How does your course rate?

You’ve seen the course/slope ratings on the scorecard, but do you really know what they mean?
Take a ride with North Shore Golf as we shadow the MGA during a course rating session at Tyngsboro Country Club.

By Barry Scanlon

Golf is a game of numbers. A player will hit a 7-iron to try and carry a ball 145 yards on a par 3. It’s all about numbers, numbers, numbers; and the most important, of course, is the final score at the end of a round.

But there are some numbers the majority of golfers - both on the North Shore and across the world - don’t understand: Course ratings and slope ratings.

“People just don’t understand it,” says Scott Whitcomb, the director of field operations for the Massachusetts Golf Association. “I’d say only 15 percent of the people really understand it. I spend a lot of time explaining what it is.”

The simple explanation is that course ratings pertain to the difficulty, under normal playing conditions, that scratch golfers will have. For example, The Meadow at Peabody has a course rating of 73.7 from the back tees, meaning that this is the estimated score that a scratch golfer would shoot from these tees.

But while the rating is a number you see on every scorecard, what you don’t see is the “bogey rating” for a course, which is the estimated score a bogey golfer would shoot on that same course. That’s where the slope comes in. Slope ratings indicate the difference between the bogey rating and the course rating, enabling players to receive more strokes on a difficult course and fewer strokes on an easier layout. The purpose is to allow more accuracy when players leave their home course to play another course.

The slope rating for a course of average difficulty in the U.S. is 113. New England courses fall in the 123-124 range due to severe elevation changes. The maximum is 155; the minimum is 55.

Whitcomb estimates he rates 40 to 50 courses a year. He is one of 90 USGA-trained course raters in Massachusetts who are part of six MGA regional teams. According to USGA guidelines, new courses are to be rated every three years for a period of nine years and then every seven to 10 years thereafter.

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The sun is shining as Whitcomb and Art Phillips, the captain of the MGA’s Boston area rating team, meet on the first tee of Tyngsboro Country Club, a short (5,320 yards from the back tees) nine-hole course that runs parallel to Route 113 and the Merrimack River, just down the road from the New Hampshire border. Their job on this gorgeous summer morning in July is to rate the course from all three sets of tees with both scratch and bogey golfers in mind, which is a change from the old days (pre-1987) when only the scratch golfer was thought of when ratings were performed.

Art Phillips is the captain of the MGA s Boston area rating team and was one of two raters to join in on the session at Tyngsboro Country Club.

MGA officials hadn’t rated Tyngsboro CC since 1994. A few of the regulars of the public course urged its owners to have it rated so their handicap indexes are accurate when they play at other courses. Generally, the MGA sends out as many as 10 to 12 raters to an 18-hole course for a course rating session. Raters assign a number or a score to each of the holes they observe and the teams compare notes. After they make their notations, the raters will often play the course.

“You certainly get a better feel for the ratings of the greens,” Phillips says of getting the chance to play the course. “You also get a better feel for the condition of the fairways.”

Due to the fact that Tyngsboro CC is a short, nine-hole course, and a lack of available raters, Whitcomb and Phillips were the lone MGA raters to update the course on this day. Before they begin their evaluation, MGA officials get the following information from a course’s superintendent:

• size of the greens

• speed of the greens

• what length they cut the rough at

• the width of fairways where scratch and bogey golfers normally hit their tee shots

They begin on the first tee, Whitcomb taking the men’s tees and Phillips the women’s tees. It’s important to note the USGA defines a male scratch golfer as someone who drives the ball 250 yards and can reach a 470-yard hole in two; a bogey golfer as someone who drives 200 yards and can reach a 370-yard hole in two. A women’s scratch golfer can drive 210 yards and reach a 400-yard hole in two.

The rating of a course is “95 percent” based on length. Actual yardage is not the important number - effective playing length is. There may be elevation changes that impact the degree of difficulty of a hole. Prior to about 1987, USGA officials rarely got out of their carts to rate a course - they simply went by length. Now, however, while length is certainly still the major driving force behind a rating, obstacles - such as the severity of rough and the location of bunkers - enter into the grading.

There are 10 categories in which raters, equipped with USGA rating books, grade when rating courses. The first is topography. With that in mind, Whitcomb and Phillips begin to walk Tyngsboro CC’s first hole, a short (317 yards from the men’s tees) dogleg left that ends on a slightly elevated green.

“I look to see the nature of the landing zones - uphill, downhill and flat,” says Whitcomb, 40, a New Hampshire native who lives on the South Shore. “The only elevation I’m looking for is from the tee box to the green.”

He grabs his evaluation sheet and points to it.

“I have my scratch values here to the left, and I have my bogey values on the right hand side of the box,” he explains. “The first thing I’m looking for is topography. I’m going to look at my changes in elevation.

“Say I’m 100 yards (from the center of the green) and I’m uphill 10 feet. It’s a minor problem, so it’s a plain old 2,” says Whitcomb, writing a 2 into his topography box.

Raters place obstacles values from 1-10, with 10 being the most severe, though scores from 8-10 are unusual.

The next numerical rating is the ease or difficulty of hitting the fairway. To that end, Whitcomb paces off the middle of the fairway. It ends up being 36 yards wide.

Next up is the probability of hitting the green from the fairway.

“There’s not a whole lot of issues out here in the fairway,” Whitcomb says of the first hole. “So I’m just going to put a little 2. But there is an adjustment that I have to make if less than half of the green surface is visible. Now I can’t see the green surface from the middle of the fairway, so I’m going to have a visibility adjustment. So that 2 becomes a 3.

