Inside The Mysterious World Of Course, Slope And Bogey Ratings

The World Handicap System (WHS) was brought in in January 2020 as The R&A and the United States Golf Association wanted a universal system which would “enable golfers of different abilities to play and compete on a fair and equal basis, in any format, on any course, anywhere around the world.”

The basic concept behind WHS was to reflect that courses are not of equal difficulty. Therefore always giving a player the same number of shots as a handicap regardless of the strength of the particular challenges posed by differing courses was not logical.

This is particularly pertinent as handicaps tend to be awarded based upon play on one course only: the player’s home one. If this course is easier than most, the player’s handicap is likely to be artificially low. Worse, especially to for those who like to cry ‘golfing bandit!’ at anyone doing well, a difficult home course may mean that someone gets more shots than seems fair when playing elsewhere.

To combat this, three types of ratings are employed to assess the difficulty of a course: Course, Slope And Bogey Ratings.

Also, no more does a player have a handicap which they take everywhere. Instead it is a Handicap Index which they take with them, and this gets translated into a number of shots at each course based upon various calculations rooted in this trio of ratings.

The Course Rating and Bogey Rating go towards calculating the Slope Rating. The Slope Rating is then used to determine how many shots a player receives via the Course Handicap, which in turn gives the Playing Handicap.

This is how the various building blocks work:

Course Rating

Course Rating, which is expressed in strokes and to one decimal point, represents the expected score for a scratch golfer. As such, the Course Rating score is often very close to the total par for the course. This figure tends to be widely publicised by a course.

Bogey Rating

The Bogey Rating of a course is much less rarely publicised, although it is also used to calculate the Slope Rating. Bogey Rating is the measure of playing difficulty for a Bogey Golfer (defined as a player who has a Course Handicap of approximately 20 for a male and 24 for a female).

Slope Rating

The Slope Rating is an indication of the relative difficulty of a course for players who are not scratch players compared with the difficulty experienced by a scratch player. The Slope Rating is calculated by subtracting the course rating from the Bogey Rating, and then multiplying by a constant. This constant is 5.381 for men and 4.24 for women. So, for men, the formula is:

(Bogey Rating−Course Rating) × 5.381 = Men′s Slope Rating

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Course Handicap

This is the theoretical number of shots a player gets based on that player’s Handicap Index and the Slope Rating of a particular course.

Playing Handicap

This is the actual number of shots a player gets. Some competitions have a recommended percentage of the Course Handicap that a player gets. For example, in a Stableford competition, players normally get a Playing Handicap that equates to 95% of their Course Handicap.