PWGA News

Local Rating Calibration Seminars at Castlewood Country Club and The Ridge Golf Course

By: Kaaren Walsh, Course Rating Director

In the last rating blog posting, an update was given on the USGA Rating Calibration at Aliso Viejo Golf Course. As a follow up, the rating directors for both PWGA and WGANC felt that this knowledge should be shared with all raters of both organizations.


So two local seminars were set up so that the raters would not have to travel too far to attend and to ensure that the rating of all courses in Northern California would be consistent between the two organizations. Approximately 50 raters attended the seminar at Castlewood and 30 the one at The Ridge. Four women from the Northern Nevada Women’s Golf Association also attended.
The raters were given a short quiz taken from the USGA Calibration Quiz to take before hand. It was interesting to see what everyone knew and what areas need work.

Both seminars essentially followed the same format. First Jerry Moreno, our rating trainer extraordinaire, explained all the changes that went into effect this year. After that the raters broke into groups and went out on the course to rate a few holes. Lots of discussion took place and lots of learning happened. Everyone had a chance to use the stimpmeters and do various measurements of each hole. The quiz answers were distributed and explained. The master rating team then talked about how they would have rated the same holes. All of the teams were happy with their ratings. There was lively discussion at times however.

Now the teams are ready to rate the courses in their areas that are due. We try to rate courses every eight years. However if a course has undergone extensive renovation, we re-rate within a year. In addition, if a course or PWGA club thinks the course has changed enough to affect the rating, we will do a rating more often or just rate the hole or two that has changed.