Jon Sherman is a friend of ours, and he runs a great site called Practical Golf. He helps everyday golfers better understand improving at golf and enjoying the game more, and he does it in a way that's welcoming to players of all stripes.
One of the keys to getting better is actually playing and practicing -- and sometimes getting a highly qualified set of eyes on your swing. To that end, Jon has worked on a project that makes it easier for a golfer to find those golf facilities to keep working on your game, which he's written about in the below piece.
Technology has come a long way in helping present data in an interesting, meaningful way. For the past year, we have been working on a project on our site that will help golfers visualize golf courses, practice facilities, and instructors in their area. Sometimes it can be difficult to get a bird's eye view of everything in your locality, or if you are traveling somewhere new, and we wanted to help solve this problem for golfers.
It took a lot of tinkering with an open-source map product called Mapbox to complete our tool. We have uploaded the data for about 10,000 public golf courses, 1,000 driving ranges, and are starting to build a network of instructors. Our goal is to allow golfers to quickly research all of these services in a unique way.
You can see how our map works in this video:
Down the road, our hope is to have every single public golf course in the world along with other helpful resources for golfers. We always love feedback from users, so please take our interactive map for a spin here. We hope you enjoy!
Follow Jon Sherman on Twitter @practicalgolf, where he is happy to chat about golf with anyone.
