A s the youngest of four, Laurie Steenrod’s golf journey started at the age of 7 when her golfing parents introduced her to the game in what she describes as “Small Town, USA” – Freeport, Illinois. That introduction blossomed into a life-long passion as both a player and volunteer. One of Laurie’s primary interests is Course Rating—Laurie has chaired the CGA Course Rating Committee since the CGA and Colorado Women’s Golf Association (CWGA) merged in 2018. She is also a competitive player and a long-time high school golf coach from Aurora, CO. Her home course is Saddle Rock Golf Course.
KK: How often do you get to play golf? And how many CGA tournaments do you play each summer?
LS: Oh, that varies a bit, anywhere from 2-4 days a week depending on ladies’ day, 18-play, CGA tournament play or some other event. I usually play in at least two CGA tournaments each summer.
KK: What is your association with the CGA?
LS: I started volunteering, was on the board, and was a course rater for the CWGA all the same year when I retired in 2011. I was the Course Rating Chair of the CWGA toward the end of that organization. The CWGA and CGA merged at the start of 2018. After the merger, I continued as the CGA Course Rating Committee Chair.
KK: How did you get started in Course Rating? Had you been exposed to it before you started? And who trained you?
LS: I was told by the Course Rating committee back in 2011 that they had their eye on me for a while. They asked me to join the committee once I retired. They had showed me a sheet full of hundreds of boxes to write numbers on and said, “Do you want to take a look at this?”. Long story short, I got trained on course with a sheet of paper and a book. I knew absolutely nothing and after a few minutes my head was spinning. We do not train people that way anymore. Now, we give people a book and have Zoom meetings. Then we get them on the course to do little practice ratings. It is so hard and moves so quickly. With the CWGA, when they started to train me, I was considered an apprentice and was assigned a mentor. My mentor was an experienced rater, so I went out on most rates with her. We have a new system now. We make sure to always pair an apprentice rater with a new experienced rater from week to week.
KK: What is the role of the CGA Course Rating Committee Chair? And what does it entail?
LS: Every golf course in the state of Colorado that is a member of the Colorado Golf Association is scheduled to be rerated every eight years. We put every course on the eight-year schedule to make sure none of them fall through the cracks. This year we are rating about 31 courses. We usually do about 28-32 courses every summer. We generally do not course rate until it is active playing season and the trees have leaves because trees are one of the obstacles that are made note of during Course Rating. They are a factor in how difficult or not difficult a course is. We do less guessing as to what the course will play like if we wait for the trees to leaf-out. The earliest we start is the 3rd or 4th week of May. And we try not to go much past September. Although we can run into all kinds of emergency situations that lead us to rate into late September. This year we chose not to do any Course Ratings during the two USGA events that were in the state, so now we still have about 1/3 of the courses left to go.
KK: Could you explain what goes into Course Rating?
LS: Of course. Distance. The length of the course is the primary driver of Course Rating. There are 5 factors that adjust the course length. Let’s say we are at a mountain course where all the holes are downhill. Let’s say it measures out at 6500 yards, but it plays closer to 6000 yards. That is the yardage we go from, not the precise measure, but how the course really plays. Then there are 10 obstacles: trees, bunkers, water, width of the fairway, height of the rough, etc. Interestingly enough, Course Rating is only for two players: Scratch (zero handicap) and Bogey for both men and women. The USGA tells us how far they each hit it, and we go only to their landing area. In those landing areas, we look for obstacles that are near or closely border the 20-yard landing zone. Any obstacles that are on the hole but aren’t near one of the golfers ‘s landing zones do not come into play for them from that tee set. We are getting more and more requests to do shorter tee sets for men and longer for women. That makes us busier than we were 5 years ago.
KK: How long does it take to rate a course?
LS: We are usually a little slower than the pace of golf. WE spend a fair amount of time on the green. We get a lot of information from the green. We also want to make sure we are all on the same page before going to the next hole, as well. There is a lot of conversation between raters. Something that is very interesting is, if I am rating the same set of tees as a man, the male bogey golfer hits it about the same as a female scratch, so we share landing areas. There are lots of charts full of numbers that we base our ratings off of. Beyond that, we have a minor amount of subjectivity to make some minor adjustments to what we think is going to happen when there is a ball in play.
KK: Are there any qualifications you need to have to be a course rater?
LS: To be a course rater, you must have a certain index. I think it’s twenty-ish or below. There is a handicap limit because the USGA needs to be confident that we more than less know how a scratch and a bogey golfer will play. Not everybody can be a course rater.
KK: Do you believe that your experience with Course Rating has made you a better golfer?
LS: I certainly look at courses differently when I am playing. I now say in my head, “Ooo…Look at that obstacle. I have to carry that, or I have to go around that. I have to navigate that in some way.”
KK: Have you rated all the courses that you play in CGA tournaments? And does that affect how you play?
LS: Yes. It is certainly helpful to have seen the course, whether I have played it or rated it before. I will tell you one of the toughest this year because they have topography issues is Heritage Eagle Bend. That ball can go any number of ways on that course, so it was a very hard course to rate.
KK: In addition to yourself, how many Course Rating experts are involved?
LS: There is currently a group of 8 of us that oversee these rates. We call ourselves “Captains”, but not all 8 of us are at every Course Rating. The rating team at each course varies but there will always be at least two “captains” present, and every rater must be a CGA member. The “Captains” create the paperwork for the rate and make final decisions on the greens if there are some questions. As we rate, we use whatever tools are at our disposal. That is in large part Google Earth to double check doglegs.
KK: Where and when do you coach golf?
LS: I coach the Girls’ Golf Team in the spring at Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, CO. Our home course is Meadow Hills Golf Course. This came about because I was playing Meadow Hills about 25 years ago and the coach at the time tracked me down and asked me if I could take the program for a year. We knew each other because we both taught P.E. in the school district. I didn’t know much about the program, but I said, “Sure”, and have been coaching there ever since.
KK: From your experience with the CGA, is there anything that you have learned that you want other people to be aware of?
LS: I just finished 25 years of volunteering for the City of Aurora Golf. I got into that while I was still working. I started playing golf when I was little, but none of my pals played. I think that is the key. Girls should be socializing in golf more than they are today. I will tell every man that’ll listen to me, “You have got to take her and her buddy out on the course. Get her out there and get her exposed to golf even if she only wants to drive the cart for now. See what happens.” This article originally ran in Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine. CGA members receive the first three months FREE when they subscribe.