Transcripts - Episode 3: Understanding Course and Slope Rating

The Birdie Board podcast is brought to you by the Birdie Board app, the easiest way to track matches, scores, and handicaps with friends. Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Welcome back to episode three of the Birdie Board podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about course rating and slope rating. One of the more unknown topics that relate to a hot goth handicap, so a quick recap: just a goth handicap is just this number that tries to represent how good you are at goth.

So, the easiest way to think about it is: if you are an 18 handicap, you typically are like a bogey golfer. So, the actual handicap number you can get from the USGA— I think you typically pay for it, but you don't need to pay for the official number to get your golf handicap. You can just calculate it on your own. What it is, is it's the average of your best eight rounds out of your last 20 rounds. And that's your average over par.

So, for example—just kind of going back to that bogey golf—if your best eight rounds are is bogey golf, so you just get a bogey every hole, or on average every hole, that's going to mean you're probably going to have an 18 handicap. A common misconception or misunderstanding with handicaps is it's your average round over par. It's not your average; it's your top eight out of your last 20. So, what that means is—so eight out of 20 is about 40%—you should be shooting a bogey golf round 40% of the time you go out. So, just about every other time you play golf, you should be right around bogey golf. But what that also means is that other round that you didn't shoot bogey golf is typically a lot higher than what your actual score is—really just trying to capture what are you playing on a good day.

So, that's the one aspect of the handicap. But you need to have this number to be able to consider what course rating and slope rating is. So, handicaps is more of a broad number, like just how good you are. But of course, we play a sport where the playing surface is not the same every single week. So, tennis and football and baseball—there's maybe really, really slight variations in their fields, but they're all about the same. So, football field is 100 yards long. The difference is maybe grass or turf, but that's about it. Baseball, you're still playing on a diamond—maybe the outfield distance is different, but that's about it.

In golf, we play different playing conditions every single hole. So, what that means is that handicap number alone is not going to be enough to help identify how good of a golfer you are. It also depends on the course you are playing. So, that's where these two things come in called course rating and slope rating.

So, a course rating is what is the expected score for a scratch golfer? So, this is if their handicap is zero under normal circumstances. So, this course rating kind of gives you a good idea of how hard is it for a scratch golfer. So, if the par for the course is a 72 and the course rating is a 72, then we expect a scratch golfer to shoot a 72 under normal conditions 40% of the time. But a course that is easy for a scratch golfer might not be as easy for like a bogey golfer. So, that's where a slope rating comes in. This trying to capture how much harder a course is for a bogey golfer versus a scratch golfer.

So, for example, a scratch golfer might be able to hit the fairway 67% of the time, where a bogey golfer gets to hit the fairway maybe 30 to 40% of the time. So, imagine a course—we have a straight fairway and tons of rough on each side. While whether or not we are in the fairway, a scratch golfer and a bogey golfer isn't going to make much of a difference. If you're not in the fairway, you're just hitting out some rough. You have a nice second shot in, hopefully, or maybe a nice second shot to set up a nice birdie opportunity for a par 5. It's not going to be too bad being off the fairway for a bogey golfer versus a scratch golfer. It might be on the fairway.

Let's imagine now a more difficult course where you have the same fairway, but instead of it being lined by rough, it's lined by a hazard on the left side and water on the right side. The scratch golfer is still going to be in the fairway 60 to 70% of the time, but the bogey golfer is going to be off the fairway 60 to 70% of the time. The problem with this course, though, is when you're off the fairway, it is going to be a penalty, most likely. Whether you're on the hazard side or the high rough side or water—whatever is off that fairway—it's going to be more detrimental to the bogey golfer than it would be a scratch golfer. That's where course rating isn't enough by itself. That's where a slope rating comes in. That's a number that's trying to calculate how much harder it is for a bogey golfer versus a scratch golfer.

Both of these numbers come from the USGA course rating system, and they're established based off the T-box that you decide to play. These two numbers are—the course rating is usually right around what part would be. So, a 69 course rating means it's easier for a scratch golfer, where a 74 course rating would mean it's really hard for a scratch golfer. It's all relative to that course's par. So, I'm just assuming a 72 par.

A course as slope rating is a little bit of a different number. It's a higher number. The base, I think, is like 113, and then it can go up to like 154, or as low as somewhere around the hundreds, I believe. But it's more of a weird number, but it's, I guess, come up by some mathematicians to try to capture that how much more difficult is a course for a bogey golfer. And I'll get into how you can use these numbers in a second.

But the thing you can do to find these numbers is they're always going to be on the scorecard. So, I have a scorecard pulled up in front of me. And this is pretty common on most scorecards— you'll see the T box you're playing, and then usually off to the left or the right of that T box, you'll see the rating slash the slope. So, it's going to be like 70.9 slash 126. So, at this course I'm looking at, the par 72—so it's saying the rating is 70.9. So, a typical scratch golfer should shoot one under par at this course. And the slope is 126. So, the average slope is like 113. So, it's actually saying even though this course plays easier for a scratch golfer, it's actually a little harder for a bogey golfer at 126, which is 13 above the average.

