I got a firsthand look at the course-rating process. There’s a lot more that goes into it than you think
On a rainy morning that would soon become a bright sunny day in Paramus, N.J., 12 Metropolitan Golf Association volunteers, plus Matt Goula, the MGA’s Course Rating manager, gathered inside the clubhouse at Arcola Country Club, a private course founded in 1909. Copious notes were being taken. Discussions were being had. Booklets and forms being passed out. This group was preparing to go through the process of “rating” the golf course. And no, we’re not talking about America’s 100 Greatest here, folks.
We’re talking about those two numbers on the back of every scorecard—the Course Rating and Slope. Two numbers that I, despite being someone who has played golf for 20-plus years and covered it for the last 10, have never given much thought past the usual “oh, these two numbers are higher ... this course must be hard.”
While that is technically true, it is an oversimplification of the process itself, which took four hours, not including the extra four hours dedicated to playing the course afterward, which is also a big part of the process. It’s not mining for coal, to be sure, but it’s a full day’s work.
All Course Ratings are conducted by local allied golf associations, with support from the USGA. On this day, it was the MGA, which has a large pool of volunteers to select from on days like this. Goula, previously with the PGA Tour and the PGA of America, took over the MGA's Course Rating program in July 2020 and officially became the Course Rating Manager in November 2021.
Becoming a Course Rating volunteer requires a rigorous vetting process, Goula says. There are three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. If you're a beginner, you can simply tag along on a Course Rating and rate one set of tees. If you're an intermediate, you can lead a team. If you're advanced, you're essentially in Goula's role, which allows you to drive the discussion, enter Course Ratings and lead the entire group on days like this one. To reach any of these levels, you first have to attend a USGA Course Rating calibration event—a two-to-three day workshop the USGA runs that Goula and his counterparts will attend and walk through the Rating process with prospective volunteers. The workshop also includes presentations, quiz reviews and Q&A. After that, beginner volunteers still need a certain number of Ratings under their belt before they can advance to the intermediate level.
Arcola recently completed a renovation project that began in the fall of 2025, replacing all its bunkers and making select tee and fairway adjustments. Golf course architect Andy Staples of Staples Golf Design, who led the project, also reconstructed the fourth and ninth greens, re-routed the first and ninth holes and completely redesigned the 16th, hence why the MGA was there early this fall. Any time a course is renovated, the MGA looks to rerate it. With no adjustments to the golf course, USGA Course Rating certifications last 10 years, though the MGA operates on a six-year cycle regardless of course changes. For the year, Goula and his team will rate about 60 courses, though that number continues to grow after the USGA lowered the yardage threshold two years ago to include par-3 courses and executive nine-hole courses. (Approximately 16,000 courses in the U.S. have an official Course Rating and Slope; you can find a database that the USGA has compiled of courses here.)
After a brief meeting in the clubhouse, the 12 volunteers split up into groups of six, one group taking the front nine and the other the back nine. There are three men and three women in each group. Two of them tackled the most-played set of tees at Arcola, while the remaining four spread out among the other sets of tees. Goula also covered the junior/forward tees on this day. As for the tips—specifically, tee sets longer than 7,000 yards for men and more than 6,000 yards for women—those can be replicated remotely and do not require being on site to be rated. In other words, Goula is able to use the data they've already collected from the next-farthest set of tees and simply change the yardage. “At that point, the numbers from, say, the black tees, are not going to get much higher,” Goula says. “So we just update the yardage and that will increase the course rating for the tips at a particular course.”
All raters gets their own paper form with a particular gender and tee set on it. They begin the process at the tee box, where they look at any crossings, rough and/or carry or elevation change. They’ll then make their way to the “landing zone,” i.e., where a tee shot down the middle will typically finish. From there they’ll measure the width of the fairway, the distance to lateral obstacles such as out of bounds, penalty areas or fescue, and they’ll evaluate bunkers or mounds near the landing zone. Then they’ll look at the “green target,” defined more simply as the likelihood of getting the next shot on the green based on the effective playing distance, size of the green and potential punitive obstacles.
This portion of each hole is controlled chaos. Volunteers, and their respective carts, scattered everywhere. Pencils being put to paper. One older gentleman shouting at another from across the fairway, notifying each other of the distance to a particular obstacle. Finally, everyone convenes on the green where, as a group, they’ll determine the difficulty of the putting surface and any surrounding areas like bunkers or penalty areas. On one hole, a par 3, there was serious deliberating on whether or not a massive hump on the back portion of the green complex made this particular green two-tiered. In terms of real-world problems, this is not one of them. But these volunteers take the job seriously and have serious respect for the game. Ultimately, they agreed it was another tier. On to the next hole.
This lengthy evaluating process is done specifically with the scratch and bogey player in mind. And it’s about what those two types of players will probably do on any given shot or hole, not what they could do. Technically, the "expected performance" of each golfer. For example, for a male scratch player, the average “landing zone” will be at 250 yards, and their subsequent shots will go, on average, 220 yards. For the bogey player, the off-the-tee average is 200 yards, subsequent shots 170. The longer the hole, and the more obstacles on the hole, the more it will affect the bogey golfer.
Once both groups complete their respective nines, they stop for lunch and then they go and play the golf course, and they are allowed to add to, or change, their notes based on their experience. At the very end, Goula gathers all of the forms and enters the data into calculation software that applies the formulas and weighting to determine the Course Rating and the Slope Rating. Simply defined, the course rating is the “expected performance” of the scratch player on a particular set of tees when playing well under normal conditions. For example, prior to this day’s rating, Arcola’s Course Rating from the blue tees is 74.2. On a good day, under normal conditions, that means a scratch should shoot their expected score of 74.
The Slope Rating is based on how much harder the course is for the bogey golfer compared to the scratch player. From the same blue tees, Arcola’s slope is 140. No, that does not mean the bogey golfer is shooting 140. There is a third number not displayed on any scorecards called the bogey rating, which is an indication of the difficulty (expected performance) of a golf course for the bogey player (20 handicap for men, 24 handicap for women) under normal course and weather conditions. The Course Rating and the Bogey Rating are calculated in a formula that spits out the Slope Rating. The higher the slope, the larger the expected difference between the scratch and bogey player. Slope Ratings can be as low as 55 and as high as 155. From the black tees (the tips) at Arcola, the slope is 145.
The other important thing the Slope Rating does is help convert your handicap index into a course handicap. This way, when you travel to a course, you receive the correct amount of strokes from the set of tees you are playing that day. As Goula says, one of the biggest misconceptions about what they do is they are just out there to make the course rating higher, or lower, in some cases. The whole point of the process is to make sure your handicap travels well.
The other huge misconception? Golfers will come up to Goula and say “this hole should be the No. 1 handicap.” This group does not come up with the stroke index, that’s up to each club, and it's based on how difficult each hole is for the people who play the course every day, and which holes the bogey player will likely need a shot from the scratch player. So when you're playing a road game and wonder why a certain hole is the No. 1 handicap, just remember it wasn't made the No. 1 handicap with you, specifically, in mind.
When can Arcola expect it's newest rating and slope? Goula says with the season winding down, the administrative process is about to begin. That is, inputting, analyzing and establishing all tee ratings for all courses. Arcola, along with many other clubs in the metropolitan area, will receive their updated Course Ratings as well as any applicable yardage and/or stroke index reports in late November. Just before they do, though, Goula and his regional chairs will hold a review session to go over every tee from every rating for quality assurance and to determine clarifications for updated ratings. Once the clubs have all off this information, the new ratings will be published at the start of next season for score-posting.