Golf course GPS measurement?

aliikane · February 23, 2011

Does anybody know how golf course gps measures their yardage? Is there something in the cup to measure pin's exact distance.

I am starting to think the accuracy of GPS is more and more questionable. Today I had 189 to the hole, 195 to the back and 168 to the front. The problem was that flag was dead center of the7 green and no where near 6 yards from the back.

Hateto3Putt · February 23, 2011

[quote name='aliikane' timestamp='1298456540' post='3002276'] Does anybody know how golf course gps measures their yardage? Is there something in the cup to measure pin's exact distance. I am starting to think the accuracy of GPS is more and more questionable. Today I had 189 to the hole, 195 to the back and 168 to the front. The problem was that flag was dead center of the7 green and no where near 6 yards from the back. [/quote] 

Some courses/gps companies use an actual person to walk around with a receiver measuring the location of defined points.

Some courses/gps companies use satellite imagery coupled with other known defined points and measure to/from those points with mathematics.

My course with their cart installed gps units would mark the quadrant of the pins. When compared to a hand held laser, those pins were sometimes accurate.

As far as I know, no courses have anything the hole telling a gps where the pins are.....yet.

Your experience with the inaccuracy of GPS information is fairly routine.

TM_HOYER · February 23, 2011

Handheld GPS cannot give exact measurements to the hole. Some cart GPS can if the course programs the hole locations into their system and supplies it to the carts. With some handheld GPS's you can move a cursor to come close to the hole locations. And shortly Skycaddie will allow you to enter pin locations before the round using a pin sheet to give you yardage to the pin. But with any yardage to the pin using GPS, the accuracy is only as good as the information supplied to calculate the to the pin yardage.

aliikane · February 25, 2011

I guess it is best to have both GPS and rangefinder. . Too many things to have on the course. Haha. I still like the good old fashioned sprinkler markers and colored flags for front, middle, and back. It seems I get the yardages better. I may have to upgrade to get a rangefinder.