How a Course Gets Drawn

What does a course need?

Nine holes, each a numbered line from tee to green.

A course in OpenStreetMap starts as an outline tagged leisure=golf_course. That alone draws a shape with nothing in it. What makes a print is the holes: each a line tagged golf=hole, drawn from the tee to the green, with ref set to the hole's number. Par and handicap on the same line put them on the card. Greens, fairways, tees, bunkers and water fill in the drawing around them.

The studio counts all of these before any price, and opens the order at nine numbered holes, the size of the shortest course a club would call a course.

Why won't my course print?

Because fewer than nine of its holes carry a number in OpenStreetMap.

Sometimes the holes are there and nobody gave them a ref; sometimes only the outline is there. The studio shows the count and the drawing either way, so you can see which. We refuse rather than guess: a hole we can't measure is a yard figure we'd be making up, and that's the one thing this print exists not to do.

How do I add the missing holes?

With a free OpenStreetMap account and the editor in your browser.

• Read the golf course page on the OpenStreetMap wiki, which sets out every tag a course uses.
• Open your course at openstreetmap.org, sign in, and press Edit.
• Draw each hole as a line from the middle of its back tee to the middle of its green, and give it golf=hole and ref=its number. Add par=, and handicap= if you know it.
• Save with a short note on what you added. Overpass, where this studio reads the survey, takes minutely updates from OpenStreetMap, so your edit is usually here within minutes.

Map only what you know or can see in the editor's imagery, and never copy from another map or a club's course guide: OpenStreetMap accepts only data its contributors are free to give.

Why does the print carry a date?

Because the data changes. A print states the day its survey was read, so the drawing on your wall is a record of the course as its mappers had it then.