Hi Wayne,

Thanks for working to improve golf courses on OpenStreetMap. But I wanted to let you know of a small problem with the work you did on a couple of holes. If you look at the fairway on the second hole here, you brought the fairway right up to the green, but then you overlapped the green by only sharing a few of the nodes. You need to share all of the nodes at the border. Thanks.

I'm going to leave this "broken" now in case you want to see it and fix it up yourself. If you're too busy, don't worry about it and I'll get to it in the next week during regular golf clean-ups.

Thanks for bringing golf courses closer to standards. There's an important one that you missed on a bunker in this change. There is a patch of rough that was correctly mapped with a multipolygon, but you deleted the inner polygon and drew a lollipop* around it instead. This is incorrect. Please avoid these in the future. Thanks.

* Example: osm.wiki/w/images/5/58/Golf_Course_Lollipop_Example.png

You should move "extra turf if needed" to something like a "note" or "description" tag. I don't imagine the grounds crew actually named that chunk of turf.

If it were me, I think I'd put the overpass query in JOSM directly (File -> Download Data... -> Download from Overpass API), select all of the items that match your query. then edit just that misspelled name.

When you go to upload the changeset, you'll see that they are all modified objects, and no objects are being added.

You might want to try with a small subset and make sure things are working correctly before making a change over a large area.

Good luck.

There's a discussion on the topic of multiple courses within a golf_course boundary.

osm.wiki/Talk:Tag:golf%3Dhole

Nothing has been decided, and probably won't be for a long time. That doesn't prevent you/me/others from just starting a defacto standard and getting some traction that way.

What I'd like to see on the "Wizard 7" golf=hole way is this:
* golf=hole
* ref=7
* course_name=Wizard
* name doesn't exist

Again, the standard doesn't exist, but this is the direction I'll be taking things in 2026. If you want to save your work from being replaced, you could start editing in this way. I'm open to discussing other schemes.

The multi on 7 looks perfect. Thanks!

I spot-checked 3 of the 98 objects changed and they all show the same pattern, duplicate a problem object, correct some misspelling, add a strange "@id" tag, leave the old version in place, and destroy history. Fix objects, don't replace them. Thanks.

changeset/177313602

Also, holes shouldn't have the course name in them ("Wizard 1", "Wizard 2", ...) The tagging of course names hasn't really been nailed down, but it will likely be a separate tag on the golf=hole. Just a heads-up that I'll start cleaning those up at some point.

Hey maddog,

I love that you are adding the multipolygons as you map. Thanks for that.

The 7th green wasn't done quite right though. Your multi has the green as one of the inner ways, and then the rough/bunker multi as the other inner. The correct thing to do is set the rough way as the inner, and not the entire multipolygon. Does that make sense?
The rough/bunker multi is correct. It just shouldn't be included in the larger multi. Only the rough way itself needs to be.

If you want me to fix it up, let me know. Otherwise, I'll let you mess around with it. I'll clean it up in next Thursday's pass if it's still there. Thanks.

FYI, I reversed a bunch of the golf=hole ways on this course so they lead from the tee to the hole. Direction matters. Just letting you know for any future golf mapping you do. Thanks for the contributions.

People using golf simulator tools are often lead down the wrong path and make problematic changes to the map. I hope you aren't using Chad's Tool.

FYI, golf holes don't have names, they have "ref" numbers. Please don't add "name" tags in the future. Thanks.

RE: way/1464143120

When drawing golf course areas (i.e. greens, fairways, bunkers, tees, etc.), please be aware that the ways (lines) used to outline those areas must not cross over each other. Fairway outlines shouldn't cross over greens or bunkers or other fairways for example. Take a look at osm.wiki/File:Golf.png for an example of the "Wrong" way to map a fairway and a green along with the right way. There are some cases where a fringe exists around a green and you should draw the fairway outline completely around a green, leaving room for the fringe. Other times, the fairway and green butt up against each other. In that case the fairway and green should share the same nodes at the boundary between the two, and every node at the boundary needs to be shared leaving no gaps. When drawing these shared nodes, editors like iD (built into openstreetmap.org) will "snap" to an existing node if you get close enough. If you have any questions about golf course mapping, feel free to reach out. Thanks.

Thanks for the clean-up.

I get a weekly dump of the US from geofabrik and run it through a bunch of filters and code and SQL/PostGIS magic to generate working data files (lists of URLs of problem golf course features). I then go and clean those up best I can. The two major phases of my project are fairways and greens overlapping, along with greens fully inside fairways but not probably set as a multipolygon. The former has been completed and the latter is just a day or two from completion. It has taken over 3 years of work.

I also have related nightly dumps of the diffs that does a analysis to find out what has changed and if it fails various checks. I then go and clean those up and if appropriate, notify the mapper of their errors and how they can improve in the future.

I'm working on a diary entry draft that will detail a bunch of this. I should dust it off and finish it up.

RE: way/1462393623

When drawing golf course areas (i.e. greens, fairways, bunkers, tees, etc.), please be aware that the ways (lines) used to outline those areas must not cross over each other. Fairway outlines shouldn't cross over greens or bunkers or other fairways for example. Take a look at osm.wiki/File:Golf.png for an example of the "Wrong" way to map a fairway and a green along with the right way. There are some cases where a fringe exists around a green and you should draw the fairway outline completely around a green, leaving room for the fringe. Other times, the fairway and green butt up against each other. In that case the fairway and green should share the same nodes at the boundary between the two, and every node at the boundary needs to be shared leaving no gaps. When drawing these shared nodes, editors like iD (built into openstreetmap.org) will "snap" to an existing node if you get close enough. If you have any questions about golf course mapping, feel free to reach out. Thanks.

Hey wat,

I appreciate any work towards cleaning up golf courses, but I found a problem in your methodology. If you look at the second hole fairway, you'll see that the nodes on either side of node/4218321798 were removed from the fairway, but not the green. This leaves the two objects overlapping and setting off my Q/A checks for overlaps. I'm not sure how automated this cleanup is, or if it was just a one-time manual oversight. Just wanted to let you know. thanks.

And thanks for being responsive to changeset comments in the past maddog, we appreciate it.

RE: way/1433425782

You have made a common error when you saw a fairway that looked like it didn't have a proper "Feature Type" defined and you decided to add the fairway tag. The hole was already properly tagged, but was part of a relation of multiple objects known as a multipolygon. Please read this short wiki where I've tried to explain what you are looking at and avoid making the mistake in the future. osm.wiki/ID_understanding_golf_course_relations

Thanks.

RE: way/1054075723, et al

You have broken fairway relations with this edit. Please see the wiki at osm.wiki/w/index.php?title=ID_understanding_golf_course_relations

RE: way/1461319115, et al

When drawing golf course areas (i.e. greens, fairways, bunkers, tees, etc.), please be aware that the ways (lines) used to outline those areas must not cross over each other. Fairway outlines shouldn't cross over greens or bunkers or other fairways for example. Take a look at osm.wiki/File:Golf.png for an example of the "Wrong" way to map a fairway and a green along with the right way. There are some cases where a fringe exists around a green and you should draw the fairway outline completely around a green, leaving room for the fringe. Other times, the fairway and green butt up against each other. In that case the fairway and green should share the same nodes at the boundary between the two, and every node at the boundary needs to be shared leaving no gaps. When drawing these shared nodes, editors like iD (built into openstreetmap.org) will "snap" to an existing node if you get close enough. If you have any questions about golf course mapping, feel free to reach out. Thanks.