For golf courses
Maps for your course
The survey data and 3D renders behind our prints, made for the course itself: hole maps for your scorecard, a yardage book, a routing map of the whole course, a course guide for your golfers' phones, a grounds report for your superintendent, and a hole analysis that plays your course thousands of times.
Every map is made by a cartography professional with over a decade of experience, from the same USGS survey of the ground, course map and aerial photos as our prints.
Hole maps for the scorecard
Each hole is rendered in 3D from the survey, as our prints are, with the land outside the hole cut away. The 100, 150 and 200 yard markers sit on the line of play, measured to the centre of the green, and each hole shows the carry over the hazards that matter most from the back tee.
A yardage book, a page for every hole
Each page is measured from the course map and the survey. You check the numbers on the course before anything is printed.
| On each page | How it is measured |
|---|---|
| Every tee's yards, par and handicap | From your card |
| The 100, 150 and 200 yard markers | To the centre of the green, along the line of play |
| Reach and carry for bunkers and water | From the back tee to the near and the far edge |
| The green's depth and width | Along the line it is played in on |
| Uphill or downhill | The green's height above or below the tee |
| The green's slopes | From the survey's own ground points on the green |
4¼ × 7 in, the largest book the Rules of Golf allow in play when it holds maps of greens, with each green drawn at 1:480 or smaller.
Green slope maps from the survey
The USGS LiDAR survey measures the ground of every green, a few points in each square metre. We fit each green's surface from those points and draw its slope in 1% bands, with arrows down the fall line and a grid every 5 yards from the front.
Where two surveys cover a course, we check one against the other. On the course shown here, two surveys flown twelve years apart agree on the slopes of 16 of its 18 greens.
A green rebuilt since the survey was flown won't match it, so we ask about any work on your greens first.
A routing map of the whole course
Every hole rendered together in 3D from the USGS survey of the ground, the course map and aerial photos. Each hole's line of play runs from a numbered badge at its back tee to a flag on its green. The practice range is labelled, and the course's name, par, yards and scorecard sit around it.
A 36 × 24 in poster on a dark or a paper ground, for the clubhouse, the pro shop or the cart barn. It also comes as a plan, straight down with north up, for the back of a scorecard or a cart-barn sign, and as the course alone on a clear background for a designer.
And as a video: the camera circles the whole course once, slowly, at the poster's own angle, for the course's website, its social posts or a screen in the clubhouse.
A course guide on your golfers' phones
A web page golfers open from a QR code on the scorecard, a cart or the first tee, and can add to their home screen. Nothing to install, no account and no ads.
Each hole's 3D map shows the yards to the front, centre and back of the green from where the golfer stands (the phone's GPS), and the yards to reach and carry each bunker and water hazard ahead. A tap anywhere measures to that spot, and from it to the green.
There is a scorecard kept on the phone, and a page for the course's own links: tee times, the pro shop's phone.
It works without a signal once it has opened, and the golfer's location never leaves the phone. It gives distances only, with no slopes, so golfers can use it in competition unless a local rule bans distance-measuring devices.
It is a small website of plain files, with no server to run or keep up. Phone GPS is good to a few yards.
A grounds report for your superintendent
A report measured from the course map and the USGS LiDAR survey, without a site visit: the whole course in numbers, then a page for every hole.
Three of its 28 pages, for the same concept course. Tap a page to see it full size.
| In the report | How it is measured |
|---|---|
| Every surface's acres and square feet, hole by hole | From the course map, each area with a ± for an outline about a foot and a half off all round |
| Each green's size, slope and hole-location area | The survey's ground points on the green; the area flat enough for a hole (under 3%), against the USGA's guide of about 2,800 sq ft |
| Which way water leaves each green | The green's surface in the survey, as front, back, left or right of the line of play |
| Hours of direct sun on every green, and the trees that take the most | The sun's path on a clear day in mid April, on the longest day and in mid October, against the survey's trees |
| Where runoff crosses the fairways, and where water can pool | A flow model on the survey's bare ground (drains and pipes don't show in it) |
| Turf too steep for a riding mower | Mown turf over 15 degrees, steeper than most ride-on mowers are rated for |
| Bunker sand, hole by hole | Tons at 4 and at 6 inches deep |
| Tee space, hole by hole | Against your rounds, at the USGA's rule of thumb of 100 sq ft per 1,000 rounds |
The numbers also come as spreadsheets (CSV), and the mapped shapes as a GIS file (GeoJSON) for your own maps.
It is a planning aid, not a survey. The report says how far to trust each kind of number. Check the ones that matter on the course and tell us what differs: we correct the map and send the report again.
New: the hole analysis
Your course, played tens of thousands of times
Eight kinds of golfer, from a long-hitting scratch player to a 30-handicap and a 125-yard hitter, play every hole of your course thousands of times on its own map, ground and trees. Then we count what your crew sees every day: which bunkers get the footprints, where balls are lost, where the divots go, and who your tees are too long for.
Play a hole a thousand times
Pick a golfer. Each dot is one of its tee shots, from the tees that fit it, flown over the survey's ground and through its trees.
in a bunkerin the watertrees or long grass
| Its tee shots | Share |
|---|
This example needs JavaScript. Every hole page of the report shows the same dots.
Hole 2 of the concept course: a real course under a made-up name, played by the model. Nobody's own shots are in it: each golfer is a set of published averages from the USGA Course Rating System, Arccos, Shot Scope and Mark Broadie's Golfmetrics.
