these kind of things — we take those measurements and they give us a raw number value out of our Course Rating Guide between 0-10. A zero means an obstacle does not exist and 10 is the absolute worst obstacle you can come across. Every obstacle that we judge falls somewhere in between there. 

Those number values are then taken and I do the data entry into the Course Rating System, put in those raw number values for every obstacle and that is where the system does its thing. 

How often do courses need to get a rating done?

For an initial rating, we haven’t had any new golf courses in a while, but a new golf course needs to be rated as soon as possible from its opening date and then that particular golf course also needs to be rated within five years. New golf courses tend to mature a little bit differently than more established golf courses. It can undergo a lot of changes in that first five year period as the land settles and the grasses mature. 

Our normal schedule for a golf course, the absolute maximum is 10 years with no changes to the golf course. We try to keep it closer to eight or nine years to give us a bit of a buffer. 

We have a running list of courses that are due or coming due and ultimately it is a lot of emails and phone calls to get to the right person to contact and find a date that works for the facility. We need to find a couple hours, typically in the morning, for the rating team to either go out before play with the maintenance team which is our preference not having to dodge golf balls. We are also used to rating between play and do our best to stay out of the way. 

It is a little bit on the golf course staff to keep us updated with any changes, whether it is moving some tees around or making large scale physical changes to the golf course. So, we certainly do get a good amount of that as well as a rating review from time to time to review some things if there are concerns with the current rating. 

One of the big perks of the rating and what our volunteer team gets to enjoy is part of the rating process is to at least play some of the golf course after the rating. That does allow the team and myself to play some places we would probably never get to play otherwise. Every golf course in the state needs to be rated including the top of the line country clubs, so a great perk for the volunteers and myself is to play at the facilities after conducting the official Course Rating.