Hi. My club is about to install new tee signs that I designed in photoshop. I would like to have accurate hole distances for these tee signs.
http://home.comcast.net/~cs_lastboyscout/Hole_13_Example.jpg
I have searched the internet and tried contacting several local course designers but have not received an answer. Are courses measured in a tee box to basket point to point method, or a tee box to basket measurement following the center of the fairway? Or is it that the designer decides how the course is measured.

I have currently measured the course in a point to point style so as to offer the thrower a true distance and allow him or her to choose their own flight path accordingly. That is also why no flight path is shown on the tee sign.

Any and all help would be appreciated and feedback on the tee sign as well.

Thanks!

I always measure from point to point unless there is a forced dogleg then I measure to the turn then to the basket. Probably a good idea to put the distance to the dogleg on there also, or to the landing zones on par 4's and 5's.

You measure based on the shortest route a player of the skill a hole was designed for can take. If there's a shorter "over the top" route Blue or Gold level players can take on a hole designed for Red level, don't use that route but one a Red level player can take. Same thing when there's a longer crossing over water. You don't use straight line if a player of that skill level can't possiby throw 400 feet and the intended route is to cut across a corner of the pond not fully over 400 feet of water.

It doesn't make a whole lot of difference in the length but I usually measure 10 feet into the fairway from key trees that border or define the shortest route.

Fortunately our course is a blank canvas. It was designed on open army corps of engineers land leased to the city to maintain, so we have alot of open area. Our goal is to start having trees donated so as to create better risk reward factors versus ability to throw long and cant throw.

On the landing/layup zones, are you mesuring to the dead center of the zone, or what would be considered the front "entry point" for the zone? On the issue of marking the distance from tee pad to landing zone, would you just mark it on the map versus making a notation on the footage box? I am trying to go for the best looking, and functional tee signs I can make. Besides, come tournament time, I can remake these with sponsor info for that hole and just the hole layout being played that day.

Keep the suggestions and ideas coming. Im eating this stuff alive! :D

stay away from colored text. UV rays can bleach out colors, usually ONE of the main colors. So your blue or red text may simply fade away.

Bold differences between OB, in bounds and Trees and targets and TEES are a must.

The simplest signs are the best designed. USE BOLD COLORS. Make the fence black. Trees dark green. grass light but bright green. Tees and targets BLACK. If there are 3 targets, there's not much need for different colors if it is obvious that they are longer than each other.

Look at the tee signs at renaissance at www.charlottedgc.com (http://www.charlottedgc.com) (take the hole tour) The guys at IFO did a great job on these signs. Some of the best I have seen.

We currently have the teesigns set up as you described. In majority opinion, the tee signs are bland and lack the creative touch that is possible.

As far as color fade, that was all taken into account. The teesigns will be overlayed with UV protected Lexan. This is the newest form of lexan and UV protection as the Lexan on our current signs and they have not faded in the 8 years of installation. Besides, the cost to remake one of these signs is $2.09. Add in the fact that with the installation of new trees, O.B.s, and alternate pin placements these signs will need updating, and this will be very easy to do. Plus, like I said, come tournament time, hole sponsor info is added on the sign with just the pin position being played. This allows the sponsor to take an actual tee sign home with them after the tournament.

Drawing off of your suggestions, and some other PMs I have received, here is a newer version.

http://home.comcast.net/~cs_lastboyscout/Hole_13_EDITED.jpg

As you see there is a lack of flight lines. This is something that has been discussed with John Houck and is felt to help make the disc golfer think about the shot more than the proposed shot or path listed on the sign. When pin is located at the C position, I thorw a 450 foot straight shot that passes over pin B location and lands near the cliff edge. My friend throws a shot that lands near mine, but is a hyzer sweep that passes over the gate in the fence (shown in white). Two shots, same results, but different risks and rewards.

my question on this entire thing is what is the best way to measure the distance? Laser range finder? GPS? Wheel? tape?

laser range finder is the way to go. unless you have flat land, then a wheel will work.

I would measure the distance from the tee to the pin with the prefferred flight path in mind.

any advise on getting a laser range finder? I see a bushnell yardage pro 400 for under $50 wonder if is would be cheaper to hire a survey crew for a few hours and get it done right.

Bill Paulsen and Paul Mann are course designers in your area and might have rangefinders they could loan you.

I measured my course using a small wheel. Then later, I used a friends Bushnell laser range finder .... Anyway, the Bushnell measured to the nearest yard with a margin of error of + - 1 yard. After comparing the wheel measurements with the Bushnell measurements ... all measurements were within 6 feet of each other. So, the wheel did a pretty good job, but the Bushnell was alot easier. And I should also mention that none of the property is flat here .... it's all rolling hills and lots of elevation changes.

