Abstract: The invention disclosed herein is directed to a method and apparatus which employs a spread-spectrum based radiolocation system, using hand-held receiver units and fixed-position reference transmitters, to determine distance and direction between a golfer and key locations on a golf course, such as the distance and direction to a particular pin. The plurality of timing reference transmitters which are located throughout the vicinity of the golf course broadcast a spread-spectrum ranging signal consisting of a radio-frequency carrier directly modulated by a periodic pseudo-noise (PN) coded or similar sequence. Each transmitter broadcasts at the same RF signal but a unique PN-coded sequence is assigned to each transmitter. Golfers are provided with the hand-held receiving unit which receives the transmitter spread-spectrum signals and which synchronizes to the spread-spectrum signals in order to obtain range estimates to a selected set of reference transmitters.