Our Data

Stymie maintains a broad directory of US golf courses and practice facilities. Coverage and field completeness vary. We combine geographic, rating, scorecard, facility, manufacturer, and first-party records, and we leave an unavailable field blank instead of estimating it.

Data Sources

OpenStreetMap (Base Layer)

A large geographic source for US golf-course and practice-facility listings. Licensed under ODbL. Presence in Stymie is not a guarantee that every field is complete or current.

Authorized rating records

Published slope ratings, course ratings, and bogey ratings set by authorized golf associations under the World Handicap System. Ratings are tee-specific and can be revised.

GolfCourseAPI

Hole-by-hole scorecard data: yardages, par values, and stroke indexes for each tee set.

Direct Facility Research

Selected business details such as official websites, contact information, and amenity corrections are sourced from facility websites and manual verification.

Update frequency

Different sources refresh on different schedules. Some automated maintenance runs daily; equipment, fee, closure, and editorial checks use source-specific cadences. A source change is not guaranteed to appear within 24 hours.

How research articles use the database

Each Stymie Research article freezes its figures to a visible snapshot date. The article states its unit of analysis, inclusion rules, missing-data handling, and limitations. Live database changes do not silently alter published findings.

Common safeguards

  • Open and merged records are filtered explicitly.
  • Scorecard ranges are checked for plausible 18-hole par, yardage, course rating, and slope values.
  • One course is counted once when the question is about courses or states.
  • Missing product specifications remain missing; “not published” is not treated as “no.”
  • Medians and minimum sample floors are used where outliers or uneven coverage could distort an average.

The selection, corrections, illustration, and commercial-independence policy is on the editorial standards page.

Open Data

We publish aggregate, machine-readable golf statistics — national and per-state slope, yardage, and year-built distributions — as a free JSON feed: stymie.golf/stats.json. Free to cite with attribution to Stymie.

Corrections

If you notice incorrect data, email [email protected]. We investigate within 48 hours.