How to Build a Yardage Book

A yardage book is a hole-by-hole record of the distances and features that matter on a course: how far it is to carry a bunker, the depth of each green, where the trouble sits, and the safe places to miss. Tour players carry detailed ones; you don't need theirs, you need one that makes your decisions faster and more confident.

Before you build one, know the rules. Under the Rules of Golf, a distance-measuring device that shows distance only is allowed by default, but a Committee can prohibit devices with a Local Rule, and using anything beyond distance, like slope or elevation, is not allowed in competition. A written yardage book is always legal. Check each event's local rules and hard-card so you know what you can carry, and never assume a rangefinder is permitted.

The point is decisions, so record what changes them. For each hole, capture:

• Total yardage from your tees, and the layout: dogleg direction, hazards, out of bounds.
• Off the tee: carries to clear bunkers or reach a corner, and the distance to any trouble you can run out to.
• The approach: distances to the front, center, and back of the green, so any pin becomes a simple sum.
• Green depth and shape, plus slopes and tiers that make certain pins hard to reach.
• The safe miss on every green and the spots to avoid, the short side and the bunkers.
• Notes to yourself: a good target line, a club you tend to over-hit, a green that runs fast.

Front, center, and back numbers are the single most useful thing in the book. With the center distance and the day's pin sheet, you can club precisely for any flag.

The best time to build a book is during a practice round, played at an easy pace when you can gather information instead of chasing a score. Walk the hole from the tee, note your landing area and the carries that matter, then walk off or laser the approach and the green.

Pace the greens front to back to get their depth, and note the general slope. Drop a few balls in likely miss areas to learn what each recovery looks like. Combine this with a course-management plan and you'll arrive on tournament day with the thinking already done. This is the recon layer of good tournament prep.

You have a few ways to get numbers, and combining them is most reliable:

• Laser rangefinder: fastest for carries and approach numbers to fixed targets during a practice round.
• GPS app or watch: quick front, center, and back numbers, though less precise than a laser.
• Sprinkler heads: many courses stamp yardages to the center of the green on them, a free reference mid-round.
• Pacing: walking off distances, one stride roughly a yard, is the old-school backup and how you measure green depth.

Whatever you use to build the book, remember the device rules above. The written numbers you record are legal to carry even where rangefinders are banned, which is exactly why the book is worth building.

Some players add a green book, a map of each green's slopes and contours. Commercial green books exist for many courses, but note that the Rules limit the detail and size of green-reading materials you can use in competition, so a homemade page of general slopes is the safe route. Keep your notes simple: overall tilt, obvious tiers, and any pin position that's a genuine sucker location.

Pair the book with the daily pin sheet the event provides. Marking the pin on your green diagram turns the front, center, and back numbers into an exact yardage, and tells you at a glance whether a flag is worth attacking or a spot to play safely away from. For how those reads turn into decisions, see the green-reading work in the training resource.

On the course, the book speeds up your routine: pull the number, factor the conditions, pick the club, commit. It should make you more decisive, not less. If you find yourself studying pages over the ball, you've got too much detail; trim it to what you actually use.

Update it as you learn. When you discover a green runs faster than expected or a bunker is closer than the number suggested, write it in. A yardage book gets better every round you play a course, which is why players guard the ones they've built for a home track.

You can buy a professionally surveyed book for many courses, print one from a GPS app, or make your own by hand. Commercial books are accurate and save time; a homemade book is free and forces you to learn the course by building it, which is often worth more than the precision. Many players start with a printed base and add their own notes on top.

Paper still rules on the course. It never loses signal or battery, it's unambiguously legal, and writing a note by hand makes it stick. Keep it in a back pocket with a pencil, and treat it as part of your standard kit alongside the rest of your tournament prep.

Here's a per-hole template you can copy into a notebook and fill in during a practice round:

1. Hole number, par, and yardage from your tees.
2. Tee shot: target line, the carry to clear trouble, and the number to lay back to if needed.
3. Approach: distances to the front, center, and back of the green.
4. Green: depth, major slopes or tiers, and the safe miss versus the side to avoid.
5. One personal note, the key decision or reminder for the hole.

Five lines a hole is plenty for most players. Build it once, test it in competition on the GolfNexus calendar, and refine it every time you play.