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Hi Friends

Two posts from me in a matter of hours after nothing last week - Like London buses.

I just received a reply from an handicap “expert” on the Slope Rating newsletter, detailing the reasons for its inception and use in far more detail then I gave. Also sending this out in fairness to Lt Commander Dean Knuth who doesn’t have the right of reply.

After you read it you may well ask, why are you complaining about Slope Rating Jerry? Seems like a good idea, are you some sort of Luddite?

Well that’s what “they” want you to think! I still say do away with it. You play off a 18 handicap you get 18 shots, you playoff scratch you get zero shots etc etc etc.

Unabridged reply from Michael Budgen (Buj) below…………………

You could’ve just asked an expert…… ( or a bore )

To begin with, why do we have 2 ways of Rating a course, Course Rating and Slope Rating ? Simply, they ‘rate’ two differing aspects of a course.

Course Rating is largely dictated by length, this then changes for each set of tees on a course.

Slope Rating is more to do with hazards, the ‘danger’ element of a course if you like, and this is normally more static across a course’s tees.

In the ‘old’ days, you got the same shots no matter the difficulty of the course you played, or what tee you played off, Red, yellow, white, black, your 8 was an 8 anywhere, but then how come, on some courses 33 pts would win a monthly stableford, on others, you’d need 42….???

Then, imagine this, If you were a ‘scratch’ golfer, and you had to play a match against a 20 h’capper, would you chose a short course with not much rough and a few bunkers and slow bumpy greens, or would you choose an Open qualifying ‘monster’ with long carries, deep bunkers, punishing rough and fast greens ?    yep, it’s obvious isn’t it.

And converse to the above, if the 20 h’capper took on the scratch golfer on the ‘easy course’ they would greatly increase their chance of winning. ( albeit 55% of all matches are won by the lower handicap*)

So the ‘old’ Standard Scratch System ( SSS ) only took into account the scratch golfer, it didn’t take into account how golfers with different abilities would play the same course, because under the old method, it only predicted what a scratch golfer would shoot…..

This system wasn’t satisfactory then, was it ? as surely, you’d want the match decided by on who plays best on the day, not the course it’s played on…

The introduction of CR, ( which correlates to length ) meant that you both got shots for that, so therefore Slope is needed to understand the course difficulty, so as to fairly allow for shots to all golfers, good and…..not so good….

So let’s imagine we have a match between Player A & Player B.

Below shows how three course with the same length a Par 69 with a CR of 7, would produce playing handicaps if the Slope, was different.

Player A with a HI of 0.0 will get 2 shots with slopes of 137 / 125 / 115, there is no effect to their playing h’cap.

Player B with a HI of 20.0 gets 25, 23, 21 shots, with slopes of 137 / 125 / 115 respectively…..

So, in our match, on the ‘harder’ course, a slope of 137, player B gets 23 shots, on the ‘easier’ course ( slope 115 ) they ‘only’ get 19

PLAYER A    ( imagine Tee 1, 2 & 3 are 3 different courses )

PLAYER B   ( again, imagine Tee 1, 2 & 3 are 3 different courses )

The reason in Jerry’s experience ‘all it does is give shots to higher h’caps’ is because he plays his golf on a higher slope rated course, if he played his golf at a club with a lower slope, obviously, the opposite would be true.

The biggest problem was England’s Golf initial implementation of it, as, in its infinite wisdom, it didn’t allow the CR adjustment when we changed over to WHS 5 years ago, fortunately this was rectified last April. This is simply because as in example above, giving 2 shots to a scratch golfer, is more beneficial than giving 2 shots to someone who’s already got 20+ of them, as simply, who’s more likely to look after them…..

All the best !

Buj

(* the 55% rule doesn’t apply to me obviously )

So there you go. Thanks very much Buj,