Tempean scores state links - Tempe Daily News - May 16, 1986

DateMay 16, 1986

MediumEmulsion on paper

Dimensions5 x 5 in. (12.7 x 12.7 cm)

ClassificationsDocumentary Artifact

Catalog number2001.19.5077

DescriptionFrom an article, "Tempean scores state links", appearing on Page A5, 'People', Tempe Daily News, Friday, May 16, 1986:

Jean Selleh is an avid golfer, but she could get teed off about teeing-off before the next year or so is over.

By then the long-time Tempean will have seen more Arizona golf courses than she ever knew existed.

The film negative of this photograph is housed in box 2G9-A.
First vice-president and 2 1/2 year board member of the Women's Golf Association of Arizona, Selleh is participating as one of 5 four-member rating teams which will visit every golf course in the state to help rate them for the U.S. Golf Association's new slope rating system.

Slope rating, expected to be in use at golf courses nationwide within the next couple of years will give a basis for deciding a golfer's handicap on any golf course played, according to the difficulty of the course.

"It is supposed to be more equitable for everyone," says Selleh. "If one course is easier or harder than another, there will be a chart there to tell you your handicap will be one stroke more or two strokes more."

She explains, "Right now I have a 20 handicap and anyplace I play, I play with a 20 handicap. With the slope rating, though, if Mesa Country Club rates me at a 20 handicap, I might go to Tempe Municipal Golf Course and have an 18 handicap."

About half of the states already are on slope ratings, says Selleh. "In Arizona, the men will be on it by this fall."

But the system won't go into effect for the state's golfing women until the WGAA teams complete its job and sends golf course "score cards" to the USGA.

And that, says Selleh, means playing every 18-hole golf course in the state - "hundreds of them because there's a new golf course going in every day."

But before you play a course, says Selleh - who already has helped rate 10 courses from Mesa to as far as Kingman and Safford - "You have to walk it off" to check distances from tee-boxes to holes and view course hazards, etc.

In a two-day training seminar put on by a USGA professional, the women were instructed how to give points on about 10 different items ranging from number of sand traps and water hazards to the uphill or downhill slope of the fairway.

Says Selleh, a golfer since 1947, "Playing the course is a lot better than walking it."

The walk then play process takes about seven hours. So, when the team is out of town, says Selleh, "We usually spend the night there because we're just too tired to drive back."

One thing, though, the ratings teams won't mind a bit doing their job this summer. They've save the state's northern courses for summer.

NOTE: 2001.19.5076; 5077; & 5078 are all related

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