“So the topography is a 3 for the scratch golfer and now here is what I do for the bogey player. I start all over again. He’s 19 yards back behind here. I’m looking at what he’s got. He’s got the same things, so I start all over. Ten feet up. Minor problems. Visibility? Can’t see [the green]. So that 2 becomes a 3.”

Before the hole is over, Whitcomb and Phillips assign numbers for the remaining seven obstacles:

• how tough it is to recover
• bunkers
• out-of-bounds/extreme rough
• water hazards
• trees
• speed of green surfaces and psychological challenges
• the evaluation of the cumulative effect of the other obstacles

Included in the ratings system is a “nervousness” factor that automatically adds “2” to both the first and 18th holes.

“Those are the two holes that most golfers get a little ‘tight,’ if you know what I mean,” Whitcomb explains with a laugh.

The numbers for each obstacle factor are added together. For a scratch golfer rating, the total obstacle factor number is added to the estimated playing length. That number is then divided by 220 (a USGA-assigned number). Finally, 40.9 (USGA number) is added.

For a bogey golfer, the total obstacle factor number is added to the estimated playing length. That number is then divided by 160 (a USGA-assigned number). Finally, 50.7 (USGA number) is added.

The MGA, after receiving the results, inputs the data and issues the certified course rating and certified slope rating to a course within two weeks or so.

“In 10 years I had one guy disagree with it because he thought it was too low,” Whitcomb says. “He rejected it. I worked with him. I said, ‘That’s fine. If you don’t like it, I’ll come back.’ He said, ‘No, no, you guys don’t know what you’re doing.’ It was a public golf course and he was afraid it would hurt his revenue.

“These golf courses that inflate their yardage, they want that 7,000 yards on the scorecard because they think it’s going to get more people to play their golf course, which I tend to disagree with,” he adds. “Here’s the kicker: You tell me your golf course is 6,800 yards when it’s really 6,600, so your superintendent sets it up at that yardage. We’re adding 200 yards over the course of 18 holes, which is going to make a difference. So now we rate the golf course at 6,800 yards, so we’ve got an inflated course rating and an inflated slope, don’t we?

“Now, with all that info, what happens when the guy goes out and shoots (around his handicap) and now he’s like, ‘I’m getting killed when I go out of town. Your course rating is all wrong. Your course rating is too high.’ Well, it’s probably too high because your owner or your club officials wanted it that way. We fight that all the time.”

“Most courses want their rating higher,” adds Phillips, a retired engineer and a member at Needham Country Club. “If there’s a disagreement, it usually is because the slope is not high enough. But distance is such a dominating factor. On a smaller course like [Tyngsboro], these [obstacle] factors may be 10 percent [of the rating], as opposed to five percent.”

Course and slope ratings won’t change much in 10 years, unless a course adds 400 or so yards. There are exceptions, like when TPC Boston in Norton, home of the Deutsche Bank Championship of the PGA Tour, shortened its layout by 200 yards and still saw its ratings increase.

“The bunkers are set up in all the right places. The fescue is in all the right places; where you want to hit the golf ball,” Whitcomb adds.

Another example is Bass Rocks Golf Club of Gloucester, a private club that was rated in June by the MGA for the first time since 1996. While the course has been shortened from 6,010 yards to 5,953 yards, the course rating went from a 68.9 to a 69.2, and the slope rating increased from a 120 to 124, mainly because six bunkers were added and spread out among three holes. One of the three altered holes, the fourth hole, is now a dogleg left with several obstacles.

Bass Rocks Head Pro Peter Hood said members who “keep an eye on their handicap” noticed the rating changes immediately. Hood said even if he doesn’t understand what goes into a course rating/slope rating.
“There’s formulas all over the place,” he says. “[Members] have no idea what goes into it. They’re starting to understand what the [handicap] index is, but they don’t know where the index comes from. Personally, I don’t either.

“They want a tougher course. But when they go out and have a miserable time, it doesn’t make sense,” Hood adds.

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For all of their notations and numbers, MGA course raters like Whitcomb and Phillips bring a human element to their job. Walking down the par 3 third hole at Tyngsboro CC, Whitcomb breaks into a huge smile when he sees Tyngsboro CC’s owner, Glenn Garau, cutting grass as his dog, Diesel, stands proudly atop the mower.

Garau, taking a break from his grass cutting, said he figured Tyngsboro CC’s course/slope ratings would increase.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what they come up with,” Garau said. “We’re just a small, nine-hole course. It’s come a long way. All the money goes back into the course.”

In the end, Garau was right - Tyngsboro’s course/slope ratings increased, due to faster greens, higher rough and the 530-yard, par 4, fourth hole, which features a water hazard it didn’t in 1994. (It was a much shorter par 4 the last time the course was rated).

When it was rated in 1994, Tyngsboro’s men’s course/slope ratings were 65.2/104. The club’s new rating/slope is 66.2/114. The women’s red tees also underwent a change, from 62.6/97 to 65.8/107.

“I thought it was an interesting place,” says Whitcomb. “There is a lot of potential and a lot of interesting holes. I thought this was going to be just a real short, short golf course. [But] there’s some character out here.”

“That’s why I love rating golf courses,” he adds. “This to me is a treat, this is a huge treat.”

(Barry Scanlon is the assistant sports editor of the Lowell Sun.)