Golf Flyover can get you in anywhere

Golf Flyover, provides none of these practical data but makes up for it by tapping the power of Google Earth. This amazing program, a seamless collection of detail-rich satellite images in which users can pan and zoom to their hearts' content, is useful by itself: You can configure it to outline every golf course in its database in bright green and use it to preview courses you are planning to play. The trouble is, it tells you zero about which greens go with which tee boxes, and in which order.

Golf Flyover, free at www.golfflyover.com, solves this problem. Its programmers have created tours of 5,500 U.S. courses, about a third of the total, and are working toward mapping the rest by the end of this year, followed by overseas courses.

From the Web site, you select the course you want and then either examine a zoomable view of it in your browser, or click instead on Google Earth Flyover, which opens up the Google Earth program (assuming you have installed it on your machine) and transports you to the first tee.

The flyover is bare-bones but satisfying. A yellow numbered circle identifies each tee box and a red line traces the route to the green. The flyover smoothly pans to the first green, much like the helicopter camera does in the flyovers on tournament broadcasts, then pulls back, moves to the next tee and rotates as necessary to face down the fairway, and begins again. You can pause at any time to explore on your own or to return to the home page and jump to another course.

Previewing a course with Golf Flyover probably won't improve your score when you play it, but it will convey a sense of the challenges you will face and help you decide which types of shots you will be most likely to need. Given the flattening perspective of the satellite views, you won't learn much about elevation changes. Another caveat: The satellite images of some courses are dramatically sharper than of others.

The more intriguing use of Golf Flyover, however, is peeking behind the hedges at exclusive courses. In my neck of the woods, near New York City, for instance, Shinnecock Hills, Pine Valley and Winged Foot were available for spying, but not yet National Golf Links of America on Long Island (even though it's next door to Shinnecock). Augusta National comes in crystal clear (perhaps its members launched their own satellite camera). The Web site features a list of links to all but three of the courses used on the PGA Tour and another list of the major courses in 16 top resort areas.

Depending on the imagination you are willing to expend, you can dig deep. I kept Golf Flyover open recently while reading Mark Frost's new book, "The Match," about a famous 1956 competition at Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, Calif., involving Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward. Photographs of some holes at Cypress Point available through Google Earth's Panoramio feature (definitely worth enabling) helped bring the course even more to life, as did the illustrated architectural critique of Cypress Point at www.GolfClubAtlas.com, which I also kept open as I read. I've never played Cypress Point, but this has to be the next best thing.