by Cliff Towne - PDGA Course Directory Editor
We hope you have been appreciating the new course directory while we have been working out some bugs in the changeover. If you have not had the chance yet - please take the new directory out for a test drive - pull up a few courses and check out the added functionality. Here is one that has most of the new bases covered - compare this listing with your local course.
www.pdga.com/course_directory/course/chavez-ridge-dgc-at-elysian
Does your local course have the street address entered? - is a course map uploaded? - cool pix? a review with a rating? Now is the time to go online and start improving the course listings to make the best use of these new capabilities up at the directory.
The most dramatic upgrades are in Location Mapping, uploading of photos and course maps and the posting of course ratings and reviews. With a quick update to your local course listing you can bring traveling players there smoothly, show them how cool the course looks, put a course map in their hands and also do a course rating/review.
PLEASE come online and update a course listing....and post a review or two of your most favorite (or least favorite) courses.
First:
You will need to be an online community member but there is no cost (and you do not need to be a current PDGA members to do this). If you don't already have an account at PDGA.com please go to www.pdga.com/discussion/register.php to get started.
If you are logged in when you pull up a course, you will see an "Edit" button that will lead you to the form for updating the course listing. You make the changes and put a note in the Revisions field to advise the editor (me) of the changes, click "submit" and it goes to my desk to approve.
Location Mapping:
There are several ways to help with location mapping. Over time we have found that there are 3 different locations that can be useful to know: street address, parking lot coordinates and 1st tee coordinates. These GPS coordinates need to be in Digital Decimal Format - like Lat/Lon: (34.074, -118.229) .
* Street address: With many courses, the street address for the park alone does the trick. Most GPS handhelds and car-based GPS devices will find this location the easiest (no 4-wheeling needed). Oftentimes it is then obvious where to park and where the 1st tee is. If you enter the street address for the course the location module will now *USUALLY* issue good GPS numbers for that map. Please just provide a good street address here - DON'T update the GPS numbers in this section on the edit form - they are based on the street address and useful for navigation programs, as noted above. Good street addresses for parks can often be found using Google. Sometimes an intersection address works also (like "34th St. and Main Ave.").
* Parking lot coordinates: These coordinates can be very helpful at larger parks, (for example, state parks or wilderness areas) where there might be a long drive from the street back to the parking lot. Some GPS units, however, won't have the internal park roads mapped, which leads to problems. This field is new in the database, so it can use the most updating.
* 1st tee coordinates: It is NICE to print out a map with a star directly on the first tee. This can also be very helpful for courses where the 1st tee is a considerable distance from the parking area (e.g., Stafford Lake in Novato, CA).
Helping update any of these three sets of location data on a course could be useful. Just log on, pull up the course and click "edit" to insert the street address, the 1st Tee GPS numbers or those for the Parking Lot.
Here is a course with good maps generated after an update that included both a good street address and good 1st tee coordinates.
www.pdga.com/course_directory/course/chavez-ridge-dgc-at-elysian
and here is a course that lacks a street address and has not been updated with 1st tee coordinates. All we have to go on is the zip code. Notice that the map view is pretty useless (the default mark at the center of the zip code is about a mile from the park).
www.pdga.com/course_directory/course/polliwog-park-dgc
Doing Reviews:
Here is some how-to info and some preliminary thoughts on doing reviews.
To do reviews, you just click [Submit] down by Reviews and select the number of links that you feel the course deserves and write some text about the course. Feel free to be brief or lengthy on the review. Some folks like a Pros, Cons and Added Notes format. The Added Notes section can be a good place for additional useful info about the area (good food? lodging?)
Here are a couple of courses that I did reviews on - if you want some approaches
www.pdga.com/course_directory/course/adair-park (folksy general rave)
www.pdga.com/course_directory/course/whistlers-bend (Pros/Cons format)
I started with the best (4 and 5 links) and the worst courses (1 link) in our area first. It would seem most useful to help visiting players find the best ones and avoid those courses that are not worth playing.
So there you have it. We have some volunteers already gathering and updating the database with street addresses, GPS data, pictures, course maps and reviews. Now we're ready for lots of golfers like you to come online and help make the best out of the New Course Directory! We look forward to seeing what you add to make this a really fun and useful guide to our courses.