So, these numbers give you an idea of like, okay, how hard of a course is this that I'm about to play? If you're more of a scratch golfer, you look at the course rating. If you're more of a bogey golfer or higher, you're going to look at the slope. So, if you're going into a course and the slope rating’s like 145, 150, you got to bring some extra golf balls—it's going to be a tough day—where if you go into the course and maybe the slope rating is close to 100, then you're like, okay, I've had some nice scoring opportunities. That's not going to be too hard for me.

You can take all of these numbers, and there's actually a formula that you can connect it back to your handicaps. So, you take your handicap, and it's called the World Handicap System Formula. And it's not the most straightforward formula in the world, but it is meant to be able to adjust your handicap based off the difficulty of the course that you're playing.

So, what this formula is, is trying to get your course handicap number. So, you take your handicap, you multiply it by the course slope divided by 113, and then you add the course rating minus par, and then you round it away from zero. Yes, it's complicated—it's tough to communicate over a podcast—but that is the formula. And what you get in the end is your handicap adjusted for the difficulty of the course that you're playing.

So, for example, we go back to the scorecard that I had up. That had a course rating of 71. If I was a scratch golfer, I'm not getting any strokes. You put that in the formula; I might actually have a negative one course or negative one handicap on this particular course.

The let's consider a bogey golfer as an example. So, this course, this slope rating is 126—so a little more difficult than a typical bogey course. So, let's say I go into the day with an 18 handicap. I run this formula, and it raises me up to a 20 handicap. So, I'm going to get a stroke on every hole, plus two more on the two hardest holes, because this course is going to be a little harder for me as a bogey golfer. So, that's kind of how it all connects back to the handicap.

And then really the biggest thing is it's just trying to make matches between two players fair, no matter where they're playing. So, if you are playing with a buddy who is closer to a scratch golfer and you're a bogey golfer—maybe even higher than that—it helps capture that difference no matter the course you're on.

So, this is all a lot to do leading up to a match. You're going to have to gather everyone's handicaps. You're going to have to look at what tee box you want to play. You're going to want to put figure out the course rating, the slope rating for that particular tee box. Like I said, you can usually find it on the scorecards. And then you run it through that world handicap system formula to adjust everyone's handicaps for that particular course. And then you distribute the strokes per hole. So, for example, if you get 20 strokes, you're going to get a stroke on every hole and then two more strokes on the two hardest. It's a lot of work just to keep things fair.

And this is where birdie board comes in. Definitely a plug for birdie board. I think I love the course rating and the slope rating system. I love handicaps. I love how I think it equates two players and makes things competitive even if one player is significantly better than the other. But there's obviously a ton of work that goes into preparing for a match. And this is where birdie board can come in. So, when you set up a birdie board round, you can put in the course rating and the slope rating. Every user, when they sign up, they put in their handicap. And what birdie board will do during the round is it applies all this math automatically for you. So, it will adjust the user's handicap based off the slope rating and the course rating according to that world handicap system formula I shared earlier to make sure that the user is getting the appropriate number of strokes per hole.

And it does all this automatically. So, all the user does is put—they put in their actual score they get. So, their gross score on the whole, and birdie board will consider their handicap, consider the formula, consider the course rating, slope rating, and it adjusts their score based off of that formula. So, birdie board really just emphasizes the ease of use of these awesome systems that are in place in our sport. It ensures the scores are going to reflect the performance well relative to the course difficulty, not just the raw strokes. And it helps a lot when you have a wide handicap range in a group, and it keeps every hole competitive.

So, that's the course rating, the course rating—or the course rating and the slope rating. Main takeaway here is the course rating is going to show how difficult a course is for a scratch golfer, where the slope rating adjusts it for everyone else. Typically the bogey golfer, but even people worse than bogey golfer, maybe just a little bit better than bogey golfer. Using these systems is really core to why birdie board even exists. It's just trying to make utilizing all these systems easier and, in the end, just make golf more fun and fair and connected for everyone.

So, I appreciate you guys listening to this episode of the birdie board podcast. I'm going to continue to try to put these out as frequently as I can—at least once a week, maybe a little bit more often—but I'm really excited to just continue to share everything golf, from highlights of recent rounds to the deep dives in the birdie board, to golf tips. I hope—hopefully—this was a good show today talking about the course rating and slope rating.

So, until next time, keep enjoying golf. Thanks for tuning in to the birdie board podcast. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share it with a friend who loves golf as much as you do, and before your next round grab the birdie board app—free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store—and let it handle the scoring while you enjoy the game.