How to tag golf course features?

Hi kaptinkenny14 - what to use for grass on golf courses is a bit of an open issue; there are at least two approaches. I'm assuming here that in OSM you're this user; apologies if I've got that wrong.

The editor that you're using (iD) does indeed suggest "landuse=grass" for a golf fairway as your screenshot shows. Some people think that is incorrect, and have raised that with the iD editor here, and here. Discussion on the first of those explains a bit about why the wiki page here says things like "Do not use the tag landuse=grass" on fairways.

The comments that you have received here** are from one person who seems to be on a singular crusade in GB to rid GB courses of "landuse=grass" for fairways.

For completeness, I'm from OSM's Data Working Group, and we got drawn into golf tagging because a couple of people editing golf courses in OSM complained about "automatic edits" to their previous tagging and the rudeness of some of the comments they'd received.

Editor maintainers always need to treat the wiki with care as some of the things that it says are self-contradictory. That said, there have been times where popular editors push forms of tagging that are very much in the minority in OSM. I don't have a personal view about which tagging is correct here, beyond "both are, because both are widely accepted". iD has a new maintainer and I'm sure that issues such as this are among the ones that they will look at.

Regards, Andy

** and somewhat confusing, containing as they do "The landuse of golf features is 'golf' not grass." and "landuse=golf is not a valid tag".

The iD editor presets for fairways & greens comes with landuse=grass.

This is believed by some, including me, to be incorrect tagging ("tagging for the renderer"). The history if long and complicated. Golf features have only recently been rendered on the main CartoCSS map, and people have used various subterfuges to make the mapped features appear: these include: natural=beach for bunkers, leisure=pitch for greens, and landuse=grass on fairways, etc. The result of this is that statistically these look like very popular combinations, which I presume is what the iD developers picked up. The presets, of course, reinforce it.

In practice the individual golf=* tags now actually work fine as standalone tags for rendering purposes, just as they have for other uses since they were introduced. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to avoid iD nagging for these tags.

The use of these tags on golf=* elements is totally uncomplicated if one is just considering golf courses, however landuse=grass is already a tag with multiple meanings and this usage adds another. This means anyone consuming landuse=grass for purposes other than straightforward rendering will need to provide special rules for 'golf=*` features.

Ultimately it is a matter of choice as to whether one ignores the message in iD, but be aware that others might not, and 'correct' your original decision.

Hi kaplinkenny14, have a look here, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:leisure=golf_course