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In 1998 I volunteered to the South Carolina Golf Association (SCGA) as I wanted to give "something back" to the game I love. They were happty to accept my volunteering and assigned me to a course rating team in the Upstate. I was to contact Harry Wilson in Anderson.
I called Harry and expressed my interest in helping the SCGA. Harry was the team captian for the Upstate Course Rating Team and I discovered he was living "just around the corner" from me. Harry asked if I could meet him at a golf course in the Upstate so he could explain USGA Coure Rating and show me how it was done.
At the course, Harry showed me the USGA Course Rating Guide and the USGA Form 1 that data where data is recorded. He explained the 10 obstacles that needed to be rated on each hole:
Prior to 1987 every golf course rating was based on yardage alone. The USGA created a task group to come up with a better method of assigning a rating to a course.
A system, based upon ten obstacles that golfer faces when playing a hole. The obstacles were evaluatd by volunteer course rating using the new USGA Course Rating Guide.
Each Tee Box for each hole is rated for both a scratch and bogey golfer. This leads to the calculate of a Tee Box new Rating and Slope, which evaluates how difficul the course plays for the Bogey Golfer.
Raters use a USGA Form 1 to records their evaluation of the 10 obstacles for both golfers. They stop when the have finished rating the green for that hole, move away from the green, and look up the obstacle's rating values in the Guide which they record on the Form 1. The USGA Form 1, for both front and back nines, is forwarded to the State Golf Association for entry into the USGA Course Rating Program. This produces each Tee Box's Rating and Slope.
It takes a rating team about 4.5 hours to rate all 18 holes a course.
I learned, after working with Harry for 9 years that he was spending hours after each rating going over the Form 1 for each tee box and, if necessary, re-writing the Form 1 to make it easy to read by the State Golf Association.
With my backgound in Expert System I knew I would greatly reduce Harry's time by having a computer do what he was doing.
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