Using OpenStreetMaps to design a Disc Golf Course

This short guide was published on Medium and YouTube by Mapbox on how to create a ball golf course on OSM. It is useful as a quick overview of contributing to OSM without reading all the documentation on how it is supposed to be done. The summary takeaway is that you can edit OSM just like you can edit Wikipedia.

Unlike a ball golf course, you will need to get out into the field (woods) to map a disc golf course. Since disc golf is traditionally played in heavily wooded areas - it is impossible to map a course from just aerial or satellite imagery due to tree canopy.

The high-level process is to record a GPS track (e.g. using a phone app) while you walk the course and tag locations called 'waypoints'. Of course you simultaneously mark the ground while you're on site. Then, you download and work with your data in desktop software like QGIS or online via OpenStreetMaps to map out the markings you made in the field.

Freedom

"Free to use" options like Google Earth or "My Maps" from Google Maps can be used, but have real limitations and drawbacks. OpenStreetMap (OSM) (example) is the go-to free competitor to Google Maps. OSM; used by TomTom, Apple, Microsoft, Esri and others, is judged to be one of the most successful collaboratively maintained open datasets in existence. Aside: one of the beautiful things about OSM is that the data design of the system makes it so that you can literally map things like "Massachusetts Route 110", and use tools like wp:OsmAnd to navigate that route - something which is impossible to do with Google Maps, or even paid apps like Rever for motorcyclists.

Disc Golf Course as a Map Feature on OSM

There is a whole category of Leisure activities which are can be mapped and depicted in OSM (think "Dog Park" to "Bowling"). One is Golf Course and so naturally there is also Disc Golf Course. See the overview page in the OSM wiki for Disc golf which references the tags used.

Caution - the proposal to add a Disc Golf Course feature was authored around 2012 and never fully adopted. So despite thousands of courses, there doesn't seem to be any clear resolution on how to map them. Notably too, it is not among the "presets" in JOSM - making it harder for even the dedicated mapper to add disc golf courses to OSM.

By 2022, some support was finally added to the 'id-tagging-schema' project of OSM for disc golf course tagging, but rendering still has not been resolved. If you can't see it, does it really exist? A reasonable pull request was closed in 2022 without being merged, ostensibly because there were unrelated issues in sports generally. I think that pull request should probably be revived. The openstreetmap-carto CSS project seems overburdened judging by the hundreds of open issues.

• See the leisure: disc golf course tag in the OSM wiki for details on elements and instructions for mapping disc golf courses in OSM.
• Compare to the leisure:golf course tag which is for mapping ball golf courses.
• Here's an example of a course mapped on OSM using the conventions as of Feb 2025. There is one noticeable problem right away: baskets and tee pads use the same symbol. Apparently this is a feature not a bug. The current node type for basket and tee use the same symbol!!??. I think it was just lazy programming, and was part of the commit in 2022 that finally added tagging support for tees and baskets at all. If you use the OSM editor called JOSM, there is a style created for it that marks features with nicer svgs but I'm fairly certain that those markings only appear to the editor, and do not look as nice - or aren't even rendered in the OSM map. Whatever the case may be, the 'tag info' site shows that there are ~2,137 disc golf courses named in OSM, so I'm hoping to find a best practice example - plus update the OSM wiki and community adoption of best practices.
• This example is done right. It is the U.C. Santa Cruz Disc Golf Course. There is a node type 'route' with 26 members. Those members are nodes for each tee and basket; and ways for each hole.
• Issue #3766 in openstreetmap-carto opened in 2019 is still open and needs some love to get it done. The issue subject is "Render disc_golf features analogous to golf=* features" The relevance and importance of Disc Golf continues to grow each year across all continents, while basic support in OSM remains unresolved. There are more than 16,000 disc golf courses worldwide. The number one disc golf course in the world, Krokhol (UDisc), is not mapped on OSM - likely because people don't even know that you can (Disc Golf is not a preset in JOSM for example.) while the Krokhol 'ball golf' course is marked in OSM. The Krokhol Disc Golf Course is mapped in Google. It is also mapped in the UDisc App. This is the #1 app for Disc Golf players, and represents what OSM rendering could/should look like.0
• Mapping a disc golf hole, much less an entire course, can't be done from a computer chair relying on aerial photography. Instead it is like mapping a hiking trail in the woods. You have to track it hole by hole, from tee pad to basket.

Tagging Scheme

• course: leisure=disc_golf_course sport=disc_golf
• hole: disc_golf=hole with optional name, par, ref (hole number)
• tee: disc_golf=tee with optional surface
• basket: disc_golf=basket

Tags

leisure	disc_golf_course
name	U.C. Santa Cruz Disc Golf Course
sport	disc_golf
type	route

Tags

leisure	disc_golf_course
name	U.C. Santa Cruz Disc Golf Course
sport	disc_golf

Hole Tag

disc_golf=hole

disc_golf	hole
disc_golf:length	231ft
name	1

Mobile Mapping

Handheld GPS Units

You really can't make a map until you've collected detailed GPS coordinates. Something like a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx ($40 on eBay), GPSMAP 62s ($150 on eBay), GPSMAP 79sc ($350 at WestMarine) handheld GPS unit. You don't need a dedicated GPS device. Your mobile phone could work well.

Your Phone

You can actually use OsmAnd to record tracks and edit OSM. See mobile mapping with osmand2 Frustratingly, the OsmAnd app limits you to 10 downloads (of maps and updates) so you either need to use the F-droid FOSS version, or use a work-around where you can download map indexes to your PC and transfer them manually to your phone.

There are many other tools that you can use on your phone. See mobile mapping with gpslogger.

Mapping on the Computer

Not only can you edit the OSM directly in your web browser, but there are desktop tools that make it a much more powerful experience. The leading tool is the Java editor, called JOSM (install steps for Ubuntu). The most powerful editor is probably QGIS.

Similar to Google's "My Maps" there is a uMap project for creating your own overlays on OSM.

Using JOSM

JOSM has presets for all the most popular leisure activities - including ice hockey and curling under 'ball sports'; and also has multiple options for ball golf.

There are a few presets for disc golf course - authored in 2018.

Enabling styles in Preferences

To get started, type this in your terminal if you're on a 4K monitor and want to run everything scaled up 2x

export GDK_SCALE=2 && josm&

Besides presets, there are also styles that you can apply locally to make editing disc golf features in JOSM more visible/suitable. To make the disc golf course styles available, open Preferences -> Map Paint Styles and select 'Disc Golf Course Testing', then enable it by clicking the > arrow.

Notes

How to search by tag on OSM itself?

Use Overpass turbo (definition) which is at https://overpass-turbo.eu/ Starting from the OSM wiki, on each tag page there is a toolbox with links (e.g. this overpass turbo search for key=leisure&value=disc_golf_course); and also the same structured links to the TagInfo site.