Posted 06 August 2015 - 05:21 PM
Google Earth won't help much, although in some more catered for areas, it can be good to walk through courses infull 3D to get a feel for them, see tree and clubhouse heights.
GlobalMapper gives you more flexibility but has a bigger learning curve compared to WorldComposer and TerrainForge (and much larger cost for those who haven't access to it). If you don't mind jumping in the deep-end, I wouldn't bother with anything else, but if reliant on step-by-step tutorials, I probably wouldn't recommend it. LiDAR is now an add-on module for GlobalMapper so you may wish to make sure you have access to that too.