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Show HN: I mapped every US golf course (golfcoursebrowser.com)

223 points by rickmf ↗ HN
I got tired of Googling basic course info, so I made a free directory of every US course

Google filters for golf course results are terrible so I built a better way to browse courses using OSM as the backbone.... https://golfcoursebrowser.com/

It's a work in progress and mostly US for now, but I want to expand to the rest of North America, the EU, and the rest of the world ASAP.

It's free, no ads, no login, no bs. If you spot anything wrong (bad info, a missing course, wrong scorecard), you can flag it right on the course page. I actually read those and fix them.

Still a lot of missing info, but I'm filling out more and more each day. The goal is the most complete, and current golf course directory in the world, verified and maintained by actual golfers. I think is attainable in the next few months. The base layer is OpenStreetMap, cross-checked against course websites and enriched with scorecards, USGA rating/slope, and public/private status. User corrections from golfers who know their home course have beaten every commercial data source we check against.

60 comments

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prologic
Any plans to expand this to other parts of the world?
elpakal
clicked on a website link for a course near me and it took me to a weird site wopraja
verdverm
are we able to estimate water usage and other statistics from this data set?
punnerud
Nice job! When I zoom in on Google earth you can easily see if it’s actually a golf course or not, would been interesting to use this to draw up the areas with polygons and some more details.

Then you could start providing a lot more details about each one automatically.

totetsu
This is fascinating not because I’m interested in visiting any of these. But to see the communities in Alaska with courses, or to look at the most concentrated places and wonder what so many people in Florida get out of having a fairway and one hole right in their backyard..
crossroadsguy
I am not sure how it is in USA but in my country golf courses are abuse of public resources for (almost) private use. For a very few who can lobby enough for renewal of these leases and these are kept out of reach of the normal public, either by rule or by cost, sometimes both. Golf courses are lungs of many of the growing cities, across the world, but I do believe they should not be kept exclusive. Also, this comes directly from feudal/colonial times here. Those also require too much of other natural and public resources to be maintained.
fluorinerocket
Why don't the "In my country" posters ever name the country
proxy_skate
so thats why lebron wanted to go to philadelphia or miami
ryan_lane
It would be interesting to map this to parkinson's data.
thomasswift
This is badass. Thank you!

Near my area, there is a driving range and a simulator place as pins. both nice but not courses. Do you want reports on that?

aren55555
Would be sweet if it also had membership status (private/public/etc)
scoofy
So, I started https://golfcourse.wiki in 2020, and I see courses that basically only I’ve mapped.

It’s cool, I want it to be public, if you want to work together, do reach out.

I would also say what you are doing is almost certainly opening you up to liability if you are just scraping other sites and republishing their data. One paper town that you published and you might have a lawsuit on your hands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_settlement

abhishek_aieng
Are you planning to do somthing similar other than US?
cantalopes
This map just shows how terrible more priviledged people are and destroy our environment for their rich boi "fun"
flaburgan
Do you plan to contribute the data back into OSM? That would be the nice way to go to share with the community and allow you to have better data in the future with less maintenance work.
haunter
Golf is a sport I never tried but really want to. Also from the outside it looks both fun and relaxing to be outside in the nature. But I’m in the wrong country for that currently lol, golf is a niche here in Eastern Europe
rickmf
Try VR golf to get started!
jasonjei
No information on Olympic Club. I’m a member. Let me know if you need info for filling the gaps there.
comrade1234
You have hidden greens in Solon springs Wisconsin but you have it on the wrong side of the lake. It's like a 25-minute drive around the lake to get to it.

I think you must only have the village name for the address and not the street address. You can see the golf course in the map image on the other side of the lake.