Golf Glossary
Definition: Slope Rating
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Slope Rating
The slope rating (aka, slope, course slope) is a number that describes the difficulty of a particular course for a bogey golfer.
A slope rating can assume any value between 55 and 155. The easiest course will have a slope rating of 55; and the hardest course, a slope rating of 155. A course of average difficulty will have a slope rating of 113.
Actually, each course has several different slope ratings, depending on the tees that a golfer plays from. Thus, the slope rating might be 128 from the gold tees, 122 from the blue tees, 117 from the white tees, 110 from the green tees, and 115 from the red tees.
The slope ratings from each tee are usually stated on the course scorecard.
The slope rating is used to compute both a handicap index and a course handicap.