Why Do We Rate Golf Courses? ⛳️

Why Do We Rate Golf Courses? ⛳️

We’re here today at Stromness Golf Club and we’re up here for the week. We’re rating four courses this week all in the one trip. We’re visiting South Ronaldsay Golf Course, Westray Golf Club, Orkney Golf Club and we’re here today at Stromness. Due to the challenges of Orkney being remote, we brought a team with us to support clubs on various aspects this week. So primarily the Course Rating, VMS and also participation and junior golf. We’re covering all that this week The reason we rate golf courses for Course Rating and the slope is because no two golf course play the same. You could have two golf courses – 6000 yards, par 70, both very different playing characteristics. One completely flat, no elevation, no real golfing problems. Whereas the next golf course has a lot of golfing difficulties, challenges. You could have extreme rough, bunkers, trees, higher topography, close distance to the lateral, out-of-bounds, more undulating greens and so on. And if that manifests itself around 18 holes, You’ve got a very different golfing problem. That’s why we use the Course Rating System and not par when two golf courses could be very different. So we aim to rate up to 60 courses a year. That’s depending on the dates that courses are due on the rota and also resources and availability of the volunteer teams around the country, that we’re very thankful for who’ve been trained and rate the courses for us. You know, you can move the reds forward and back, so you get that average over the 18 holes of that 100 yards, which allows you the measured points for the Course Rating. So the benefits in having a current course and slope rating is to ensure that members and visitors have an up to date WHS™ Handicap, to ensure they can return scores against a measured and rated golf course. It’s done on a 10-year cycle to ensure course mature, changes are accounted for and handicaps are kept up to date. The last 10/11 years we’ve done a lot of alterations i.e bunker repair, I think we’ve done 30-odd bunkers in ten years, we’ve rebuilt two greens, we’ve rebuilt 12 tees, we’ve grown in some rough, we’ve given it more definition. So there’s been a lot of changes, not just for the (2025) Island Games, but just the course needed it itself. There were some trees planted in 2010/2011 or so, so they’ve really matured and come on. It’s a bit difficult here to grow trees in the wind, but what we do have is surviving. And that’s giving great definition to the course. We were due a re-rating anyway and Covid kind of got in the road of that. So, we also have the Island Games coming up here shortly next year (2025). So we took the opportunity to get, like the other courses in Orkney, completely re-rated because we’ve done a bit of work over the years. We’ve installed sort of new bunkers, shortened a couple of the par threes and re-done the greens around them as well. And there’s been quite a lot of ongoing work over the years, just kind of shaping the rough, changing the fairways putting in a fairway bunker as well here or there, and a green-side one beside the last. So there’s been a kind of a progression of work over the years. We appreciate, obviously the likes of yourself at Scottish Golf, it’s a bit of a journey as you’ve found out to come out here. But it’s good to get all the courses done at the same time as well.

Why do we rate golf courses, why don’t we just use par to compare them? Find out from our Course Rating team who rated four courses on a trip to Orkney in the summer of 2024 ahead of the 2025 Island Games.

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