Check the Bogey Ratings

It’s never fun when you have to take clubhead covers off and put them back on multiple times per hole.  Not many golfers enjoy going on a golf trip and getting beat up by playing the longest tee set on the course, no matter how manly it makes them feel.  A good way for the average golfer to choose what set of tees to play is to find out the Bogey Rating of each tee.  If you consider yourself a ‘bogey golfer’, try to find a Bogey Rating around 92.0 or less to make sure you can expect to have a good time.  In most cases, this will likely result in playing the middle tee or even one tee forward.  After all, this is a time when golfers are being urged to ‘tee it forward’ to have fun and enjoy better scores.

The Bogey Rating is an evaluation of the overall difficulty of the golf course under normal course and weather conditions for the bogey golfer. It is equal to the average of the better half of a bogey golfer’s scores.  It takes into account the length of the course, proximity and abundance of hazards and obstacles, and the skills of the bogey golfer.  According to the USGA Course Rating System, the bogey golfer, on average, hits the ball 200 yards off the tee, and 170 yards off the ground.  Therefore, length plays a major factor in determining the Bogey Rating.  The presence of obstacles also has more impact on the bogey golfer as opposed to the scratch golfer.  Ultimately, the Bogey Rating is used to determine the more commonly published Slope Rating.  A Slope Rating can be misleading to a bogey golfer since it is dependent on the Course Rating.

Most course scorecards do not publish the Bogey Rating, but they are listed on your club’s Course Handicap conversion charts.  They can also be obtained at www.gapgolf.org on our member club pages.

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