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Show HN: I mapped every US golf course
I got tired of Googling basic course info, so I made a free directory of every US course
Google filters for golf course results are terrible so I built a better way to browse courses using OSM as the backbone.... https://golfcoursebrowser.com/ https://golfcoursebrowser.com/
It's a work in progress and mostly US for now, but I want to expand to the rest of North America, the EU, and the rest of the world ASAP.
It's free, no ads, no login, no bs. If you spot anything wrong (bad info, a missing course, wrong scorecard), you can flag it right on the course page. I actually read those and fix them.
Still a lot of missing info, but I'm filling out more and more each day. The goal is the most complete, and current golf course directory in the world, verified and maintained by actual golfers. I think is attainable in the next few months.
The base layer is OpenStreetMap, cross-checked against course websites and enriched with scorecards, USGA rating/slope, and public/private status. User corrections from golfers who know their home course have beaten every commercial data source we check against.
- elpakal 2mo agoclicked on a website link for a course near me and it took me to a weird site wopraja
- rickmf 2mo agoprobably and old site that now redirects.. you can report issues right on the site. community reports are going to be the most reliable for me over time.
- mercurywells 2mo agoI was going to say you were missing this one but I'm not sure if it's still open after the county purchased it. https://www.pga.com/play/ny/rome/mohawk-glen-golf-course/0335970 https://www.pga.com/play/ny/rome/mohawk-glen-golf-course/033... Now add mini golf courses.
- rickmf 2mo agoyeah mini golf would be a nice add. I'd like to get all practice facilities and indoor/ sim golf as well eventually.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- prologic 2mo agoAny plans to expand this to other parts of the world?
- rickmf 2mo agoYes. Canada and Mexico next. Then will move to EU Asia etc. Want to work out all the hiccups in US first
- prologic 2mo agoHow are you populating the dataset here? Anything we can to do help crowd source and contribute?
- rickmf 2mo agoOSM, golfcourseapi.com, booking sites, etc. some help from AI to parse duplicates, bad locations. missing data. Users can contribute right on the site by submitting corrections. It goes into a review queue and then is reviewed and implemented
- rickmf 2mo agoThat said if its in the US and incorrect or incomplete you can submit, but anything outside the US i'd wait until i do a first pass on the new regions.
- verdverm 2mo agoare we able to estimate water usage and other statistics from this data set?
- bruce511 2mo agoThe amount of water used is somewhat less important than what the source of the water is. And it's important to understand that "using water" isn't like "using coal". In other words, while coal can be burned once, water is in a cycle that means water can be "used" infinitly. But back to the source. A golf course near me takes effluent water (ie treated sewerage) destined for pumping out to sea. They spread it over a large piece of land. What is not consumed by plants, or evaporation, ends up in an underground aquifer. So it "uses" a lot of water. But it's not using tap water. Obviously this is not true for all courses. Hence the issue of "source", not "quantity" is material.
- ta20240528 2mo ago"The amount of water used is somewhat less important than what the source of the water is." Where I live, the golf courses are the largest and often only consumers of recycled water — in a water stressed city. This directly subsidises indigent water use. It doesn't stop the easily-offended from agitating to convert them into low-cost housing.
- albumen 2mo ago“easily-offended / agitating”? Hmm. There’s lots of good reasons to convert golf courses to low-cost housing, or use the recycled water for something else. Expand irrigation of parks, recharge groundwater, create wetlands, create dual plumbing networks to use the recycled water for toilet flushing etc.
- bruce511 2mo agoThere will of course always be different potential uses for land. And there are up and down sides to every argument. It's easy though to dismiss options which don't benefit me personally. If I don't cycle then money spent on cycle tracks is wasted. If I don't golf then I'll lean towards non-golf options. Incidentally it's very seldom local users who are lobbying for more local low-cost housing. That typically reduces neighborhood property values. Equally having green spaces is something that drives up property values etc. And yes, creative use of effluent would be nice. We should be able to recycle grey water into toilets etc. But that is an infrastructure change, so not easy to implement. Yes we need public green spaces. And yes we need sports fields and golf courses and so on. It's not necessarily an either/or situation.
- adm4 2mo agogreat! have you seen https://openskimap.org/ https://openskimap.org/ and https://openskistats.org/ https://openskistats.org/... maybe change name to open golf map?
