Last week found Nate, Ryan, and myself traveling East to Knoxville. Tuesday morning was started with a site visit at Toqua Golf Course, host site of the 2009 TGA Four Ball/Senior Four Ball. During the site visit we met with the club owner, club pro, head superintendent, and GM of Food& Beverage. We discussed details such as practice round and tournament days, tournament registration, course set-up and marking, cart availability, player lunch, etc. Typically our site visits run 30 minutes to an hour, and allow us to go over the basic details of the tournament before registration begins for the players.
Tuesday afternoon found us at yet another site visit with TN National Golf Club, host of the 2009 Senior Amateur. After our meeting we were kindly invited to hit links for what would be our first round of the year. YIKES! The weather was great, except for the high gusts of wind, but we had a great time and all in all were all pleasantly surprised at how well we played seeing as how none of us had swung a club in several months.
Wednesday started off with another site visit, this time at Holston Hills CC, site of the 2009 Mid Amateur. Jay Garrison, our Tournament Chairmen, accompanied us to this site visit where we again discussed details of this years event. After our meeting we headed to Beaver Brook CC to do a course rating. Luckily, the weather was some-what warm, a drastic difference from the weather we have encountered thus far on this years course rating trips.
Some quick info for those of you who don't know what exactly goes on during a course rating:
USGA Course Rating - USGA Course Rating is defined as the evaluation of the playing difficulty of a course for scratch golfers under normal course and weather conditions. It is expressed as strokes taken to one decimal place, and is based on yardage and other obstacles to the extent that they affect the scoring difficulty of the scratch golfer.
Bogey Rating - USGA Bogey Rating is the average of the better half of a bogey golfer's scores under normal course and weather conditions. It is expressed as strokes taken to one decimal place, and is baed on yardage and other obstacles to the extent that they affect the scoring difficulty of the scratch golfer.
USGA Slope Rating - Slope Rating is the USGA's mark that indicates the measurement of the relative playing difficulty of a course for players who are not scratch golfer, compared to the USGA Course Rating. It is computed from the difference between the Bogey Rating and the USGA Course Rating. Slope Rating is expressed as a whole number from 55 to 155.
The Rating Process
When rating a golf course, the rating ream (usually consisting of three to five team members) evaluates the difficulty of a golf course under normal playing conditions. The golf course is evaluated for a scratch golfer and a bogey golfer. The rating process requires a study of each hole, including detailed data obtained at all landing areas for both of the golfers. The shot lengths are used by the rating team to determine where the landing areas are for each player. When rating, the team considers ten obstacles, along with the effective playing length of the course. Both length corrections and obstacle values are considered at each hole. Following this evaluation, the values given to the obstacles are plugged into an equation, which formulates the USGA Course Rating and Slope Rating for each set of tees.
The 10 Obstacles that we evaluate are: Topography, Fairway, Green Target, Rough & Recoverability, Bunkers, Out of Bounds/Extreme Rough, Water Hazards, Trees, Green Surface, and Psychological.
Effective Playing Length Corrections are determined by the following: Roll, Elevation, & Dogleg/Forced Lay-Up
A typical course rating will take between 3-5 hours depending on the amount of tees and obstacle values that have to be rated.
The USGA recommends that a golf course be re-rated every 7-10 years.
We finished rating Beaver Brook just as the storms were rolling in. (The wind had been so brutal that several trees had fallen on the course during our rating.) The storms passed that night and Thursday morning we ventured down to rate Green Meadow Country Club. The weather was great, just a little chilly, and the course rating went extremely well. After some quick lunch we headed back to Franklin. Friday morning the three of us headed south to Columbia, TN. There we visited Stoneybrook GC, which had just recently gone through some major course renovations, and needed to be re-rated.
The week was very productive and it only confirms that the golf season is quickly approaching. While it takes a few weeks to get back in the swing of things after winter break we are finding ourselves diving in head first now!
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