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Distance Inaccuracies

• Panteleimon 17 Posts

  Fri, Aug 13 2010 1:51 PM

  I've noticed for a while that some holes just seem to be wrong in the distance to pin they report. For example, hitting dead on a 180-yd shot with a 180-yd club to a non-elevated green with wind to your back and it coming up 10-15 yds short.

  I copied down some numbers in a recent round I played. This was a match game at Kiawah Island. I (pro) played an amateur and I noticed a strange inconsistency in the distances reported. On Hole #6, my tee box was at 345 yds and his at 331 yds. I hit my shot 272 yds and had 121 yds left to the hole. He hit his shot 231 yds and had 105 left to the hole. The math just doesn't add up for me. Just on my shot alone, 345 yds hit 272 yds leaves only 73 yds left, a difference of 48 yds from what was reported. A similar effect was noticed on the following #7, but I didn't write down the figures.

  What is up with this?

• Snaike 3,678 Posts

  Fri, Aug 13 2010 5:20 PM

  Panteleimon:

  What is up with this?

  Hi Panteleimon, 

  The reason the math does not add up is because yardage is determined from the current position of the ball to the green.

  If you and I were standing together on a perfectly straight 500 yard (par 5) tee box and both hit 300 yard drives right down the middle, then we could expect to be 200 out each.

  But, for instance, say you hit your 300 yard drive down the middle and I pushed mine left.  Even if I went the same 300 yards you did, my distance to the pin is going to be greater because I'm not playing in the middle of the fairway.  As a matter of fact, the further my 300 yard drive goes to the left, the more yardage I'm going to have to the green.  Because, as we all know.. the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

  So, instead of thinking of an aggregate yardage from tee to green, think of each shot as a straight line measurement.

  I hope that helps.  Perhaps someone can come along and explain it better than I did.

  Peace

• Yakublue 125 Posts

  Fri, Aug 13 2010 5:53 PM

  If you do a little study of basic trigonometry you will come across a process known as triangulation. That'll give you a geometrical explanation of the phenomenon you have observed!

   

  The Yak

• Panteleimon 17 Posts

  Fri, Aug 13 2010 7:13 PM

  Snaike:

  The reason the math does not add up is because yardage is determined from the current position of the ball to the green.

  I did take that into account, and I still don't think it accounts for the wild differences (particularly since our balls landed in approximately the same location).

  It also doesn't account for the differences observed in my own distances (irrespective of my competitor). Nor does it account for certain holes that in a straight line play longer than they indicate (as I noted above).

  Yakublue:

  If you do a little study of basic trigonometry you will come across a process known as triangulation. That'll give you a geometrical explanation of the phenomenon you have observed!

  I do happen to know a little math. A simple application of the law of sines and cosines gives a potential ball flight divergence of ~18° (that is assuming that the observed effect is not a software glitch). That may not seem like much, but after a 272 yd flight, that would amount to an 84 yd lateral shift (I don't even think the fairways are that wide).

  Just for the sake of argument, let's for a second assume that this case can be accounted for with geometry. In that situation, wouldn't it be best to have the program registering things distances on the fly?

• piztaker 5,743 Posts

  Fri, Aug 13 2010 10:21 PM

  Mind you, some are wrong. It's the same on a lot of real courses, they move the tees and hole placements and can't be bothered to alter all the score cards and tee boxes.

• Naughtyone 873 Posts

  Fri, Aug 13 2010 11:20 PM

  could be the distance given are to the front edge off greens.. not to the pin placement