We’ve seen Google Earth connected with the game of golf a number of times over the years. We’ve talked about the built-in Golf Courses layer, sites like GolfNation that make great use of Google Earth, and even fly-throughs of ideal play on each hole for some courses.
Tony Korologos at the Hooked on Golf Blog has just written a great post about how he uses Google Earth to prepare for his next round of golf. From his post, here is an example of how he looks at a hole:
From looking at the aerial imagery on Google Earth, this looks to be a tight, tree-lined hole. The hole is only 390 from the middle tees. We don’t need to hit driver here unless we are not long hitters. A tee shot of 240-250 yards will put us in a safe and fat part of the fairway. The strategy for the tee shot is a 3-wood, or a driver if your driver goes about 250 yards. I measured from the tee to the left fairway bunker and that clocks in at 266.6 yards. Once again, that 3-wood is looking good from the tee. Even if we hit it on the line of the bunker, we won’t reach the bunker, unless our 3-wood goes 266 yards.
The approach on hole #1 is fairly simple. There’s a bunker on the right, so we want to aim left, away from the bunker.
It’s a great way to preview a course, and the Google Earth editing tools (adding placemarks, paths, etc) make it easy to add notes and ideas to each hole. Check out Tony’s full post to learn more.