[ajbrown]

I am playing over at Lopez today and in preparation for our 4ball match I was checking handicaps. To me there is an issue looking at the Ashley/Torri 18 with the slope ratings. Two of us play the gold tees and the slope rating for the gold tees is 139. The problem with that is the slope for the black tees is 137!. I verified what the card says is also what the FSGA has.

Sanity check.... the slope of a gold tee box can NEVER be higher than the slope of the black tee box when the black tees have a higher course rating, right? I will call over, but found this interesting....

http://www.fsga.org/clubservices/clu...sp?crclid=1181

Their respective ratings are Black (72.9) and Gold (70.9).

This is a big deal as if it is 134 instead of 139 my opponent gets one less stroke

[MrMark]

Originally Posted by ajbrown

I am playing over at Lopez today and in preparation for our 4ball match I was checking handicaps. To me there is an issue looking at the Ashley/Torri 18 with the slope ratings. Two of us play the gold tees and the slope rating for the gold tees is 139. The problem with that is the slope for the black tees is 137!. I verified what the card says is also what the FSGA has.

Sanity check.... the slope of a gold tee box can NEVER be higher than the slope of the black tee box when the black tees have a higher course rating, right? I will call over, but found this interesting....

http://www.fsga.org/clubservices/clu...sp?crclid=1181

Their respective ratings are Black (72.9) and Gold (70.9).

This is a big deal as if it is 134 instead of 139 my opponent gets one less stroke

Instead of looking at the FSGA website you might want to look at the Lopez Scorecard which shows:

Black Slope = 138 Gold Slope = 137
Black CR = 72.6 Gold CR = 70.7

Just the way they should be!

[ajbrown]

Originally Posted by mhoerauf

Instead of looking at the FSGA website you might want to look at the Lopez Scorecard which shows:

Black Slope = 138 Gold Slope = 137
Black CR = 72.6 Gold CR = 70.7

Just the way they should be!

I think you are looking at an older card?? The course was rerated in August 2010. I could be wrong and will verify this afternoon.

I did call the pro shop, the folks there could not understand why it was like that and will talk to the pro on Monday. Problem is my friend/opponent gets one extra shot today!

[charlie49]

The rating is more important than the slope in comparing different tees. If people play from different tees the ratings of the tees must be considered. At Glenview, someone playing the Whites will give up three strokes to someone playing the Blues. If the person playing whites has a 15 handicap and the one from the blues has a 10 handicap, then the person from the whites gets 2 strokes instead of 5.

Charlie

[Mikeod]

Originally Posted by charlie49

The rating is more important than the slope in comparing different tees. If people play from different tees the ratings of the tees must be considered. At Glenview, someone playing the Whites will give up three strokes to someone playing the Blues. If the person playing whites has a 15 handicap and the one from the blues has a 10 handicap, then the person from the whites gets 2 strokes instead of 5.

Charlie

Charlie - I don't think that's right. With the advent of slope and handicap indexes, you compute a course handicap for each player based on the slope of the tees they are using and their index.

[ajbrown]

Originally Posted by charlie49

The rating is more important than the slope in comparing different tees. If people play from different tees the ratings of the tees must be considered. At Glenview, someone playing the Whites will give up three strokes to someone playing the Blues. If the person playing whites has a 15 handicap and the one from the blues has a 10 handicap, then the person from the whites gets 2 strokes instead of 5.

Charlie

I agree with you. In fact I find that many folks do not know to use the course ratings as you describe when competitors are playing different tees. Here is a link for anyone interested:

http://www.usga.org/playing/handicap...rent_tees.html

In my case yesterday my buddy and I were playing the same tees and his handicap went from a 16 to a 17 because the slope rating was wrong. To be clear this is not a big deal to us as it is not a big money match, all losses are consumed afterwards .

[charlie49]

Mikeod you are wrong on this. When golfers are playing from different tees they are playing 'different' courses and this difference in length must be considered. The slope alone does not make up the difference. The ghin system is very clear about this. If you google 'adjusting handicaps for players using different tees' you may find more information.

Charlie

[ajbrown]

Originally Posted by ajbrown

I am playing over at Lopez today and in preparation for our 4ball match I was checking handicaps. To me there is an issue looking at the Ashley/Torri 18 with the slope ratings. Two of us play the gold tees and the slope rating for the gold tees is 139. The problem with that is the slope for the black tees is 137!. I verified what the card says is also what the FSGA has.

Sanity check.... the slope of a gold tee box can NEVER be higher than the slope of the black tee box when the black tees have a higher course rating, right? I will call over, but found this interesting....

http://www.fsga.org/clubservices/clu...sp?crclid=1181

Their respective ratings are Black (72.9) and Gold (70.9).

Finally got to play Lopez again yesterday and I revisited this question about slope rating to see what the pro shop had learned. I was told by a friendly gentleman at the desk that that FSGA had confirmed the slope rating is correct (137 black versus 139 gold). He tried to explain what the FSGA person said, e.g., slope rating is based on bogey golfer.....

We chatted for a bit, I explained that I understand how the course rating versus slope rating are determined but that it makes no sense to me that tees that are longer (black) would have a slope rating lower than shorter tees (gold).

This is one of those things that does NOT keep me up at night, but I am always interested in learning more about golf and rules and still do not see how this is right. When I get time I will craft an email to the FSGA.

In the meantime, anyone else ever see a slope rating of a shorter tee box higher that the slope rating of the tees further back?

PS. Weather and course were awesome yesterday !

[ajbrown]

I post this for those of you that enjoy learning some of the less obvious rules about golf and the handicap system. I exchanged a few emails with Gary Donat about my slope question. Gary is the Director of Course rating for the FSGA and was very responsive and helpful.

Turns out that once again Alan was wrong . It is indeed possible that the slope rating of forward tees can be higher than back tees. This text is from an email Gary sent me.

First slope is the difference of the Course Rating (scratch Rating) and the Bogey Rating multiplied by 5.381.

So let’s look at the Gold tee ratings, Course rating is 70.9 and the Bogey rating is 96.7 giving us a difference of 25.8 multiply that by 5.381 and rounding to the nearest whole number we get 139.

Black tee Course rating is 72.9 and the Bogey rating is 98.4, giving us a difference of 25.5. Multiply that by 5.381 we get 137, of course rounding to the nearest whole number.

Let’s look at Course ratings between the two tees we see the course rating went up 2 strokes from Gold to Black but the bogey rating between the 2 tees only 1.7 strokes. Well how can this be?

In the USGA course rating system, the bogey golfer hits his drive a 200 yards and hits his subsequent shots a maximum of 170 yards. So let say I had a set of tees that forced the bogey golfer to hit long approach shots to the greens, this would bump up all of the numbers for the bogey golfer for this set of tees thus increasing the bogey rating and also increasing the difference between the Scratch and Bogey rating . Now let’s say I have a set of tees has the Bogey golfer hitting essentially chip shot approaches to the green. This lowers the bogey rating and decreases the difference between the Scratch and Bogey rating. Now the difference in yardage will bump up both the Scratch and Bogey rating but because of these shorter approach shots we can have a lower slope on a longer set of tees.

In addition he sent me this text which explains further:

At times, a golfer playing from a back set of tees cannot hit the ball far enough to reach difficult obstacles (e.g., bunkers, water hazards, trees, OB, etc). Therefore, that golfer will not need as many handicap strokes to equal the course rating.

And finally this link.....

http://www.ncga.org/2007/06/18/an-explanation-of-slope/