Newbie question on individual hole distances

[newtogolf]

After reading a few books they all seem to stress the importance of yardage books for courses in determining the best way to play each hole. I started to create a yardage book for a few of my home courses using oobgolf as reference. The app provides aerial maps and the ability to measure distance from the different tee boxes. I noticed that in mapping out the yardage based on shots I could reasonably hit, the hole yardage was significantly longer than the courses score cards or oobgolf reported as the holes yardage. Is the yardage on a hole measured as the crow flies, based on optimal playing distance or is this just showing a margin of error between the recorded distance and software inaccuracy? Sorry if this is a dumb question, but the yardages were pretty far off and that's with me allowing for a reasonable margin of error for pin placement on the green.

[phillyk]

I notice that too in a lot of courses.  But, I think it all depends on the course of whether it will state the distance to the hole from tee to hole or from tee following center of fairway to green.  If the hole is a dogleg and you can see it from the tee, they might just give you that distance on the cards.  But, I believe most courses give you the hole distances as you follow the center of the fairway to the center of the green. My home course has a lot of doglegs, albeit short doglegs, but it makes a considerable difference in yardage for whether you want to go for the green.  The card might say 330 for the hole, but it would more likely be 290 or 300 to go straight for it.

In terms of making yardage books, I do like using them for my bigger tournaments I participate in. Usually, I'm only recording distances of the tee to certain objects, like to carry water, stop short of water, carry trees or sand traps, or stop short of them.  And for the greens I'll calculate the exact distances from 150 out to green-side traps or other objects.  I don't like putting overall yardages as they are unnecessary for my game at least.

[newtogolf]

Originally Posted by phillyk

In terms of making yardage books, I do like using them for my bigger tournaments I participate in. Usually, I'm only recording distances of the tee to certain objects, like to carry water, stop short of water, carry trees or sand traps, or stop short of them.  And for the greens I'll calculate the exact distances from 150 out to green-side traps or other objects.  I don't like putting overall yardages as they are unnecessary for my game at least.

The one books suggested playing the hole backwards to determine the best position to get on the green and work your way back to the figure out the best choice of clubs given my skill level.  For me that means avoiding swings that are less than full swings as I usually mess them up.  Was an interesting exercise as I found that on a few holes where I was using my driver it might not the best way for me to approach the hole.  We'll see if it translates properly on the course.

If I was at your skill level I wouldn't worry about overall yardages either.

[phillyk]

When I first started playing, I didn't even think about getting a yardage book.  I just took the distance it gave me and said, "OK, what club will should I hit to get to 150 out?"  I always did this because my club for 150 was a pitching wedge, which is usually my more accurate club.  Even now, I'll mainly think about hitting to 150 to hit a full wedge if the hole is pretty straight, but I'm comfortable with all my wedges and distances to put the ball on the green every time when I use them.

[walk18]

Why not just get yourself a skycaddie and save a lot of headaches?

[newtogolf]

Originally Posted by walk18

Why not just get yourself a skycaddie and save a lot of headaches?

I have a uPro, so I know the distance to the pin when I'm playing.  I was trying to create a yardage book and work backwards from the pins to figure out the distances and best clubs to use on each hole.  During the process I noticed there was a pretty large gap in the distance I'd hit the ball compared to the published distance on each hole and wondered why.

[phillyk]

Originally Posted by walk18

Why not just get yourself a skycaddie and save a lot of headaches?

I like the idea of skycaddie, but I'm a "traditional" golfer if you will.  I like to rely on my own perception to tell distances, that way if I misjudge the distance I know it's my fault, not technology.