- rickmf 2mo agoNot a bad idea i have not heard of those
- punnerud 2mo agoNice job! When I zoom in on Google earth you can easily see if it’s actually a golf course or not, would been interesting to use this to draw up the areas with polygons and some more details. Then you could start providing a lot more details about each one automatically.
- rickmf 2mo agoyeah i am pulling from OSM. I can probably draw those polygons. It;s been an OK source for number of holes etc but I need to cross reference to get other detailed info
- punnerud 2mo agoI was thinking image analysis from satellite images, but of course start with what’s annotated (OSM)
- nirali-shekhwa 2mo agoThis would surely be helpful!
- postalrat 2mo agoMissed one: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Elizabeth+Lyle+Robbie+Stadium/@44.9960516,-93.1975658,3619m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x52b32c7da5dda2f7:0x78e4cf17bbd7ac75!8m2!3d44.9945689!4d-93.1894358!16zL20vMGZ6dzlr?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDcyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Elizabeth+Lyle+Robbie+Stad...
- fsckboy 2mo agothat's the University of Minnesota Les Bolstad golf course https://www.uofmgolf.com/teetime https://www.uofmgolf.com/teetime
- cheeaun 2mo agoPolygon areas would be cool to see how big they are. I made this few years ago for Singapore https://observablehq.com/@cheeaun/golf-courses-in-singapore https://observablehq.com/@cheeaun/golf-courses-in-singapore
- totetsu 2mo agoThis is fascinating not because I’m interested in visiting any of these. But to see the communities in Alaska with courses, or to look at the most concentrated places and wonder what so many people in Florida get out of having a fairway and one hole right in their backyard..
- rickmf 2mo agoretirement communities in florida have a lot of these weird mini private courses.
- AshamedBadger56 2mo agoYep, old people in Florida love to golf and really love it when they can drive their golf cart from their garage straight to the clubhouse, finish a round of golf, and ride it right back to their garage only ever having to get out to hit the ball.
- navaed01 2mo agoIn a lot of places, that golf course is the most beautiful piece of land around you, not just well maintained but lot of wildlife, birds, deer etc. so having that right on your backyard whether you golf or do not golf is a great attraction
- crossroadsguy 2mo agoI am not sure how it is in USA but in my country golf courses are abuse of public resources for (almost) private use. For a very few who can lobby enough for renewal of these leases and these are kept out of reach of the normal public, either by rule or by cost, sometimes both. Golf courses are lungs of many of the growing cities, across the world, but I do believe they should not be kept exclusive. Also, this comes directly from feudal/colonial times here. Those also require too much of other natural and public resources to be maintained.
- rickmf 2mo agoUS is a mixed bag. Where i am from, Michigan, we have over 600 courses and 87% of them are open to the public.
- topato 2mo agoYeah, I could imagine golf being a sore spot for Indians. I never imagined India would even be a hotspot for golf, but given the amount of corruption going on, it would make sense that golf courses would be foisted upon the public. It’s always discouraging to see the amount of upper class Indians who, despite colonial times being long gone, are still very willing to sell out their countrymen to appease whites or to fit a British/white ideal. I hope I’m wrong about this impression, and I’m just seeing cherry picked news articles, but your reaction makes me think otherwise….
- trollbridge 2mo agoIn the USA they are overwhelmingly public and are desperate for customers. The handful of private ones near me are also desperate for new members, and several country clubs have ended up closing. Considering some of the golf courses that have closed around me ended up being converted into Amazon distribution facilities, I am not terribly excited about the idea of more golf courses closing.
- crossroadsguy 2mo agoWere those private lands/properties? Because in my country a lot (if I can't say 'most') are actually on public land with weird and disgustingly cheap leases which can be closed at a finger snap but somehow very few Govts have tried it because every Govt have ministers (and of course bureaucrats) who are members there or made members there, and then there are their kids and families etc. So no they can't be turned into building constructions really, I mean assuming the limits of corruption in my country. Because technically anything can be sold if we go down that way. Also, my city is reclaiming lakes, demolishing illegal constructions and parks are also being reclaimed and cleaned up etc. Not perfect, far from it, but it's a start and no, that Amazon Warehouse thing I am not expecting to see here. People are divided strongly on religious and ideological lines here but everyone's tempers run high whenever Govt tries touching a public land, green patch, and now we just take matters into our hands whenever that happens.
- proxy_skate 2mo agoso thats why lebron wanted to go to philadelphia or miami
- rickmf 2mo ago100
- ryan_lane 2mo agoIt would be interesting to map this to parkinson's data.
