When I ’m not expend time with my girl , playing with technology , writing forMacworld , or doing household task , golf game is my favorite time - destroyer . For some strange reason , I bask the defeat that comes with trying to swing a club at 100 - plus mph and scratch a belittled ball absolutely positively solid — the sense of gratification when I manage to do just that , typically about one out of every 100 swings , is probably what lend me back to the class . Hours of frustration punctuated by moments of sheer amazement is how a supporter describes the sport — for us hackers , at least . Tiger Woods would probably key out it differently .
In any outcome , I recently play a course here in Portland called Great Blue atHeron Lakes . While the name sounds passably like that of a fancy private country clubhouse , the course is have by the city of Portland ( and located in a square bordered by a railroad , a racetrack , an interstate highway , and the departure route for Portland International — quiet atmosphere is not a reasonableness to play this course ! ) . With water on 13 of 18 hole , deeply rough , and bantam greens , Great Blue is a thought-provoking layout . I was seek to describe just how baffling it was to a non - local friend when I realized I could useGoogle Earthto assistant with the process .
If you ’re not familiar with Google Earth ( ) , there are both high- and humble - resolution images , reckon on what part of the world you ’re looking at . Portland , Oregon , is one of the areas with high resolution image . As Great Blue at Heron Lakes is well within the coverage area for these high-pitched - resolution persona , zooming in on the course gives fairly prominent resultant :
That ’s the 16th hollow at Great Blue , a wonderful “ how gay ( stupid ? ) am I ? ” hole . ( The golf tee is at the downcast left hand ; the super acid is upper rightfulness . ) Do you bail out to the right and face a long second dead reckoning across water , or attempt to cut both lake with your tee shot , leaving a chip shot to the green ? So one way I could use Google Earth to facilitate my crony understand the form would be to grab screenshots of every jam . But that ’s tedious , to say the least . or else , I suppose I ’d use Google Earth ’s placemarks ( Add - > Placemark ) to place the camera above and behind each tee box seat , then I could just export my list of placemarks ( single file - > Save - > Save Place as ) and get off that Indian file to my pal .
I was heading down exactly that path when another aspiration come upon — Google Earth has a Play clitoris in the Places section . flick the Play push button , and all of your places will play as a movie , with the camera fly from spot to spot . So rather of just show my buddy the tee view of each hole , I tote up some additional placemarks to speculate a typical drive and second ( and third , on par fives ) shot on each hole . I then modified the appearance of the placemarks , take out the ikon for the fairway shots and making their textual matter semi - gauze-like , and using a small flag icon for the on - the - unripened placemark — just to make things appear a scrap unclouded .
The end answer of all those efforts isthis placemarks file , a quick virtual enlistment of a troll of golf at Great Blue . I could have stopped there , of course , but I wanted to see if I could make a picture show of my course tour . So I fired upSnapz Pro Xandcaptured a movieof the placemark playback .
The above video has been dilute in both size of it and quality for entanglement streaming;here ’s the original(15 MiB , 868×739 ) if you ’d like to see the gamey character reading . With a self - contained pic , I can now make practical walkthroughs for any course visible in Google Earth ’s high - declaration areas . ( There ’s just not enough point in the low - settlement images to do anything remotely like this . ) question what it would be like to dally Medinah , site of the recent PGA championship?Here ’s the first tee . Or the classicPebble Beach ? Or Oregon ’s own laurels - bring home the bacon oceanfront links course , Bandon Dunes ? With Google Earth and high - resolve images , such things are comparatively niggling .
Other thing you could do
you may use Google Earth to get very accurate measurements of your tee guessing ( or any injection , if you wish ) after a round . During the round , just make a Federal Reserve note as to the accurate emplacement of the tee - off spot , and where your ball come to rest . When you get home base , launch Google Earth and navigate to the course . Select Tools - > Ruler to put the ruler on - screen , and set the building block pop - up to Yards ( and verify Mouse Navigation isnotchecked ) . Fly to the hole you ’re interested in measuring , then just click and drag from the tee boxful to the situation where your driveway landed , and you ’ve got a quite - accurate drive measurement tool . As an lesson , here ’s my drive on the previously - mentioned sixteenth cakehole :
Woot , a very rare ( for me ) 300 - one thousand drive . OK , so it was lee . And the hole represent downhill . And the football tee was up . And I foul up the chip shot to the green . I ’m still felicitous I handle to observe the landing zone after need the ‘ no easy direction out ’ alternative !
Another golf - have-to doe with task that would be quite useful for Google Earth is scout out a trend you have n’t dally yet prior to arriving . you may get a good flavour for the general form layout ( how many left and right-hand dog leg ) , denseness of tree , the amount of piddle ( “ maybe I should bring the cheap golf balls ! ” ) and even the altitude changes on the course . It ’s not quite the same as stupefy a real practice around in , but at least the ballad of the land wo n’t be totally foreign to you when you arrive .
Ah , golfing in Google Earth … yet another way to devastate some of that free time I already do n’t seem to have enough of !
