A QR code on a tee marker is one of the few pieces of course technology that requires nothing from the golfer. No app, no login, no account. They point a camera at a sign while they wait for the group ahead to clear, and they see the hole they are standing on.
The version of this that works and the version that annoys people differ by one decision: whether the code opens the hole, or opens your home page.
One code per hole, not one code for the course
A single code on every tee that opens the club website is a wasted scan. The golfer is standing on the seventh. They scanned because they want to know what is over the hill on the seventh. Landing them on a home page asks them to navigate, on a phone, in the sun, with a group waiting.
Each tee gets its own link to its own hole. The seventh tee opens the seventh.
This is also what makes the signs worth paying for. A code that saves somebody three taps is a novelty. A code that answers the question they are standing there asking is a reason to put one on all eighteen.
Plan the eighteen links first
Before anything goes to a printer, write the list. One row per hole, with the address that hole lives at. It takes ten minutes and it is the step that stops a reprint.
The pattern is the same for every hole, with only the number changing, so the list is mechanical to produce and easy to check. Two things worth getting right while you are in there:
- Check every link in a browser before it becomes a sign. Paste each one,
confirm the hole that opens is the hole you meant.
- Decide what the code does on a hole you have rebuilt. The link stays the
same and the clip behind it is replaced, so the signs survive a renovation.
What to send the sign maker
Sign makers want the link, not a picture of a code. Give them the eighteen addresses and let them generate the codes at the resolution their process needs. A code you generated on a free website and emailed as a small image will print badly, and the first anyone knows about it is a golfer whose camera will not focus.
If they do want images, ask for vector files rather than a screenshot, and ask them to print a test of the smallest one before the full run.
Where on the sign, and how big
Bottom right corner, and bigger than feels necessary. The common failure is a code sized for a page in a magazine, printed on a marker a golfer reads from four feet away in bright light.
A few practical rules that hold up outdoors:
- Give the code a quiet border. A code pressed against a logo or a frame scans
badly.
- Keep it dark on light. Reversed codes, light on dark, scan unreliably on
older phone cameras.
- Put four or five words beside it saying what it does. People scan a code that
promises something and ignore a code that does not.
Something as plain as "See this hole from the air" is enough. The scan rate on an unlabelled code is dramatically worse, and the fix costs nothing.
Test it the way a golfer will
Walk out with a phone and scan the actual printed sign on the actual tee. Not the proof on a screen, the sign on the post.
Three things to confirm per hole, which takes an afternoon for eighteen and is worth doing once properly:
- The camera focuses and the code resolves without the golfer stepping closer
- The hole that opens is the hole they are standing on
- The page is readable in sunlight at arm's length
That last one is why the tour is built to open a single hole on a phone rather than to load a whole course page and ask someone to find their hole in it.
What this is actually for
Two things, and it is worth being clear about both because they justify the spend differently.
The first is the round in front of you. A visiting golfer who has never played the course gets to see the hole before they hit, which is a better round and a better review.
The second is slower and larger. The codes put your course tour in front of every single person who plays, including the ones who are deciding whether to join, whether to bring an outing, or whether to come back. That is a few thousand impressions a season from a one-time print job, which is not a claim about bookings, only about how many people see the thing.
If you want to see what a single hole looks like when it opens on a phone, the course tour page has the map running, and tapping any hole shows exactly what a code on that tee would open.