Slope tables

Since we're in Ypäjä, Finland's horse municipality, the tees are marked with horseshoes. White = 62 Yellow = 59 Blue = 54 Red = 51

Loimijoki Golf's course rating and slope rating, as well as the holes' HCP index

The course assessors, or "raters", visited Loimijoki to carry out a re-rating in autumn 2020. This gave our course new "key figures". Below, our club's captain, Petri Prusila, explains the topic in more detail, behind what may be unfamiliar terms.

· Course rating reflects the difficulty of the course

· Slope rating reflects the course's relative difficulty for players of different levels.

Course rating and slope rating values always vary depending on which tee the round is played from. They are also defined separately for men and women.

Course rating (CR)

Course rating is an estimate of the score a scratch player - that is, a player with a zero handicap - would average on a good round under normal conditions. As a concept, it's easier to understand since the value is expressed in strokes. On an easy par-72 course, the course rating value can be clearly under par, for example 69.0. On a difficult course (par 72), on the other hand, it's over par, say 74.7. At Loimijoki, the new CR value from the men's yellow tee is 71.9 (previously 71.3). So our course was assessed as slightly more difficult than before.

In addition to a course's difficulty, its relative difficulty for players of different levels must be taken into account. For two players, one playing off a handicap of 0 and the other off 18, the real difference in their handicaps is exactly 18 strokes on only a few courses. On a normal full-length golf course, the difference between the players usually grows, meaning the weaker player gets more handicap strokes than the numerical difference in their handicaps. But how much is determined by the slope rating.

Slope rating

The Slope rating value indicates the course's relative difficulty for a bogey golfer (according to the slope-rating criteria, for men players with roughly 16–20 handicap and for women players with a handicap slightly above 20).

The reference number used to define relative difficulty is 113. If a course is relatively equally difficult for a scratch player and a bogey player, the course's slope rating is 113. If the course is relatively more difficult for a player with a higher handicap, the course's slope rating is above 113; if it is easier, the rating is below 113.

When the course's slope rating is divided by 113, you effectively get a coefficient that relates the player's handicap to a scratch player.

For example, at Loimijoki the new slope value (men's yellow tee) is 134 (before re-rating it was 131), giving a factor of 134/113, i.e. 1.19. Since this is a multiplication, the higher a player's handicap, the more handicap strokes they receive. For example, a player with a 1.0 handicap gains only 0.19 strokes (1.0*1.19=1.19), while the relative extra benefit for a player with an 18 handicap is already 2.14 strokes (18.0*1.19=21.4). Of course you don't need to calculate these yourself - at every course, at least in Finland, there's a slope table where you can check your playing handicap. In practice this means, for example, that a man playing off handicap 18 now gets a playing handicap of 21 (yellow tee), where it used to be 20. Likewise, a woman playing off handicap 18 from the red tee gets a playing handicap of 22 (previously 21). The new slope table will be available on the club's website shortly.

Hole HCP index

At the same time, the difficulty order of the holes was also reviewed. The course's hardest hole has an HCP value of 1, the second-hardest 2, and so on. The course's easiest hole therefore has a value of 18. This was based on scorecards submitted between 2016 and 2020 (approx. 10,500 of them).

regards, El Capitan This text was written after the rating carried out in 2020, and the comparisons to old values mentioned in it refer to the figures used before 2020. Since we still feel the text illustrates the matter well, we haven't changed it since.