DIY Yardage Book

[PlaidJacket]

Recently I've been toying around with making myself a yardage booklet of my home course. I most recently tried the 3UP method. It's a good one but I just lost interest in using Google Earth and the sketch program it requires. I'm just not that techie anymore. So, I'm going back to the old school method of sketching up my own. Well sort of….

I ordered a couple of Yardage Markerâ„¢ flip booklets to give myself a little guidance and head start. The booklets are spiral bound and the pages are a nice heavy card stock paper. On the front cover it says, A Do-It-Yourself Yardage Book for the Competitive Golfer.  Inside the front cover is a description of how to use the book along with common symbols and two example holes of what you'll want to emulate.

I think what I'll do initially is go out on the course alone in the late evenings and walk a few holes at a time. I have a measuring wheel to push as well as a laser GPS. I'll take along some other type of tablet and make some sketches as I go. Later I'll re-sketch what I drew in my Yardage Book. I think the whole exercise will be interesting and a good learning process. Over time I can refine my book as needs arise.

Does anyone else use a yardage book? Have you made your own?

 

[jbil8802]

I'd really like to do this for the courses I play the most. Plus I really want a yardage book cover from Ace of Clubs. Only problem I see is that the white tees get moved around quite a bit.

[PlaidJacket]

Well all you have to do is draw in more than one tee area if different boxes are used or just mark different yardages from different positions on the white tee. Then you just adjust your yardages accordingly. My course has from the back... Blue, White, and Gold for senors. In my book I'll plan on drawing Blue and White tee boxes. On those boxes I'll probably label a few different spots. Once you're in the fairway and around your approach positions the distances will all be the same to the green. I'll have some experimenting to do for sure. Sounds fun to me. I think these books were maybe $7.00 each?

[Kenny B]

Sounds like a lot of work. If you like to do that, I say go for it! The courses I play, I know so well that I don't even really need a gps. But I use one when it really counts. That said, long before gps and lasers I played the Wildfire golf courses (Palmer and Faldo) in Phoenix. With the green fee I got a yardage book that had yardages to all the hazards and spots on each hole from all tee boxes. I had seen these books before but never really paid much attention to them because I was a bogey golfer and couldn't repeat any swing very well. Didn't really matter to me then. But I played one round using the book faithfully and missed most hazards; had my best round ever at that point. So even today, when I go to an upscale course, I always ask if the have one. I got that one for free, but they usually cost a few bucks. Well worth it though.

 

Good luck! And let us know if you find anything interesting.

[jbil8802]

I really like the traditional aspect of it along with the added benefit of walking and studying some of my regular tracks.

[sp0rtsfan86]

I made my own. Ironically just found it in my car today from over two years ago.

 

What I did was google earth everything and print out every hole. I'd mark off distances using earth.

 

For the greens, I traced them, and then put in marks telling me where the breaks were. 

 

All of this took me probably 3-4 hours plus on course time to put in the breaks of the green.

[TIBA_Putt - Kyle]

I've thought about doing this several times. Even bought a fancy schmancy yardage book cover with my initials stamped on the front. Still haven't made any books tho.

 

As far as the greens go, taking out some of the aimpoint green reading stuff would probly be helpful for mapping breaks and whatnot. If one was so inclined to get that specific.

[fozcycle]

Don't think I have the patience to do this.....

[BK in TEXAS]

I think it's pretty cool really. I use a laser which gives me most of what I need to know. I think I'll map the greens though....that would be useful.

[DaveP043]

I developed a yardage book for my home club a few years ago.  It started out as something just for me, but the finished product is almost good enough to sell.  I used the sattelite photos as a basis.  I imported a pdf "print" of each hole into a computer drafting program I have through my work.  I traced all the visible features, scaled the entire thing so it agreed with a single GPS measurement, and was then able to inseert the dimensions I wanted.  Terrain features I "drew" by hand. I don't have the finished drawings on this computer, but here's the almost-finished product:

All my "tee" distances are from that little target near the back of the middle tee area, usually the front or back of the primary tee (at our course most men play the blue tees), and I have distances to each of the other tees.  Similarly, fairway distances are to the front of the green.  The green detail provides yardages from the front to ridges and tiers.  Our pro shop has a pin sheet available every day, showing a yardage from the front to the pin, my distances work well with that.

Its hard to estimate how much time I spent with this, but I really enjoyed it, and learned a lot about the course in the process.

[PlaidJacket]

Wow. That is really nice Dave. I don't have the skill or where-with-all to attempt something like that. Even though I know my home course pretty well I still think I'll learn a lot by going through the process. I've found in the past that just walking a course without playing provides a whole different perspective.

[Kenny B]

Dang!  Thanks a lot Dave!!  I wasn't going to do this until I saw your graphic. 

 

I have one course here that I don't play very often, and when I do I don't play it very well.  I have always used GPS and while the yardages seem pretty close, I manage to get into trouble a lot.  It's a links style course with a lot of rolling hills and some semi-blind shots.  Since I got a laser for Christmas, I think I will see if I can make a decent yardage book for this course.  I'll start with Google Earth, but it is not an easy course to walk because there are some healthy walks from greens to the next tee.  The greens are very quick with lots of slope, so green mapping will probably be the most help for me.  Since it is early in the year, I may be able to do this before the course gets too crowded.  

 

Thanks again for making more work for me!  

[DaveP043]

Thanks, guys, for the compliments.  Plaid, I don't really think I have a lot of skill, but I did have a good tool with the computer drafting program.  The other thing I have is plain old stubbornness.  Once I got started, I refused to give up.  I'm sure I started it about this time of year, itching to do something golf-related while the snow was still on the ground.  Once I had the grunt-work of simply tracing was done, I'd take a copy of the work with me every time I played, and keep adding notes, sketching in contours to include, showing where somebody might want a lay-up distance.  

I'm a yardage book junkie, I try to buy one whenever I play a new course. In the modern age of GPS and laser, they're much less common.  I have books going back years, including one of the Gorgeus George pro-style books from the 1995 Senior US Open at Congressional.  Its a nice way to reminisce about past golf trips, leafing through antique yardabe books.

[apprenti23]

Don't think I have the patience to do this.....

 

Same. I think this would be cool for a course I'd never played, but usually they have them available. For the courses I play at regularly, I'd probably forget I even had the book in the bag!

 

The books look great though!

[RookieBlue7]

There's a very good DIY that GolfWRX user DeerSlayer posted he does to make his son, Stratton, yardage books with. They're awesome too