If you've ever watched the European Tour or another overseas professional tour, or if you've ever played golf outside of the United States, then you've probably had the pleasure of trying to figure out how to convert meters to yards.
The rest of the world uses the Metric system, while Americans are pretty much the only people using the Customary system these days. On the golf course, that means figuring out how meters translates to yards on the scorecard.
How to convert from meters to yards
To convert from meters to yards, simply add 10 percent of the number of meters to the stated number of meters, and that's very close to the number of yards.
For example, if you have 200 meters to the hole, you'll take 10 percent of 200, which is 20, and add that to the 200 to get yards. Therefore, 200 meters equals 220 yards.
A tougher example. If you have 175 meters to the hole, you'll take 10 percent of 175, which is 17.5 and add that to the 175 to get 192.5 yards. You can round that up to 193 yards.
Now, how about if you're not from the United States, and you're playing golf in the USA with a scorecard showing yards. How do you convert from yards to meters? It's basically the opposite calculation.
How to convert from yards to meters
A yard is shorter than a meter, meaning the yards-to-meter conversion factor is 1 yard equals 0.91 meters. For golf purposes, we'll simplify that to 1 yard equals 0.9 meters. That means the conversion is taking 10 percent of the total yards and subtracting that from the total number of yards.
For example, if you have 200 yards to the hole, you'll take 10 percent of 200, which is 20, and subtract that from 200 to get the meters. Therefore, 200 yards equals 180 meters, for all you need to know. Technically, it's 183 yards, but don't worry about that.
It's pretty easy to make a quick conversion on the fly from yards to meters, or from meters to yards. You just have to know what you're doing with the 10 percent you're figuring: adding it for meters to yards, or subtracting it for yards to meters.
