The courses nobody had mapped.
Our model drew maps for 952 golf courses that no one had ever mapped. Plus Prestonwood for the SAS Championship, the steel inside almost every iron, and the fifth par 3.
Is it just me, or do you get excited when a scorecard says 70 or 71? Maybe we're just tired of 72, because it's almost all we ever see. From the late 1940s on, builders settled on 72 and never really let go. I hope the shorter card makes a comeback. The Cut below traces how we got here.
Our AI drew 952 golf courses nobody had mapped
Most golf course maps online start with a volunteer. Someone opens OpenStreetMap, traces the holes over an aerial photo, and every app downstream gets a map. Thousands of courses never got their volunteer. Until this week, their pages on our site had a scorecard and a photo with nothing drawn on it.
So we taught a vision AI to do the tracing. It looks at the same public aerial photo, finds the greens, fairways, bunkers and water, then works out which green belongs to which hole and draws each hole from the tee to the length on the card. On courses it had never seen, 99 holes in 100 landed on the right green.
952 courses now have every hole drawn this way, and 117 more that volunteers had mapped all but a few holes of got the missing ones filled in.
It's a good first example. The Field Club opened in Fox Chapel in 1915 and hosted the 1937 PGA Championship, which Denny Shute won. It also has five par 3s and finishes on one, a 215-yard 18th from the back tee. About one course in 17 ends on a par 3.
Every page drawn this way says so, and a volunteer's tracing replaces ours when one arrives.
SEE THE PITTSBURGH FIELD CLUB MAP →The Tour takes a week off, and the Champions play Prestonwood
Michael Brennan won the Baycurrent Classic in Yokohama on Sunday by one shot, at 16 under, ahead of Jacob Bridgeman and Keith Mitchell. A year ago he had no Tour card. He's 24, and that's his third PGA Tour win and his second this season.
The PGA Tour now rests until Bermuda on October 22. This week belongs to the over-50s: the PGA Tour Champions play the SAS Championship at Prestonwood Country Club in Cary, North Carolina, Friday to Sunday.
Last year the hardest hole was the 11th, a 190-yard par 3 that played 0.31 over par and made more double bogeys than any other hole. The 17th, a par 5 of 503 yards, played 0.64 under. In about 230 rounds it gave up 146 birdies and 3 eagles, so roughly two players in three walked off it under par.
The takeaway: the Champions' finish is built for a late move. Watch the 17th on Sunday.
OPEN PRESTONWOOD'S MEADOWS COURSE →The SAS course is two courses stitched together
Prestonwood is a 54-hole club, and the Champions don't play any one of its courses from start to finish. The tournament course is a composite of two of them, the Highlands and the Meadows, par 72 at 7,237 yards, designed by Leon Howard.
The front nine is Highlands holes: its first three, then 13 to 18. The back nine is Meadows: its first four, then 13 and 15 to 18. That makes the Champions' 8th the Highlands' 17th, a 168-yard par 3 to a green on an island. Last year's hardest hole, the 11th, is the Meadows' 2nd, and the birdie-fest 17th is the Meadows' 17th.
Both courses are long for members too. The Highlands plays 7,082 yards from the Gold tees, rated 74.4 with a slope of 138, and the Meadows 7,108, rated 74.6 and 138.
The takeaway: if you get a game at Prestonwood, ask which course you're on. The Meadows' 17th is the birdie chance. Its 2nd is the par 3 to play to the middle of the green.
SEE THE HIGHLANDS CARD AND MAP →Almost every iron ships with the same two shaft makers
Pick up a new set of irons and you're picking a head. The shaft in it is probably one you've swung before, whatever the brand.
Across 15 club brands whose stock iron shafts we've captured, 14 offer a True Temper or a KBS steel shaft as stock in at least one iron (Cobra's are versions made for Cobra). The odd one out is Bridgestone, which ships Nippon. Dynamic Gold alone, in one weight or another, is stock at 10 of the 15.
Drivers are the opposite. 13 brands list 230 stock driver shaft options between them, and they spread across 80 different shafts. The most shared one, Mitsubishi's Tensei 1K Black, is stock at 4 brands. Only 8 driver shafts turn up at more than one brand at all.
Part of the reason: a third of those driver options are made-for versions, built for one brand under a famous shaft name. In irons, the steel is mostly the steel.
The takeaway: if you love how your irons feel, you can probably take that shaft to almost any brand's head. If you love your driver, test the shaft before you switch heads, because the next brand may not offer it.
From the stock shaft lists on 408 club models from 16 brands, as each maker publishes them. Brands we're still collecting could move these counts.
SEE TRUE TEMPER DYNAMIC GOLD →The fifth par 3 went away, then came back
Most courses have four par 3s. About one in five has five, and when a course was built tells you a lot about which kind you'll get.
Before 1920, 26% of courses opened with five par 3s. Through the 1960s and 70s that fell to 15%, as par 72 with four par 3s and four par 5s became the standard layout. Since 2000 it's back to 20%.
The fifth par 3 mostly comes with a lower par. At par 70, four in ten courses have five. At par 72 it's fewer than one in ten, and those nearly always balance it with five par 5s.
The takeaway: when an older card says par 70 or 71, count the par 3s before you pick a tee. With five of them, more of your score rides on your irons.
6,933 US courses where we hold a full card and an opening year, each counted once from its longest tee.
BROWSE THE COURSE RANKINGS →- Maps for 952 courses nobody had mapped. Every hole, green, fairway, bunker and pond, drawn by our model and labelled that way. →
- Prestonwood's Highlands and Meadows, mapped. Both SAS courses now have every hole on the map, in time for Friday. →
- A whole round in one answer. The studio can now make up to forty lookups for a single question, enough to plan every hole of a round. →
Does your home course have four par 3s or five?
Reply and tell us, and which one you'd cut or add.
See you next week,
Blake