Yard vs Meter ?

Which yardage do you prefer on your golf course, Yard or Meter?   And why?

Which one is more accurate?

1 yard equals 3 feet exactly whereas 1 meter is 3.28 feet.  I think most people will have an easier time judging yards over meters, even us canucks that are brought up with the metric system.  I have yet to see a course that measures off in meters..

I live in Europe and Norway, where the imperial system doesn't even exist (Norway), of course I use and prefer the metric system. The imperial got some advantages in terms of using the body to measure stuff, but it's no more difficult than to use the distance in centimeters. I'll have to calculate it over to metric in the end anyways. The metric system is of course more logical and easier to use.

I saw one scorecard from Germany which listed both yards and meters for the tee boxes.

If you go to a course with metric distances, make up an index card with major yardage conversions on it. Laminate it so sweat and rain doesn't blur things.

Rough conversion factor: meter = 1.1 yards.. So

90 meters = 99 yards

100 meters = 110 yards

Etc.....

That way, you don't have to try computing things in your head while playing a strange course for the first time.

Or, if you have a rangefinder set to yards, you don't need the index card.

Or if you're not a complete math slouch, you can just take the yard length and subtract 10% for meters (or add 10% if converting meters to yards).

The meter/yard conversion doesn't bother me too much (provided that you know which one the course is using), what kills me more are differences in measurement methods (e.g., middle of the green vs. front of the green).  I played a course in France that used meter measurements to the front of the green but didn't know about the front of the green part until my second round there.  I was having a heck of a time figuring out why my shots kept coming up short!  Figured it was heavy French air or something.

There is a huge difference between meters and yards when it comes to golf. 150 meters = 164 yards. That's at least one club! When I played golf in Europe for the first time, I was coming up short based on the yardage (meterage) markers...

If it's 100 meters:club up about one club

If it's 150 meters: club up about 1.5

If it's 200 meters: you're looking at about two clubs.

Yes, as was said above, a meter is about 10% longer than a yard (39.4 inches vs 36 inches).  It's enough that you have to convert, but not enough that one is any more accurate than the other unless you're worried about about 1 inch extra worst-case error for the meter.  You need to know which it is, but other than familiarity there's no advantage to one or the other when it comes to golf.

Does it mean that golf course with meter yardage is longer than golf course using yards?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ronaldkuntoro

Does it mean that golf course with meter yardage is longer than golf course using yards?

Longer how? In distance? No. A 6000 yard course is 5486 meters.

Longer means when you see 330 meter average distance for par 4 against the average 330 yard par 4 on most courses. Maybe you should play Golf in East Asia once to see my point.

The courses are not laid up after numbers regardless of unit of measure, meaning that an average par 4 is not 330 yards in one country and 330 meters in the next.

In Norway the guidelines for the course distances are as follow (for men):

Par 3: Up to 225 meters (246 yards)
Par 4: 200 - 450 meters (219 - 492 yards)
Par 5: 400 - (437 yards)

I couldn't find anything on the USGA website, but other pages use this:

Par 3 - Up to 250 yards (228 meters)
Par 4 - 251 - 470 yards (228 - 430 meters)
Par 5 - 471 - 690 yards (431 - 631 meters)

As you can see, the distances are pretty close to eachother. There are many other variables that make a difference to how long a hole is playing also, of course. In the end, if you play courses around the world, this will not be an issue. The biggest differences are in the individual course lengths.