Marker posts, Strokesavers and blind links holes: reading a course map in Britain

Most golfers glance at a course map the way they glance at the Tube map in a city they are visiting: long enough to find the next stop, never long enough to understand the network. Read properly, a map tells you where the hole wants you to miss.

A map will not fix your swing. It stops you aiming a decent swing at the one spot on the hole where it costs a shot, and for a golfer who plays off 18 that is worth more than anything you could change on the range this month.

What a course map is actually telling you

Four kinds of map turn up at a British club, and they do not say the same thing. The scorecard diagram is a sketch, rarely drawn to scale. A course planner such as a Strokesaver is drawn from a survey, with point to point distances on the page. A GPS screen, on a watch, a trolley or a phone, sits on top of mapping or satellite imagery and measures from where you stand.

Before you trust any number, ask two questions. Measured from where? Tee boards count from a fixed plate on the tee, and the markers may have been moved ten yards that morning. Measured to where? Most yardages run to the centre of the green, but some courses measure to the front. The scorecard or the planner usually says so in small print, and it is the most expensive line on the page to skip.

Five things to find on every hole before you tee off

• Your landing zone. Take your real carry with the club you plan to hit, not the best drive of your summer, and find that distance on the hole. What is there?
• The width at that distance. The fairway might be 45 yards wide at 200 and 25 yards wide at 250. That is often the best argument for leaving the driver in the bag.
• The lines that cost shots. White stakes or lines mark out of bounds, which is stroke and distance. Red and yellow mark penalty areas, where you drop with a one stroke penalty. Out of bounds tight down one side and a penalty area on the other tells you which side to favour.
• The depth and shape of the green. A green 35 yards deep is a two or three club green depending on the flag. A kidney shaped green with a bunker in the gap is really two small targets.
• The short side. Missing where there is no bunker and plenty of green to work with is a bogey at worst. Missing on the other side is how doubles happen.

Reading the numbers: carry, reach, front, back

A good planner gives two kinds of number for hazards. The number to reach a bunker is the distance to its front edge; the number to carry it is the distance to its back edge. On a fairway bunker those can be 20 or 25 yards apart. If your drive carries 220 and the bunker is 205 to reach and 228 to carry, you are hitting straight into it.

Greens work the same way. A hole that plays 152 to the centre might be 138 to the front and 166 to the back. A front flag makes the centre number a club too long, a back flag a club too short.

Elevation is the one thing a map shows badly, and satellite views show nothing at all. When a shot plays clearly uphill, take more club than the number says.

Plan the hole backwards from the green

Decide where you want to hit your approach from, then work back to the tee.

Take a 390 yard par 4. The map shows a fairway bunker on the left, 230 to reach and 255 to carry, and a penalty area down the right from 235 to 280. The green is 30 yards deep with a bunker short left. The driver brings both hazards into play.

Your most reliable full approach is a 9 iron at about 135 yards. To leave 135, the tee shot needs to travel 255 yards, exactly where both hazards pinch. A hybrid at 200 leaves 190, a long approach, but from the widest part of the fairway. A 3 wood at 225 leaves 165 with a 6 iron, from short of both hazards. The map has turned a hopeful driver into a choice between two sensible clubs, and told you to aim the approach at the right half of the green.

Make the map your own

• Write your carry for driver, 3 wood and hybrid on the tee of each hole diagram.
• Circle the places where a miss costs a shot, and draw an arrow towards the safe side.
• Mark your preferred approach distance on each par 4 and par 5.
• After each round, put a dot where your tee shots finished. Three rounds in, the dots tell you which way you really miss.

The Rules allow all of this. Handwritten notes are fine, as long as you are not building a detailed replica of the green contours. Since 1 January 2019, The R&A and the USGA have limited images of putting greens used during a round to a scale of 3/8 inch to 5 yards (1:480) or smaller; traditional course guides showing a green’s outline and general slopes are permitted. A rangefinder or GPS is allowed unless the committee has adopted Model Local Rule G-5, but any function that measures elevation must be off. The first breach costs the general penalty; a second in the same round means disqualification.

Mistakes golfers make with a course map

• Taking the centre number as the flag number. It costs a club on every front or back pin.
• Reading the wrong tee. Scorecard diagrams often show the back tees. If you play off the yellows, check the numbers are yours.
• Trusting an old planner. Bunkers get filled in and tees get rebuilt. A ten year old guide can be wrong exactly where it matters.
• Planning for your best shot. Use the carry you hit seven times out of ten.

Where British golfers find a map they can trust

Start with the marker posts. On many courses in Britain, posts at the edge of the fairway, or discs set in it, show 100, 150 and 200 yards, usually to the centre of the green. Red for 100 is the closest thing to a convention. Beyond that there is no national code: some clubs use yellow for 150 and white for 200, others white for 150 and blue for 200, with yellow at 250. The club sets the system, and it is normally explained on the scorecard or in the local rules. Check it before the first tee, along with centre or front.

The scorecard itself changed in 2020. The World Handicap System came in on 2 November that year, and Course Rating replaced the old Standard Scratch Score. Every rated set of tees now carries a Course Rating, the score a scratch golfer is expected to shoot, and a Slope Rating, which measures how much harder the course plays for a higher handicapper. You will find them on the card at many clubs, or in a table by the first tee or in the pro shop, and in England in the MyEG app. Those two figures turn your Handicap Index into a Course Handicap for the tees you are playing, so read the tee colour at the top of the column before anything else.

For a proper course planner, the familiar name is the Strokesaver, published by a company based in Paisley and covering courses such as St Andrews, Carnoustie, Gleneagles and Royal Troon, with electronic eStrokesaver versions for some venues. Some clubs also sell a planner or print a hole guide for visitors; ask in the pro shop, and do the backward planning on the kitchen table the night before.

GPS screens on buggies exist in Britain, and some clubs fit them to their fleets, but on many courses you will be walking with a trolley, so the screen is on your wrist or your phone. Ask whether it knows today’s flag or only the middle of the green.

Links golf is where the map matters most, because your eyes help least. Tee shots go over dunes, and pot bunkers sit in fairways, hidden until you are next to them. On the Old Course at St Andrews, the 12th has four bunkers that cannot be seen from the tee. At Prestwick the 5th, the Himalayas, is a blind par 3 over a tall dune, and the club tells you to aim at the sleeper on the hill that matches the colour of your tee. On holes like these the planner is your only view of the target, so pick the line on the page, find a post, a bunker face or a distant landmark that sits on it, and commit.

Gorse changes the reading too. A ball in thick gorse is often lost or unplayable, so treat the gorse line on a links or heathland map like a penalty line, whatever the stakes say. On the heathland courses of Surrey and Berkshire you usually find the ball in the heather, but moving it more than a few yards is another matter. Measure the fairway between the heather at your landing distance and let that choose the club.

A thirty second routine for every tee

• Check the tee colour you are playing and whether the numbers run to the centre or the front.
• Find your real carry on the map, what sits there and how wide the hole is.
• Locate out of bounds, penalty areas and gorse, and decide which side to favour.
• On a blind shot, pick the line on the page and a marker on the horizon.
• Choose the tee club that leaves your ideal approach, and note the short side of the green.

Five questions, thirty seconds, eighteen holes. For the next step, see the shots you can save without changing your swing, and if you are choosing a device to get the numbers, rangefinder or GPS: which one lowers your scores. For the right set of tees to plan from, read which tees you should actually be playing. Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any club, publisher or organisation mentioned here.