Hi. I asked a question in another thread which may have been missed so i thought i would open it up to everyone. Just wondering if someone can tell me what "slope" is. A course was described by another member as 72.5 and 136. I can work out the 72.5 part, but I was only told 136 meant slope. Its not something we get told in Australia (not at the courses I play anyway) and wondered if you could help out a guy.............

it refers to the difficulty of the course, the higher the slope the harder it is.

http://www.usga.org/playing/handicaps/surv...bout_slope.html

The course rating describes the difficulty of the course with respect to the scratch golfer. The slope rating describes how much more difficult the course will play for the average golfer who spend a lot more time off the main playing surfaces. Fairways that drop off on one or both sides, greens that are elevated or crowned, the size and placement of hazards all factor in. A low slope course is your typical flat municipal layout, with few hazards, many clear, flat approaches for golfers that hit the tee ball off line.

The terms "Slope" comes from mathematics, as in the slope of a plotted line on a graph. The slope represents the relative difficulty of a course of a scratch golfer vs. a bogey golfer. The "baseline" for whatever reason is 113. Which means a course with a slope of 113 is equally difficult for a scratch vs. a bogey golfer.

However, courses with more hazards generally have a higher slope, depending on where those hazards are found. For example, if there are a lot of forced carries, that will raise the slope. So lets say the slope of a course is 130. A bogey golfer (an 18 index) would actually have a "course handicap" of 18 * 130 / 113, or 21 (rounded up from 20.7). So when figuring strokes in a match, the bogey golfer would get 21 shots from a scratch golfer.

There's a fairly involved process the USGA goes through to determine the slope and rating of a course. Go to www.popeofslope.com for a lot more info.

Slope Rating-
In the USGA Handicap System manual, Slope Rating is defined as the USGA's mark that indicates the measurement of the relative difficulty of a course for players who are not scratch golfers compared to the Course Rating (ie.-compared to the difficulty of a course for scratch golfers). Slope Rating is computed from the difference between the Bogey Rating and the Course Rating. The lowest Slope Rating is 55 and the highest is 155. A golf course of standard relative playing difficulty has a USGA Slope Rating of 113.

Taken verbatim from "The USGA Course Rating System Manual".

In practice, a little old lady goes to the course, checks it out for the aforementioned forced carries, OBs, etc, and then asks a lot of questions like "do you usually keep the rough at 4 inches...?"

I do not jest.

If you really want the full story...go to Dean Knuth's website. Dean is "the Pope of Slope"...the fellow who used to be at the USGA who actually came up with the system.

Here's his simple explanation. Simply, Slope