- pbhjpbhj 2mo agoAre you suggesting a causal link between Parkinson's Disease and golf course locations? Or is "Parkinson's" a golf term??
- curiousObject 2mo agoSome pesticides may be linked to Parkinson’s Disease cases https://www.apdaparkinson.org/article/the-relationship-between-pesticides-and-parkinsons/ https://www.apdaparkinson.org/article/the-relationship-betwe... That is what OP was trying to say I assume
- ryan_lane 2mo agoCausal link: https://www.apdaparkinson.org/article/golf-course-concerns-new-research-shows-link-to-parkinsons/ https://www.apdaparkinson.org/article/golf-course-concerns-n...
- thomasswift 2mo agoThis is badass. Thank you! Near my area, there is a driving range and a simulator place as pins. both nice but not courses. Do you want reports on that?
- rickmf 2mo agoYes. You can report any missing or bad info right in the course info drawer that pops up when selecting one. There is a button for sending corrections with a few fields but you can also just make a comment.
- aren55555 2mo agoWould be sweet if it also had membership status (private/public/etc)
- andrewstuart 2mo agoWhy free? Golfers have money.
- markdown 2mo agoFYI: 2101 Sneath Ln, San Bruno, CA 94066, United States https://i.imgur.com/DP6SOtr.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/DP6SOtr.jpeg
- scoofy 2mo agoSo, I started https://golfcourse.wiki https://golfcourse.wiki in 2020, and I see courses that basically only I’ve mapped. It’s cool, I want it to be public, if you want to work together, do reach out. I would also say what you are doing is almost certainly opening you up to liability if you are just scraping other sites and republishing their data. One paper town that you published and you might have a lawsuit on your hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_settlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_settlement
- shshsjsj 2mo ago[dead]
- rickmf 2mo agoNice! Someone shared thAT wiki with me recently on reddit. I had not been aware of it before. Great stuff! I'm not a lawyer but my stack is clean. My base layer is OSM, which is licensed for exactly this stuff (and attributed). On top of that I used golfcourseapi.com which i also recommend (affordable, and fairly reliable so far, but not always current). Then community notes etc. I cross reference against other sources but I am only publishing facts, which are not copyrightable in the US. Would love to touch base one day and compare notes. I work in the golf industry so mostly just made this for myself. But after sharing with some friends and co workers i thought the wider golf community might appreciate it
- scoofy 2mo agoSounds good, and it would make sense that OSM and I have some crossover at this point. Now that I've had more time, I can see that the extremely obscure courses are not in your dataset (Like Ulukhaktok GC: https://golfcourse.wiki/course/ulukhaktok_golf_course-ulukhaktok https://golfcourse.wiki/course/ulukhaktok_golf_course-ulukha...). Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to look through your site when I saw this post, so I’m sorry about that. Just so we're clear, I'm effectively fine with sharing my data via Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses (say, CC BY-NC 4.0). Much of my site depends on fair use and not being for profit anyway. I'm actively losing money on the site every month (ha!). --- One personal note... It looks like you're not using referral advertising by linking to Golf Now. I would say -- golf nut to golf nut -- as someone who cares about small, mom-and-pop golf courses, Golf Now can be incredibly bad for those courses. I understand that might just be Pollyanna-ish given "the internet," but I've talked to folks who operate small courses who feel forced give a big portion of their margin to those middlemen (even losing money sometimes). I actively avoided linking to them. My partner works in hospitality, and it's the same for sites like booking.com (if you can book through the business's website, your probably should). I'm entirely happy to collaborate on this, I really just care about someone mapping all the golf courses even if it's not me. I'm happy to collaborate even if we're trying to build different things. Feel free to reach to me here, on GolfCourse.Wiki, or via the blog (for some reason most people contact me through the blog): https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/ https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/
- abhishek_aieng 2mo agoAre you planning to do somthing similar other than US?
- rickmf 2mo agoYes. After i work out best pipeline in North America id like to expand worldwide. It will take some time i'm just doing this in spare time.
- cwilkes 2mo agoMissing this one on Bainbridge Island, outside of Seattle: https://nwhickoryplayers.org/2015/08/ccs/ https://nwhickoryplayers.org/2015/08/ccs/ Believe it is only open for residents in that area
- rickmf 2mo agoplease report through the site!
