“The Hartford Links Locator” is a program that will enable golfers to read descriptive details and view photos of ALL golf courses in the Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island and British Columbia and many of the best (highest-rated) golf courses in Ireland and in the other provinces of Canada and the United States of America and other places in the world. Data acquisition and input is ongoing but the program structure is finished. Before making it available for download we want to include more courses, accommodations and graphics (photos and scorecards).

Currently, we’ve assigned to 30 territorial “zones” the 400 courses we’ve already visited but more zones will be added as additional data is accumulated. For this introduction, I’ve shown only a very few of the courses from our present database - being only those that I consider to be the “best” in only 5 of the 30 zones.

Zone A – Vancouver Island: 46 courses – the “best” ones in this zone are on a 150-mile stretch from a mid-northeast area of the Island to the southwest tip. I deem the top 3 of these to be “exceptional”.

Zone B1 – Greater Vancouver: 44 courses situated less than 45 minutes’ drive of Vancouver city center. Of the 11 that I deem “exceptional”, 4 are private courses - open only to their members and guests.

Zone B3 – N/W coastal Washington: 36 courses situated north of Tacoma and within 30 miles of the Pacific Ocean. The “best” courses are relatively close to Seattle (most being on a 100 mile stretch between Tacoma and Mount Vernon). I deem the top 12 to be “exceptional”. 4 of these are private courses - open only to their members and guests.

Zone C – Okanagan: 23 courses situated in BC's Okanagan valley. The top 10 are in the corridor from Vernon to Oliver - I deem none to be exceptional.

Zone G4 – E. Columbia River Valley: 18 courses in B.C., south of the Bugaboos, west of Alberta border and east of the Purcell Mtns. The “best” are on a 146-mile stretch of Hwy 95/93 from Radium Hot Springs to Fernie. I deem the top 8 to be “exceptional”. If Fernie is omitted, we have 7 outstanding courses on an 86-mile stretch. Great scenery, great course design, superb conditioning and accommodation for any budget.

Here is a screen shot of ONLY THE FIRST PAGE of a “summary” that lists all courses we currently have in the dbase.

The above “list view” (i.e. the summary) does give a little information but that isn’t the meat of the program. When running the program, if one left mouse clicks on a course name, the display changes to a “form view” that will show much more information. For example, here’s what one would see after clicking on the row for Bear Mountain Golf and Country Club.

The program's “form view” will have a few “hotlinks”. A mouse click on a scorecard or fairway icon would open the scorecard or photo of a designated hole. A mouse click on a web-link icon would provide access to the appropriate website using the default Internet browser. A mouse click on the envelope icon would initiate a new message in the default email application.

Program development and beta testing continues – as does the pursuit of more data on courses and accommodations. Reports of our progress will be posted on this website.