The Albatros Course has a hefty slope rating of 155, which is the highest slope rating a course can receive. If you do not want the challenge, then head over to the Aigle course, which is a bit more friendly and forgiving.
The South Course At Torrey Pines Golf Course — San Diego, California. While all the courses on the U.S. Open rotation are challenging, the South Course at Torrey Pines is among the most demanding.
Royal St George's is probably the most challenging course on offer in the Open rotation. In the 14 Championships at the course, all the winners beside one (Greg Norman in 1993 on -13) have finished with a winning score of five under par or worse.
Royal St George's certainly represents one of the most difficult tests of golf, requiring courage, confidence and solid ball striking. Severely undulating fairways make good scoring very tough indeed.
The course is consistently good, making it difficult to single out individual holes but a couple of stand-outs include, on the front nine, the testing par-4 4th where you must drive over one of Britain's tallest bunkers and, on the back nine, the brilliant par-5 14th where out-of-bounds all down the right side, a ...
What is a hard slope rating? If we know that the average slope rating of a golf course is 113, we can deduce that any golf course with a slope rating higher than 113 is more difficult than the average course. Don't be intimidated if you see a slope rating that is above 113.
(Eight of our top 50 were created by the man they call the "Marquis de Sod.") The Ocean has the highest combination of Slope Rating (155) and Course Rating (79.6) in America, according to the U.S. Golf Association.
As a beginner, there really is no sense in playing a tournament-caliber, $75-100 golf course yet - they're usually just tougher, longer and have faster, less forgiving greens. Short courses on the other hand are affordable, welcoming, quick to play and you should still get in all the shots you need to practice.
The long irons, like the one, two, and three iron, are the hardest golf irons to hit. These clubs have less loft than other clubs, require a fast swing speed to hit them well, and a smaller sweet spot makes off center hits more common.
The oldest of the majors is The Open Championship, commonly referred to as the "British Open" outside the United Kingdom.
Consider these points: Carnoustie has a Course Rating of 75.1 and a Slope Rating of 145 from the regular (yellow) tees, making it officially the hardest course in Scotland. (St. Andrews, by comparison, is 72.1/129, Royal Troon is 73.2/134, Muirfield is 73.0/133 and Turnberry is 75.3/133.)
The golf course at Rockliffe Hall has been designed with tournament play so it was always going to be long. However “long” sells this beast of a course a bit short as it's actually the longest golf course in Europe; measuring an astonishing 7,879 yards!
Jordan Spieth called it “the hardest test in all of golf.” Tiger Woods said a 10-handicap wouldn't break 100. Lee Trevino described it as the only course in the country “where you could step out right now–right now–and play the U.S. Open.” You get the gist. Oakmont's pretty tough. What makes it such a challenge?
Oakmont is generally considered the toughest U.S. Open host course and, in many ways, the perfect Open venue. At Oakmont in 2007 there were just eight under-par scores all week.
The higher the slope number, the harder the course is for the bogey golfer relative to the difficulty of the course for the scratch golfer. Slope numbers can range anywhere between 55 and 155 with the average slope in the United States being 120.
If you see a slope rating that falls anywhere in the double digits, you can expect that course to play rather easy, even for a bogey golfer. On the other hand, taking on a course with a slope rating in the 130's or 140's is going to present a serious challenge to a player with a mid or high handicap.
A scratch player essentially is one who can manage every aspect of their game, consistently, and can plot their way around the golf course hitting the right shots at the right time. A Scratch golfer will very rarely hit two bad shots in a row and has the mindset to recover rapidly from setbacks in a positive way.
You can. Royal St. George's, located in Sandwich, Kent, England — about 80 miles east of London — is a private club but allows public play during certain times and days of the week, albeit with one stipulation. Handicap verification is required upon check in, and all players must own a handicap index of 18.4 or less.
The deepest bunker in golf is named after a mountain range, and for good reason. It's called the Himalayas or Himalayan bunker, and it's a 40-foot-deep, 25-foot-wide bunker at Royal St. George's, a regular host of the British Open Championship.