About the rankings

Rankings are updated weekly. So if you submit a course rating, it will not immediately be reflected in the overall ratings. This is to reduce overhead, but mainly to prevent someone from seeing the immediate impact of his rating and maybe being tempted to adjust his rating to result in a different end result.

A course must have at least 5 ratings before it will appear on the rankings. All ratings for the last 2 years are taken into account when compiling the rankings, unless a course has not got 5 valid ratings in the past year. In that case, the time period is extended to included 5 valid ratings. So make sure your most recent playing date is always entered with your course rating. We have a straight forward, but effective, formula for calculating averages: all scores within 10 points of the median (exact middle number of all submitted scores) will count towards the average. That's it! This is a common statistical practice and helps to give a better average rating. It is very effective in cutting out extreme ratings, while including the bulk of the scores in a fairly big range.

It may seem like a good idea to push a course by rating it very high, but you are in fact doing the course an injustice as your mark will be discarded and won't affect the ranking. Rather rank fairly and have your mark count.

Important note: Only if you have rated at least 10 courses will your ratings count towards the rankings. First of all it helps you to establish a creditable personal rankings. We also believe that the more courses you rate, the better you will become at it. Rating just one or two courses without reference to more courses is just not creditable.

About ratings

Below are a few simple guidelines to assist in course ratings. At first the 12 categories might seem a bit overwhelming, but they in fact make rating easier. The more criteria there is (and when they are clearly explained, as on the rating screens), the less confusion and own interpretation there can be. A simple case of 'more is better'. The first few ratings might take you a bit longer to complete, but once you get the hang of it, it shouldn't take long to rate a course.

Be objective in your ratings and apply the same standards to all courses. Do not favour courses you merely like more, but apply the rating criteria fairly for all courses. Think about what the rating criteria means and think critical when applying ratings. The final result might not be what you had expected, but we are trying to rate courses based on a set of criteria which we believe indicates how good the course is. We are not rating courses to see which is the most popular, friendly or best value for money.

You are only allowed one rating per course, but you can edit any rating at any time. Just click on the "Rate this course" button again and it will be defaulted with your previous rating. Now you can make adjustments, most commonly when you have played the course more recently with a new hcp. We encourage you to continually review your ratings. As you get familiar and comfortable with the system, you will also learn to see courses in a differently and changes in ratings are therefor natural.

Google Earth is a great tool to assist you in evaluating a course. Use it to eg make sure of length and direction of holes, or maybe spot hazards you didn't notice when playing the course. Sadly not all courses are currently available in high resolution on Google Earth. For your convenience, we provide a Google Earth download with just about every golf course in South Africa already mapped. Download it here.

In our efforts to be unswayed by course status or service quality or green fee pricing etc. etc., the rating system completely excludes criteria covering these areas. We are evaluating the course from the first tee to the final green and NOT other factors which admittedly do enhance or detract from the overall experience.

Transparency

Our system is completely transparent. That means everyone gets insight into how the rankings are compiled. Not only can you see the breakdown of a course's rating per category, but also view the individual ratings submitted by other users and how they rated other courses as well. Any rating you see, you can click on to get a detailed breakdown of it. Any displayed username, you can click on to see that user's complete ratings.

We strongly recommend you change your display name in your profile if you wish to protect your true identity. Your display name is the only information others get to see of you, so if that is something anonymous, your true identity is safe.

We reserve the right to remove ratings and/or users we feel are abusing the system or clearly not submitting realistic ratings.