Course Rating and Slope Calculator
Work out a course's Slope Rating from its Course Rating and Bogey Rating, and see how hard that course plays compared with an average one.
Slope Rating Calculation
Formula: (Bogey Rating − Course Rating) × 5.381 for men, or × 4.24 for women.
What a scratch golfer is expected to shoot.
What a bogey golfer is expected to shoot.
The USGA uses a different multiplier for each.
Slope Rating Chart
| Slope Range | Difficulty | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| 55 – 95 | Easy | Short, open and forgiving. Higher handicappers give back strokes here. |
| 96 – 112 | Below Average | Slightly easier than the standard course. Many municipal courses sit here. |
| 113 | Average | The benchmark. Your Course Handicap equals your Handicap Index here. |
| 114 – 130 | Above Average | Most good private and resort courses. You receive extra strokes here. |
| 131 – 155 | Very Difficult | Championship tees, heavy water and forced carries. Punishing for high handicaps. |
How It Works
Course Rating
The score a scratch golfer is expected to shoot from a given set of tees. It is written to one decimal place, such as 71.5, and it measures how long and demanding the course is for a good player.
Slope Rating
How much harder the course plays for a bogey golfer than for a scratch golfer. The wider that gap, the higher the Slope, and the more strokes a higher handicapper receives.
What Course Rating and Slope Rating Actually Measure
Every set of tees on every rated golf course carries two numbers, and they answer two different questions. The Course Rating is the score a scratch golfer is expected to shoot from those tees, written to one decimal place, such as 71.5. It measures how hard the course is for a good player.
The Slope Rating answers something else entirely: how much harder the course plays for an ordinary golfer than for a scratch golfer. A long course with wide fairways and few hazards is difficult for everybody in roughly the same way, so its Slope is modest. A course with forced carries over water, deep rough and small greens punishes a 20-handicapper far more than it punishes a scratch player, and its Slope is high.
That is why two courses can share a Course Rating of 71.5 and still play completely differently for you. The Slope is the number that tells you which one will hurt.
How to Calculate Slope Rating
Slope Rating is derived from the gap between two ratings. Alongside the Course Rating, every rated tee also has a Bogey Rating — the score a bogey golfer is expected to shoot, meaning roughly a 20-handicap man or a 24-handicap woman. The formula is:
Slope Rating = (Bogey Rating − Course Rating) × 5.381 for men, or × 4.24 for women.
The two multipliers exist because the gap between a scratch and a bogey player is not the same for men and women, and the system corrects for that so a Slope of 130 means the same thing on any course, anywhere.
Example Calculation
Take a men’s tee with a Course Rating of 71.5 and a Bogey Rating of 96.2. The gap is 24.7 strokes. Multiply by 5.381 and you get 132.9, which rounds to a Slope Rating of 133 — a demanding course where a mid-handicapper will receive well above their Handicap Index in strokes.
Now take a gentler layout: Course Rating 70.0, Bogey Rating 91.0. The gap is 21.0, and 21.0 × 5.381 gives 113. That is not a coincidence. A 21-stroke gap between scratch and bogey play is the definition of an average golf course, which is why 113 is the number the whole handicap system is built around.
What Your Slope Rating Number Means
Slope Rating is always a whole number between 55 and 155. Anything below 113 is easier than average and anything above it is harder. In practice the vast majority of courses land between 105 and 145, and the extremes are rare.
A Slope in the 90s usually means a short, open course with little trouble — the kind where a high handicapper gives strokes back rather than receiving them. The 120s and 130s cover most good private and resort courses. Above 140 you are looking at championship tees with heavy water, forced carries and severe rough, where a 20-handicap round can unravel quickly.
Why Slope Matters to Your Handicap
Your Handicap Index is portable, but it is not the number of strokes you play off. Before you tee off, it is converted into a Course Handicap using the Slope Rating of the tees you have chosen:
Course Handicap = Handicap Index × (Slope Rating / 113) + (Course Rating − Par)
Because the Slope sits in that formula as a fraction of 113, a course rated 130 gives you about 15 percent more strokes than an average one, and a course rated 100 gives you about 12 percent fewer. A 15-handicap receives roughly 17 strokes at Slope 130 and roughly 13 at Slope 100 — a four-stroke swing caused by nothing but the course you drove to that morning.
Slope also appears every time you post a score. The Score Differential for each round divides by the Slope of the tees you played, which is how a good round on a brutal course counts for more than the same score on an easy one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is 113 the average Slope Rating?
When the USGA built the Slope system, 113 was the average Slope Rating of golf courses in the United States, and it was fixed as the standard. A course rated exactly 113 is average by definition, and on it your Course Handicap equals your Handicap Index before the Course Rating adjustment.
Can I calculate the Slope Rating of my own course?
You can work out the arithmetic with this calculator if you know the Course Rating and Bogey Rating, but only an authorised golf association may issue an official Slope Rating. Rating teams measure yardage, elevation, hazards, green speed, rough height and roughly a dozen other obstacle factors on site. The formula is the last step of a long process, not the whole of it.
Is a higher Slope Rating good or bad?
Neither — it describes the course, not its quality. A high Slope means the course is disproportionately hard on higher handicaps, so those players receive more strokes to compensate. If you are a low handicapper, a high Slope works against you, because your opponents are given more shots than they would be on an easier layout.
Why do men’s and women’s tees use different multipliers?
The bogey golfer is defined differently for each: about a 20 handicap for men and about a 24 for women. The 5.381 and 4.24 multipliers scale each gap onto the same 55 to 155 range, so a Slope of 125 describes the same relative difficulty whichever set of tees it belongs to.
Where do I find my course’s Course Rating and Slope Rating?
They are printed on the scorecard, usually in a small table beside the yardages, with a separate pair for every set of tees. They also appear in your national association’s course directory and in most handicap apps. Always take the pair that matches the tees you actually played — using the wrong row is one of the most common scoring errors in club golf.