I finally used GPS and it worked great. I made sure to use it on clear days so that I had the most accurate readings from the satellites. The nice thing about GPS is that while marking a spot may not be extremely accurate, measuring the distance from one point to the next is. I used an old Garmin GPS 3 that was sold at walmart in 2000. Kinda old by todays standards, but we verified to by using a laser rangefinder and also with a yardage tape. See if you know anyone with a GPS unit and borrow it.

I disagree. GPS is good for designing in wooded terrain (winter), mapping and preliminary measurements but is suspect compared with a laser rangefinder for final hole measurements. Laser is +/- 1 yard and even good GPS measurements could be 50 feet off. Wheels can also be reasonable for preliminary measurements but high and/or wet grass can generate lengths that are too long due to slippage. And, for crossing unrollable areas like marshes, ditches, ponds, you might need to triangulate and do some math.

That is what is nice about GPS is that it tells you what your DOP (Dilution of Precision) and EPE (Estimated Position Error) are. Granted, this is for an exact fix such as where a tee box is located. However, If you set a waypoint, not the DOP and EPE and walk to your next location, note the distance and make sure that your DOP and EPE are the same then you are fine. Your DOP and EPE only change when a satellite is either heading away from your over the horizon, or towards you and entering your horizion.

There are algebraic formulas that could be run if you needed the exact GPS coordinates for each teebox, so that anyone anywhere could find it with a program like Google Earth, but for distance measurement, just making sure your deviation is the same still works. Im too OCD to just trust anything. Just search the internet and you will find all sorts of webpages talking about GPS use, errors that will occur, and methods of correction. Just remember that when using GPS, make sure that you have clear atmospheric conditions so that you can connect to the most satellites and get the smallest DOP. When I measured my home course I was looking at a DOP of 8 feet. That means every waypoint could be as far as 8� feet in any direction. The trick is not to measure from waypoint to waypoint, but to use the distance to waypoint tracking feature. You set a waypoint and walk to your next destination and the GPS unit will tell you how far it is from that location. This allieviates the issue of DOP and EPE errors from using waypoint to waypoint calculations.

in the end does it really matter if the hole is actually 332 feet instead of the posted 328 or whatever, thats about a 1.2% margin of error. Ball golf courses are probably just as inaccurate, especially considering the pins and tee positions change every day, and many golfers don't take that into consideration.

Considering that you're allowed 3 meters on the tee for release, it makes little sense to list footages more precisely than in 5 ft increments (315 or 320, not 317, 318). Outside the U.S., lengths are usually in meters so that's 3+ ft increments.

Not every location can see a WAAS satellite for the best accuracy desired on GPS. I can't get better than 20 ft accuracy in northern Wisconsin for example even in ideal conditions. It's usually 25-30 feet with maybe 4-5 satellites in view.

I never really thought about that. On bad days I pick up about 8 sats. While exact distance does not matter, it's always nice to know how far the distance really is, atleast to me and several others I know. I just know that when I remeasured my home course, it was off by 3 feet on some holes and up to 25 on others.

At the end of the day its still an ace, amazing birdie shot, unbelieveable par save, or one heck of a drive.

I still like the GPS for rough measurements while designing and the laser for accurate measurements after the fairways are cleared.

The GPS was especially good at those blind areas where you think a good hole would be. Then you find out that the alley you thought was going to be 350' is really 280'.

On the original design for the North course at PDGA HQ, we used GPS for our first time in an area choked with small pine trees in the 15-20 ft height range. Couldn't see a thing at ground level. We wanted a gentle anhyzer shot so we started walking and marking just with the GPS to rough something out. Monroe and I thought we had a nice hole around 275-300 range. When we got back and downloaded the coordinates, we did have a really cool hole about that length. Only problem was the anhyzer was a little sharper than expected and our route was a horseshoe that looped back so the basket would be about 50 feet right of the tee :oNeedless to say, the GPS saved us from clearing a route that would have been a little embarrassing once we could actually see it.

That could have been cool if you had a Mando in front of the tee box.... right? LOL.

Talk about having a 2 - 3 shot hole in a small area. GPS has its pros and cons, but as you said, marking waypoints for pinpoint accuracy is not possible unless your in the military, or want to triangulate a position.

Actually accurate GPS is also available to civilians too. Some farmers use GPS on their tractors that is accurate to within 1 foot I believe. My cousin says that the tractor tire tracks almost always line up perfectly when he uses it. Course it's not a cheap system. Also used by the transportation field for laying out highways.

Yeah, its one of the few things that Clinton actually did that was worthwhile, getting rid of the GPS system automatic error system known as Selective Availibilty. Here is an article going more in depth, GP5 r0x0rz y0ur b0x0rz (http://www.exn.ca/FlightDeck/News/story.cfm?ID=20000502-53)