- cantalopes 2mo agoThis map just shows how terrible more priviledged people are and destroy our environment for their rich boi "fun"
- deepsun 2mo agoWell, golf fields are not as bad for environment as datac... I mean mines and factories. Really, golf courses are taxed much lower usually, as they go as green open spaces (similar to protected forest areas), and also their assessed land value does not account for neighboring residential prices, so their tax is based on lower value than land can be sold at.
- lukan 2mo ago"Really, golf courses are taxed much lower usually, as they go as green open spaces (similar to protected forest areas" That does not seem allright. A forest has lot's of ecodiversity, but a low cut golf course? But sure, it is still green and somewhat alive.
- deepsun 2mo agoYep, and I would not say they are "open spaces" if the owners yell at you for stepping on it.
- rickmf 2mo agoGolf courses are often full of exclusively native foliage, often protected areas, and wetland areas. With much more ecodiversity support than neighboring businesses, residential areas, and even parks.
- flaburgan 2mo agoDo you plan to contribute the data back into OSM? That would be the nice way to go to share with the community and allow you to have better data in the future with less maintenance work.
- rickmf 2mo agoNot yet but i'd like to port it back somehow eventually. I've definitely named a lot of their unnamed courses on OSM
- haunter 2mo agoGolf is a sport I never tried but really want to. Also from the outside it looks both fun and relaxing to be outside in the nature. But I’m in the wrong country for that currently lol, golf is a niche here in Eastern Europe
- kubb 2mo agoIt definitely can be enjoyed, but does it beat a walk in the forest? Not necessarily. Golf is a social marker in Anglo-Saxon countries. Only the highest classes used to be able to afford it. In America they built a lot of courses because they have the space, and there was demand, obviously because lower classes wanted to feel like they’ve made it. Kind of like wearing tuxedos (or owning a Mercedes Benz in Eastern Europe). Obviously the higher classes just got more exclusive markers (particular clubs, private jets, islands, etc.), but America is left with all that land converted into courses which apparently aren’t even used that much nowadays. Turns out it can get boring quickly.
- pseingatl 2mo agoGolf was democratized under Eisenhower. Today, demand is down because interest is cyclical and private courses are expensive.
- kleinsch 2mo agoDemand continues to go up. More golfers today than ever. https://www.ngf.org/short-game/golfs-growth-era-the-road-to-50-million-golfers/ https://www.ngf.org/short-game/golfs-growth-era-the-road-to-...
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- rickmf 2mo agoTry VR golf to get started!
- jasonjei 2mo agoNo information on Olympic Club. I’m a member. Let me know if you need info for filling the gaps there.
- comrade1234 2mo agoYou have hidden greens in Solon springs Wisconsin but you have it on the wrong side of the lake. It's like a 25-minute drive around the lake to get to it. I think you must only have the village name for the address and not the street address. You can see the golf course in the map image on the other side of the lake.
- eamag 2mo agoif you want to create custom maps there's https://mapcomplete.org/ https://mapcomplete.org/
- ivanjermakov 2mo agoOr just run Overpass OSM query with `node["leisure"="golf_course"]` https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API/Overpass_QL https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API/Overpass_QL
- rickmf 2mo agoThis doesn't provide the same level of information I (or most golfers) are looing for
- scotty79 2mo agoGolf courses in USA use half a trillion gallons of fresh water annually. All data centers use less than 0.2 (of which only less than 0.02 is used for cooling the servers, the rest is just electricity generation, which can and should be replaced with solar). There's no replacement for water usage for golf courses and even half a trillion number is after recent 30% reduction of usage from what it was before.
- rickmf 2mo agoGood thing water replaces itself!
- wanderingmind 2mo agoThis is supercool. But I have a tangential question. I see projects like this built on top of OSM for different use cases. Does this data gets contributed back to OSM. A lot of them seems hobby projects, so it's hard to maintain long term, but the data is quite useful and could be used beyond the lifetime of these projects if they can be contributed back to OSM somehow.
