News

The buzz at the club is pin positions on the greens—how do they get selected? How often? By who? And are they always perfectly done? Well, let's start with admitting they’re not always perfectly done, but we sure try to make it right as much as possible. There is always going to be some element of human nature attached to the event.

To help make pin positions on the greens better than ever, we selected StrackaLine software to help position the pin location each and every day going forward. You can Google “StrackaLine” to get more background information. For us, the main use has to do with the greens, which have been topographically measured for their individual slope and size. The green speed is also entered into the system so the pin positions can be selected in relation to slope, size of pin position area, and green speed. The software randomly picks the daily positions for 18 holes and uses the front, middle and back of the green positions. The software has approximately 15 hole locations on each green to select from.

We request your help and patience as we move through the trial period of the system. We’ve placed a white dot in the front and the back of each green. If you line the two up, this will be the axis through the green. When reading a pin sheet (or for our team, when setting the pin), the axis is used for pacing into the green and figuring the paces left or right of the axis for the final location. As good as the software is, we’re learning there are some not-so-great positions. This is OK, but we simply need to modify some of them slightly, and our team doesn't always hit the mark. The pin positions are continuously being monitored and fine-tuned. Please bear with us as we’re going to make some mistakes while getting through this process. The employee who cuts the cups has been empowered to make adjustments from the StrackaLine selection, if needed. Then we can modify the software selection so it won't happen again with that StrackaLine-selected position.

There’s plenty more information about StrackaLine and what we have to do to make it work, but I’m not going to bore you with that information. Overall, it’s a great system and with a few small adjustments, we’ll be in good shape. StrackaLine selects the pin position, the cups get cut every day (with a few exceptions) by one of our cup-cutting people on each course.

The really good news? With StrackaLine, we’re using more of the green to place pin positions. Hope you enjoy the pin locations and the beautiful golf courses available to you at Egypt Valley Country Club.

See you on the course,

Jeff Holmes, CGCS
Golf Course Manager