NFC for golf courses — hole information at the tee box, no app to download

The tee sign hasn't changed since 1985

A cast tee sign shows a hole diagram, a handicap number, and yardages from three or four sets. It's a good object and a permanent one, and that permanence is exactly the limitation: it can't tell a guest where the pin is today, that the front bunker is under repair, that the course is cart-path-only after last night's rain, or that the green runs away harder than it looks.

Courses have tried to close that gap with an app. Most guests won't install one for a single round, and the ones who would are already using a distance app that isn't yours. The download is the whole problem: you're asking for a thirty-second commitment from someone who is standing on a tee box with a group waiting behind them.

A NearField Marker on the tee post opens the same information on a tap, with nothing to install. It's the course's own voice at the moment the guest is deciding what to hit.

What goes on a tee box Marker

The hole, properly explained. The diagram, yardages from every set, and the carry numbers that actually matter — over the corner, to clear the water, to reach the bunker that collects everything. Then the part a sign never has room for: how the hole wants to be played, in a sentence from your pro.

Today's pin and today's conditions. Pin position, cart-path-only status, temporary greens, aeration, ground under repair. This is the content that justifies the whole system, because it's the content that changes daily and can't live on a sign.

Local rules and pace of play. Your actual local rules, in plain language, plus the expected time to this point in the round. A pace note on the tee is the most polite ranger you'll ever employ.

A request path. Beverage cart, turn-house order ahead, or a note to the pro shop. A group on the seventh who can order at the turn arrives to food that's ready, which is worth real money to your F&B and real minutes to your pace.

The rebook. At the eighteenth, a one-tap path to book the next tee time while the round is still fresh, plus membership information for the guest who just had a good day.

Where the Markers go

The tee post on every hole. The core deployment. Eighteen Markers, one Experience per hole, each linked to its own page. Mount on the existing tee marker post or the ball washer stand — the hardware is a moulded block that survives sun, irrigation, and freeze, which an adhesive label on a post does not. The full durability comparison is covered here.

The first tee and the starter's hut. The highest-value single placement if you're starting small. Local rules, pace expectation, today's conditions, and the beverage cart schedule, delivered once to every group that plays.

The practice facility. On the range dividers and the short-game area: drills from your instruction staff, lesson booking, and club-fitting information. Range time is the least-monetized real estate on most properties.

Carts. A Marker on the dash gives every rider the scorecard, the local rules, and the F&B menu without a fleet of screens to buy, maintain, and replace.

Outings, leagues, and the shoulder season

Corporate outings are where a course's information problem gets acute for a day: a hundred golfers who have never seen the property, a shotgun start, sponsor holes, contests on par threes, and a scramble format that half the field will ask about twice.

Because a Marker's Experience is edited rather than reprinted, the same eighteen tiles can carry outing-day content on Saturday — format rules, the closest-to-the-pin hole, the sponsor's message, where lunch is — and revert to standard hole information on Sunday. The sponsor recognition is worth selling on its own, and it costs nothing to produce.

Experiences render in 20 languages, which matters for resort courses and destination properties hosting international groups.

Start with an Action

Eighteen tee boxes is the full build. These three deliver most of the value from the first tee alone.

Each one goes live in under a minute, and any Action converts into the full Experience described here in one tap — the same link and Markers keep working. See all 17 Actions.