- dhx 2mo agoOSM probably has the best data on golf courses because for many courses, people have mapped each 'golf=hole' as a way, and mapped other golf course features such as 'golf=bunker', 'golf=green', etc. OSM knows of almost 40k golf courses around the world.[2] This compares to 38k golf courses known to the R&A Golf Around the World Fourth Edition (2021) report and 37.6k courses listed in the NGF course database as of July 2024. It's likely OSM knows of 99.99..% of all active golf courses and also still retains tags for closed/unused golf courses too. So if OSM were to be inaccurate, it'd likely be inaccurate for whether a golf course is open or closed, rather than OSM not knowing about a golf course existing. I wonder whether an OSM tile server / custom style sheet for golfers would be easiest and most useful/comprehensive way to keep track of golf courses? [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:golf%3Dhole https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:golf%3Dhole [2] https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/leisure=golf_course#overview https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/leisure=golf_course#o... [3] https://assets.randa.org/c42c7bf4-dca7-00ea-4f2e-373223f80f76/50ff4344-b576-4e2e-a9e2-8411712954ac/2021%20Golf%20Around%20The%20World%20Fourth%20Edition.pdf https://assets.randa.org/c42c7bf4-dca7-00ea-4f2e-373223f80f7... [4] https://thegolfwire.com/worldwide-golf-course-development-report/ https://thegolfwire.com/worldwide-golf-course-development-re...
- rickmf 2mo agoThere are a lot of incorrect labels in OSM. I'd love to push my data back upstream to OSM one day once i feel like its very complete and accurate.
- thunfischtoast 2mo agoSomehow it disturbs me that we have access to a far-away, tropical island and use the very limited space there for not just one, but eight golf courses
- rickmf 2mo agowhy?
- thunfischtoast 2mo agoBecause those islands feel special and rare to me, and using the tight land for a sport that takes a lot of space and fresh water and is open only to a minority feels like waste.
- sehugg 2mo agoAre you planning to feed the info back into OSM?
- rickmf 2mo agoeventually yes. I've named a bunch that were unnamed from OSM
- parker42 2mo agoA buddy made golf.bronnerapp.com to map golf courses that we had played.
- mikeocool 2mo agoAs I recall, OSM already tends to have many golf courses mapped in extreme detail, because there’s a game that lets you play OSM golf courses on your golf simulator. This sometimes leads to conflict between the game’s passionate users and OSM, when they map every road around a golf course as a cart path, because that’s the only thing the game imports.
- rickmf 2mo agocourse details are not that great on OSM. typically just some polygons labeled 'golf course' and maybe a number of holes
- jaqalopes 2mo agoPossible bug: Went scrolling way East on the map for kicks and was surprised to find 14 courses on Guam, but also that the data don't repopulate as you make it back around the globe a second time. This seems to happen in both directions—eg Guam doesn't populate at all if you scroll West.
- npilk 2mo agoIt turns out people have even mapped individual greens, fairways, bunkers, etc on OpenStreetMap! So you can use that data to generate a yardage book for each course: https://npilk.github.io/openyardage-web/ https://npilk.github.io/openyardage-web/
- reversemsp 2mo ago[dead]
- snisarenko 2mo agoGreat job! This is very useful. The search by city, state doesn't seem to work. If you enter something like "los angeles, ca" it returns no results. zip code search works fine.
- rickmf 2mo agoOnly state and zip currently. City names not yet supported (its another 3000ish pages)
- ck2 2mo agofun-fact: people living next to golf courses have extremely high rates of cancer and Parkinsons and if a golf course is next to an airport you probably should never ever go there due to the total toxicity
- rickmf 2mo ago[flagged]
- tysilva 2mo agoI noticed the site is actually quite slow to load on first visit (at least for me). Is it actually loading in all the courses up front? If so, a better experience would be a landing page where users can search or specify a geographic location - only loading in what is relevant for the query.
- receptopalak 2mo ago[flagged]
- afdsaifdoi 2mo ago[dead]
- broabprobe 2mo agothis is a great resource we can use when we Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest! https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-make-the-golf-course-a-public-sex-forest https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-make-the-g...
- 0ldblu3 2mo agoI am surprised that Google Maps has never mounted a camera on a golf cart and driven it over golf course holes. They have a backpack version and they've used it on ski resorts.
- vxxzy 2mo agoIt appears Four Sister’s golf course in allegany county md is missing.
- rurban 2mo agoEurope is missing!
- rickmf 2mo agoyes im hoping to add in the next month or two after i get through north america
- vinniev 2mo agoLove this - I've tried finding courses through google maps and left wanting more. Would be great to have prices (or even a price "average") this is often a big deciding factor for me.
- Specled 2mo agoThis is really cool! Thanks for your work.
- dieselgate 2mo agoAlready helped me learn of new courses in my area I didn't know about. THank you and works well
- ryan-sh15 2mo agowe needed this
- viccater 2mo ago[dead]
- jonaugust 2mo agoThis is great. I'm learning about courses I had no idea existed.