Alternate Pin Position Info. Available

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I'm not sure how many of you check out the hole information on each course but as I update/add courses I run across a ton of courses with alternate pin positions. My original thought was that locals could update the site as the pins are moved to their new spots but I always wanted to be able to record all that information on the site so the course profiles could be as comprehensive as possible.

It took me a while to figure out how to make it so it wasn't too confusing to view and update and I think I've managed to do just that.

The new hole update form may be slightly overwhelming at first but it's really quite simple. Each hole has 3 possible pin positions that you can fill out lengths for. You can then select which pin is the current one on the course with the radio buttons. The length fields (yellow boxes) will auto-update with the proper lengths you enter for the current pin position.

If a course only has one pin position, then you would just fill out the "A" position and the lengths would be updated accordingly.

If you guys notice any bugs or have any questions on this please let me know.

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I just added another small button in the title bar of the hole section. It is a "+" button just like the holes but it will allow you to expand or collapse ALL pin positions instead of doing one hole at a time.

[MattK]

Hi Tim,
Some courses with multiple pin positions only have "tee to green center" measurements. Right now these average numbers have been wedged into the "A" column, which is okay but not a totally correct description of what those numbers mean. I'm trying to think of a good way to convey the correct info without making the display too cluttered...

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I would probably treat that as just one pin location for simplicities sake and if you don't expand the pin positions, the page looks the same as it used to. Also, you have to admit that the "tee to green center" might just mean people are too lazy to properly measure to the pins :)

The majority of multiple pin placements on courses are treated in the A/B/C fashion with a few exceptions (Warwick has 2 pins per hole, Roland Park has 2 pins on some holes, some courses have more than 3 positions, etc.). I think trying to cover all the possibilities would end up convoluting the interface just to handle the few courses that don't follow the standards.

The current system allows more information to be entered than the previous way of one distance measurement but like you said, it's not perfect but it's better than it was. Another issue is that a lot of courses don't follow the tee color standards (red, white, blue, gold) but I felt that offering people the opportunity to pick their own colors might end up make things too crowded just for the courses that don't abide by the standards. There are a lot of trade-offs and compromises I think about to try and make things easier to use so that updating courses is a smooth process.

That said, I don't want to discourage any ideas, I just wanted to explain the reasoning behind excluding certain things.

[MattK]

Yeah I get what you're saying. I'm updating a few of the ones I know right now, and its going pretty smoothly and looks pretty good.

Have you considered linking the course length stats on a course's "course info" page to the totals on the "hole info page", perhaps with the appropriate color coding? Right now the front page just has a max and min length, while the hole info page has one, two, three or four lengths, which may change from time to time as the pin placements change.

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I did think about linking those numbers but the problem is that sometimes the hole information isn't complete (15 out of 18 are entered) or there is no hole info. I'd rather have a somewhat accurate total distance if there is no detailed hole information than having an inaccurate number there based on the number of holes entered or in most cases, no distance at all. Usually I just update the range after I find and enter detailed hole information.

Also, don't believe the total distance values on all the scorecards, I've ran into quite a few that add up the distances incorrectly. The math for the totals on the hole info page is correct :)