Hazeltine National
2009 Edition
Pro Yardage Books
Golf pros and their caddies use the ORANGE yardage books at tournaments to help them determine the precise yardage to the hole, front of green or desired target area.
George Lucas, a former caddy for Arnold Palmer, has prepared yardage books for golf events over the last 24 years. Each hole is drawn with accurate distances and notes all vital information. Features of each hole such as angles and distances of slopes place each shot into a meaningful context.
George has teamed with Stracka Design Company to make the extra Yardage books available to the public.
Click here for the full Yardage Book Inventory
New Books
Who is George Lucas?
George Lucas, a former tour caddy for Arnold Palmer and accomplished golfer in his own right (won the New Hampshire Open in 1980 as an amateur) has prepared yardage books for golf events since 1976. In his guides, each hole is mapped with precise distance measurements and notes of all vital information in the context of what a professional golfer needs to know about a golf hole.
"A bad yardage can cost a guy some bucks," says the Floridian, cartographer of every course on the PGA Tour. "I've thought once or twice that if I made a mistake, I might get sued. But it hasn't happened...yet." Nor is it likely to happen anytime soon. So esteemed are Lucas' exhaustively detailed guides--haughtily titled "The Book"--that for 30+ years. Lucas's exuberant dedication to the job and eccentric personality earned him the nickname "Gorjus" from Lanny Wadkins' caddy, Jerry Pruitt, his second week on tour in 1974.
Lucas produced his first full-fledged book for the 1976 Memphis Classic. Not yet a full-time surveyor, he was still nurturing his own tour-pro dreams and hoping for such pros as Tom Shaw, Bobby Walzel as well as Arnie. Many of Lucas's stories fro, his Tour years include: an inch-long scar on Lucas' left cheekbone (a memento from his time with Palmer). At the 1982 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, Lucas bent down to pick up a ball that had fallen off its tee just as Palmer was starting to thump the turf with his 5-iron in feigned aggravation. "Lots of people have Arnold's autograph," says Lucas, "but not everyone has a souvenir like that."
Every year from 1976 to 2008, Lucas devoted 9 months to updating his work of hundreds of tournament layouts among the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, Champions Tour, Nationwide Tour, Amateur events, and more. He is also charting new venues, while driving 30,000 miles cross-country with his golden retriever, Corky his first over the years, then Squeaky, and currently Woody. In 2000, Squeaky was the dog famous for getting chased around PGA Valhalla by Tiger Woods after snatching the superstars prized "tiger" head cover that's hand sewn by his mother.
In November 2008, The Stracka Line teamed up with Lucas to continue producing the highest quality yardage books available for professional golfers and caddies on tour. George is still actively involved in training The Stracka Line's certified surveyors in his detailed process for measuring a golf course. In addition, The Stracka Line technology has been implemented into Lucas's books for the Tour starting with the Sony Open in Hawaii in January 2009.
What is The Stracka Line?
The Stracka Line is the patented technology for tracking the exact slopes and breaks on putting greens.
Using a state of the art laser (utilized by the land surveying industry), this advanced technology scans the surface of the green (obtaining millions of data points that are accurate to the millimeter) to pick up even the most subtle elevation changes. This takes the plum bobbing and guesswork out of reading your putt. The result is a guide that brings golf into the 21st century.
Not only is The Stracka Line a useful tool to help golfers quickly understand how their putts will break, but it's also a powerful aid during an approach shot when a golfer can use the influence of the green's slopes while aiming their shot from the fairway. Also, for spectators, it adds a new level of interaction when fans can see for themselves the exact severity of a putt's break the pros (and their tour caddies) are faced with; it puts into perspective just how good today's pros are at draining tough putts.
Professional golfers, their caddies, amateurs, and even beginners new to the game agree. This new technology is revolutionizing the way to interpret how a ball will break. Never misread another putt with The Stracka Line.
The Stracka Line is protected by copyright and U.S. patents 6,296,579 and 6,638,173
