The Links at Teton Peaks

[Danny D]

I'm uploading a beta version of this real course located outside of Driggs, Idaho. Any input would be appreciated.

Hiya SB...

I looked Teton over and here's what I found.

Your pin 1's are scattered all over the place on the greens. They are not near the center where they should be.

Your OVERLAY planar sizing is too short compared to the Google Earth yardages. I read it to be off by about 5 yards short over a 300 yard span. That will definitely cause you problems getting the yardage set correctly from center of the green to the tee box. Most likely that is why you ran into problems setting the correct distances on each hole.

Given the current state of APCD construction, to correct it I would first delete all pins and start over. Plant all of the pin 1's in the center of the greens, and then move the tees to where they add up to the correct hole yardages. Moving the tees might cause you to have to also move the tee boxes. That can actually be done pretty easily, rather than rebuilding them. Worst case might be that you may have to rebuild a couple of them, but then maybe not.

I didn't really look at anything else after that. I just wanted to see if I could see what your yardages issues were. Some changes will need to be made if you expect the yardages to match the real course. Don't be discouraged. I personally think you did a great job on the overall layout and course construction. Especially with this being your first go at the APCD.

Dan

[Adelade]

I think the first pin has no effect on scorecard Dan, I see nothing indicating that it affects it in several different courses. Even on par 3s (Pebble Beach 17th and Whistling Straits 12th are some examples) In one extreme case the first pin plays 72 yards shorter than what the scorecard says.

[Danny D]

I think the first pin has no effect on scorecard Dan, I see nothing indicating that it affects it in several different courses. Even on par 3s (Pebble Beach 17th and Whistling Straits 12th are some examples) In one extreme case the first pin plays 72 yards shorter than what the scorecard says.

If you stick to the method I mentioned, you won't run into all of the scorecard distances showing wrong on the scorecards. Lez explains it perfectly in his video 17 - https://youtu.be/lS19t1mYGS4 Notice he is showing you ways to cheat and finagle your way around setting it the way it was designed. In doing so it messes up the scorecard yardages. Note his final decision was to move the tee box, rather than to accept the "tweaked" method. With Sodbuster replicating a real course, if I were he I would do it as I described and have a scorecard that matches the actual course scorecard. It is fixable, but then that is his decision as to how he wants the scorecard to look.

In the 2 par 3 holes you pointed out, they both had extremely long greens, front to back. There was obvious tweaking done to those holes, possibly in an effort to be able to plant pins on the entire green, so I suspect. I notice they were not right on the scorecards either.

Dan

[Adelade]

Im only talking about scorecards and pins and how the two relate, I dont see anything in the video that talks about that so Im not sure what you mean. I still fail to see any indication of pins affecting scorecards. What I meant about the 2 example holes is that distances to the first pin and the scorecard dont match, therefore hinting that the first pin doesnt have anything to do with it. I doubt they're tweaked with methods in Lez video since they are comfortably within the APCD hole length limitations. But as I said, I still dont know what actually determines the scorecard, Im only saying what doesnt seem to do so.

[Adelade]

Did some testing to finally get to the bottom of it, and the only thing* that seems to matter to the scorecard is the distance between A. the "center of the green" dot in the hole path, and B. the planted tee. Furthermore, and crucially, the only time that distance counts is at the exact moment the tee was planted or last moved. This explains why you can move a center of a green without affecting the scorecard if the planted tee is already planted and will not get moved or re-planted.

Since its impossible to move or plant a tee at a position beyond the acceptable limits for hole length determined by APCD, the only reasonable conclusion would be that it is impossible to get a scorecard within Links to display a number shorter than the minimum allowed Ladies tees length or longer than the maximum allowed Back tee length. For par 5s this seems to mean a minimum of 378 yards, in sodbuster's screenshot in the other thread he showed the hole actually playing 360 yards from Ladies tees, I cant comment on whether that is what is what the real life scorecard shows or not, but if it does, I cant see any way he would be able to get the Links scorecard to be accurate. He does seem to have found a way for Forward tees to display shorter than the minimum-allowed-distance-for-Forward-tees, by assigning the tee rating the same as Ladies tees, but it wouldnt work to get anything below the minimum Ladies tees limit.

*Edit: (on par 4s and par 5s , the path between planted tee and center of green is also affected by where the mid points on the defined hole path are, but there is no way to trick those into being shorter than allowed. The "Tee Center" dot has no affect)

[sodbuster]

Here is the actual yardage for the hole. As you can see the Ladie's tee is indeed 362 yards and no matter what I do I cannot get the scorecard to match for the Ladie's tee or the Middle tee.

[sodbuster]

Danny, Thanks for taking a look at the course. Actually it is my 3rd design (fourth if you count a re-design to add seam blends on my first course after the newer APCD came out).

I have spent the last couple of weeks working on getting the yardages straightened out and have taken care of it by moving the tee boxes so all yardages are spot on in the game. I took a look at Lez's tutorial on pmgolf's suggestion. Adelade had already shown me how to move the hole path dots like Lez showed. Also Lez did mention that by doing that you would screw up the scorecard. His other method (moving the tee box up) wouldn't work for me as I am trying to re-create a real course and, as Adelade said, the APCD won't allow a Ladies Tee that's outside it's minimum/maximum range on the par 5 11th hole. Same problem with the 17th hole. The Ladies Tee in real life is closer than the APCD will allow. The only way for me to get the in-game yardages right is by fooling the APCD to thinking the hole is longer than it is. I'll just have to live with the scorecard inaccuracies.

Now the last thing I need to do is reduce some severe slopes on some greens and replant the pins (unless more goof-ups are discovered). I guess I jumped the gun and released the beta to soon or should have called it an alpha.

[Pete]

Think you've done a splendid job, i wouldn't have a clue

[sodbuster]

Thanks Pete. That means a lot to any designer.

[Danny D]

Danny, Thanks for taking a look at the course. Actually it is my 3rd design (fourth if you count a re-design to add seam blends on my first course after the newer APCD came out).

I have spent the last couple of weeks working on getting the yardages straightened out and have taken care of it by moving the tee boxes so all yardages are spot on in the game.

I replied to this already, but I must have previewed it and then forgot to hit the Submit button to post it. I'll try again...

You're welcome sodbuster. I mistook you for a beginner working on your first course. Sorry bout that. But that explains the great work you did on Teton. Several years back when I was learning the APCD, I replicated my local 9 hole course. It's a tiny little cow pasture type course, and It had 2 short par 5's with the ladies tees also being too close to the green for the APCD standards. My final solution was to move the ladies tees further back and within range. Another thing you could do for realistic appearances would be to go ahead and build a DUMMY tee where it belongs and then put fake red tee markers on it. Then just plant the ladies tee in the same spot where the next tee back is. Like the juniors tee for example. On the scorecard it would show the same yardage as the junior tee, and that's where a person playing the red tees would have to hit from. At least it would still appear to have a ladies tee where it's supposed to be on the course. Heck, you could even make a little "TEE UNDER REPAIR" sign and stick it on the red tee box to explain why they are using the juniors tee. There's all sorts of tricks you can use to get around stuff. Anyway, glad you got it straight. Nice work.

Dan