Trump’s Insanely Hard Palm Beach Golf Course

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 2:55PM EST · Published Feb 12, 8:20AM EST

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Trump’s Insanely Hard Palm Beach Golf Course — © Wikimedia Commons

The Trump International Golf Club is home to one of the hardest course in the U.S. From the back tees, it has a “slope” (a rating of difficulty based on a bogey level golfer) of 155 which is the highest rating a course can receive.

According to the USGA’s description of slope:

A “Slope Rating” is the USGA’s mark that indicates the measurement of the relative difficulty of a course for players who are not scratch golfers compared to the USGA Course Rating (e.g., compared to the difficulty of a course for scratch golfers). A Slope Rating is computed from the difference between the Bogey Rating and the USGA Course Rating. The lowest Slope Rating is 55 and the highest is 155. A golf course of standard playing difficulty has a Slope Rating of 113.

The Trump course’s 155 slope rating is based on playing the course from the back tees, which stretches the course to 7,326 yards. It is a par 72 course. The course was built in 1999 and created by famous designer Jim Fazio.

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At 155, it is among the 100 or so most difficult course in the U.S. Among the famous course with similar slopes–the Ocean Course along the coast of South Carolina, the public Black Course at Bethpage on Long Island, Pine Valley Golf Club in Pine Valley, NJ which is often called the hardest course in the U.S., the ancient Winged Foot West Course about 30 miles north of New York City, the home course to the PGA known as the TPC at Sawgrass, located in Ponte Vedra, FL, Spyglass in Pebble Beach, CA, Pinehurst in North Carolina, Medinah in Illinois, and the course at Yale University.

Trump has a low handicap. He needs one to play his own course.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.