WHS explained: When will provisional course ratings be upgraded?

At the very heart of the World Handicap System are golf course ratings. It’s the metric that forms the basis for everything else – from difficulty to our own WHS indexes.

All across the Home Unions, teams of experienced volunteers have spent countless hours, despite the pandemic, visiting thousands of courses to deliver course and slope ratings and give us the basis for measuring our own ability as golfers.

Late last year, England Golf appointed Jonathan Ward as course rating coordinator. His role is to oversee the entire rating programme in the country and to support county and regional advisors to ensure that all of the 1,800 clubs have a course that’s rated to WHS requirements.

A former county development officer for the governing body, and the county secretary at the Durham Golf Union for nearly seven years before taking up his new role at England Golf, Jonathan is steeped in the game.

We sat down with him for a lengthy chat which we will release in four parts.

In this part, we ask Jonathan about the provisional ratings handed out to courses in the new system and whether that has now been addressed…

“We have a few stragglers but that’s possibly more to do with them making big changes to the course and it’s pointless rating until any those changes have been made,” Jonathan explained.

“A couple of counties are ahead of the game but for most, the second rating cycle will be commencing in 2022 as each course is due to be rated at least every 10 years. 

“So we’re starting cycle two and all counties are looking to rate 10 per cent of their courses each year going forward. For some, that might only be four, five, or six clubs, but in the bigger counties that might be up to 20 courses this year.”

So what sort of things will they be looking at? Will they consider golfers’ scores, or leave it up to clubs? How will you achieve that level of consistency you’ve talked about?

Jonathan continued: “The level of consistency is obviously down to the training, the ability, and the knowledge of the raters.

“They’re the frontline and most rating volunteers are appointed by county bodies. They are given plenty of on-the-job training and we have regular calibration-type exercises where we ask team leaders to perform some ratings – they have been online in the last couple of years – to make sure no one’s taken their eye off the ball.

“You may have seen the Course Rating guide, which goes into a lot of depth and the team leaders refer to that during their ratings to make sure they get those measurements from the right places.

“Every rating we do builds up more experience and knowledge. It’s my role to have those guides and training documents and everything on ratings for our team leaders to have access to and we’re here if they need to pick up the phone.”

• MORE IN THIS SERIES: What’s the difference between course and slope rating?

• MORE IN THIS SERIES: How are course ratings carried out?

• MORE IN THIS SERIES: Why aren’t more tees rated for female golfers?

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