A day on the hole, the way your crew sees it
The course's own mix of golfers on the tees they play, scaled to your rounds and season. Switch the layers to see where the drives come down, where the iron shots take divots, where approaches mark the green and where balls are lost.
This example needs JavaScript. The report has each layer on every hole's page.
Every bunker, by balls a day
Before you rebuild a bunker or rake all of them every morning, see which ones your golfers find. The ledger ranks every bunker by entries a day in your season, with how to rake it.
| Bunker | A day | Entries | Raking | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13-B4 | 19 | full rake daily | ||
| 12-B1 | 18 | full rake daily | ||
| 13-B1 | 17 | full rake daily | ||
| 16-B1 | 15 | full rake daily | ||
| 10-B4 | 14 | full rake daily | ||
| 14-B2 | 13 | full rake daily | ||
| 18-B1 | 13 | full rake daily | ||
| 4-B1 | 11 | full rake daily | ||
| 32 more, busiest first, in the report | ||||
| 11-B1 | 1.2 | spot-rake, full rake twice a week | ||
| 15-B3 | 1.2 | spot-rake, full rake twice a week | ||
| 11-B2 | 1.1 | spot-rake, full rake twice a week | ||
| 2-B1 | 0.7 | spot-rake, full rake twice a week | ||
| 10-B1 | 0 | rarely entered: rake after rain or before events | ||
The busiest and the quietest bunkers of the concept course, at 31,000 rounds a year; the report lists every one, with each kind of golfer's share. Pinehurst No. 2 cut its bunker hours by three quarters by spot-raking footprints on quiet days (USGA Green Section Record, 2015).
| In the report | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Bunkers and water | How often each kind of golfer finds each one, the ones rarely in play, the ones only the shorter hitters find |
| Lost balls and pace | Where balls are searched for and lost, and the holes that run longest past their time par |
| Divots, ball marks, tee wear | Where iron shots come off the fairway, which greens take the most approaches, tee space against the play each set gets |
| Rough nobody reaches | The acres no ball comes to rest on, and what mowing them as native grass would save |
| Tees that fit | Who each set is too long for, and spots on your mapped grass for a shorter forward set |
| Carries, widths, greens | Forced carries from each tee, fairways narrow where the drives land, greens small for the approach they get |
| Trees in play | The single trees that stop the most shots, with their heights from the survey |
| The card | The stroke index as the World Handicap System would set it, and each golfer's score from each set against your ratings |
Check it in one morning
A model has never seen your golfers, so the report opens with what it predicts that your crew can check before anything else: the footprints on a Monday, the par-3 divot band, the marshal's slowest holes.
- Before raking on a Monday after a busy weekend, note which bunkers have footprints. The five the model has busiest: 13‑B4, 12‑B1, 13‑B1, 16‑B1, 10‑B4. The five quietest: 10‑B1, 2‑B1, 11‑B2, 15‑B3, 11‑B1.
- The par-3 tee taking the most iron shots: hole 8's (about 124 a day). Photograph its divot band beside the next busiest par 3's.
- The fairway with the most iron shots from turf (divots): hole 2, about 113 a day, in the band its page maps.
- Ask the marshal or starter for the three holes with the most searches. The model's: 7, 2, 3 (most on hole 7, left of the line, 293 yds from the Blue tees).
- Count ball marks on three greens at 10 a.m.: the model ranks hole 2's first, 16's in the middle and 4's last.
- The water the ball retriever should find fullest: 3‑W1 (across the line at 81 and 202 yds from Blue), about 37 a day.
The concept course's own checklist. Where it matches, the rest of the report stands on the same footing. Where it doesn't, it is usually the map: a tee set, the rough, the woods or the out-of-bounds line, and we run it again with your numbers.
What it is, and isn't
A planning aid made at a desk from public data: your course map, the USGS LiDAR survey of the ground and trees, and published averages of how golfers hit the ball. It says where golfers like yours land on the map as drawn, and the questions that raises.
It is not a survey, a design or a safety study. Its findings are candidates to walk with your superintendent, and any change to a tee, bunker, tree or boundary goes to a golf course architect on site.
Walk it with your superintendent before it goes any further.
| What we ask you for |
|---|
| Your scorecard, and the share of rounds from each set of tees if you have it |
| Rounds a year, green speed, rough height |
| Tee boxes, bunkers and tree work changed since the survey was flown |
Every year, before you spend
The survey is flown every few years. Your course changes every season. The analysis comes back when a decision does.
Before a project
What if?
The holes you are changing, played again with each option: a tee moved, a bunker grassed over, a tree taken out, the native cut back, a forward set. Before and after, for each kind of golfer, for the people who approve the spend.
Every August
The season in review
Your map brought up to date with the season's changes and the whole course played again, with two pages for the board on what changed: bunkers in and out of play, lost balls, tee wear, the forward tees.
A year on
The forward tees, checked
New forward tees played again where they were built, against the tee sheet's first year: who they now fit, and the next holes to do.
Tee signs, posters and your website
Every hole also comes on its own, cut out on a clear background, ready for a tee sign, a clubhouse poster, your website or your scorecard printer's layout.
Your members can order prints of their own hole-in-one or best round on the same holes: a 3D render as a photo, an etching or an oil painting, or a watercolor. See the sample prints.
Ask about your course
Email us your course's name and what you have in mind: scorecard maps, a yardage book, green maps, a routing map, a course guide, a grounds report, a hole analysis or art for signs. We map courses in the lower 48 states.