what is slope rating golf

What does golf slope mean? What is a golf course rating and how is it calculated? We’ll share details here to help golfers understand the meaning of golf slop and golf course rating. 

The USGA Course Rating is an assessment of a golf course’s difficulty.scratch golfers. (More specifically, the number is an estimate of the average scores of the best 50-percent of rounds played by scratch golfers at the course being rated.)

Because it is stated in strokes, course rating is extremely simple to grasp. A par-72 course that is easy may have a course rating of 68.9, while a tough course may have a course rating of 74.5. That implies a scratch golfer could expect to average 68.9 strokes on the easier course and 74.5 on the more difficult one in his best rounds.

Slope rating (a term trademarked by the United States Golf Association) is a measure of a golf course’s difficulty.bogey golfers relative to the course rating.

Course rating tells scratch golfershow challenging the golf course will be; slope rating informs bogey players of the course’s difficulty.

To put it another way, the USGA Course Rating informs the best golfers how difficult a golf course is to play; the USGA Slope Rating shows how much harder the course is to play for “ordinary” (i.e. not among the top) players.

The slope rating ranges from 55 to 155 (slope does not explicitly correspond to strokes performed).course ratingdoes). The more challenging the course, the steeper the slope. When the slope rating system was first put into effect, the USGA set the slope for an “average” golf course at 113; however, not many 18-hole golf courses have slope ratings that low. Some do, but the real-world average exceeds 113. (However, a slope of 113 is still utilized in many handicap computations.)

Source: http://golf.about.com/cs/golfterms/g/bldef courserat.htm http://golf.about.com/cs/rulesofgolf/a/hfaq sloperate.htm

Use the free Golf Pad app to automatically see rating and slope details for over 40,000 golf courses around the world.  

For more info on course rating and slope visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slope_rating