Slope is a USGA term which is used to help to compare courses.

In the USGA system, the "rating" of a course would be the expected score of a scratch player based on the length of the course and hazards (trees, bunkers, etc).

The slope provides a gradient of difficulty. So two courses could have the same rating but different slopes. The course with the higher slope will result in higher scores from non-scratch players. The slope is calculated from the course rating, an idealize bogey player and hazards.


For more info see:
http://www.myscorecard.com/cgi-bin/h...pinfo.pl?hcap9