The golden age of caddies has long since given way to technology, except for the esteemed private golf clubs.
Golfers today have resorted to a wide variety of measurements to obtain yardage, directions, and score keeping.
When you play, do you have trouble gauging how far away a certain hazard is or how far from the green you need to go on your next shot?
Are you that kind of person with an uncanny ability to estimate how far you need to take your next shot?
For most people it’s a guessing game, but it’s much more important when it comes to scoring. It can make the difference between scoring a great score or getting frustrated and wanting to break every club in your bag.
When I was a professional caddy, my job over 30 years ago was to make sure I walked the golf course before my partner showed up.
Professional caddies would draw a course for their player before each tournament with all the measurements.
You knew the distances of each club that your professional hit. Your job was to walk the fairways marking every rock, bunker, tree, water, or any other permanent obstacle you could measure from the tees or any other shot from the fairways to the greens.
You write all this down in a little black book. Then every day early in the morning, before each round, you graph the pin locations for each hole. Measure using the old fashioned way of one foot in front of the other how far to the front, sides and back of the greens.
Also note where the pin location is for that day by typing it all in. Looking at it all, whether the green is sloping, bumpy, or what kind of breaks into the hole when putting.
Where is the flat part of the green or the safest place to hit the ball? There was a combination of guesswork and knowing your player’s skill level.
Today, all that has changed with technology. Yard markers can now be defined by sprinkler heads, street poles, numbers painted on cart paths.
Yard books and laser rangefinders have become a part of the golf landscape and see varying degrees of use by golfers today.
For the high-tech among us, the gadgets have found their way into more and more golf bags. Compact rangefinders with handheld GPS systems and embedded computer technology have found a growing audience.
However, with convenience comes cost, and neither of these are cheap.
ONE OF the great joys of playing golf over the last 40 years has been the extraordinary development of technology that makes the game so much easier now than it was in the early 1980s.
As we enjoy huge titanium drivers, graphite shafts, two-piece balls and soft-faced putters, we wonder how we could play drivers that have heads the size of small rocks and balls that smile every time they’re hit. center.
Advances are not limited to clubs and balls. When I first started playing, club selection was based on the perceived distance of the golf shot.
It then became standard for golf courses to place laser readable distance markers on each hole. Technology has also started to do that job and now the R&A and USGA have said they would allow the use of GPS rangefinders if a club or tournament committee introduced a local rule allowing their use.
Not many such local rules have been made. For my club it was decided against rangefinders in official club tournaments. Although they are allowed in regular play and it is legal and common in practice rounds.
The biggest problem that most golf courses have is related to slow play. The PGA endorsement made it a big issue how these devices would speed up the game.
The idea is that if players have distance information instantly available, it will speed up club selection, the pre-shot routine and the actual shot.
From what I’ve heard, the evidence points to this not being the case. The time a player spends looking at distances is not considered a contributing factor to slow play. It’s the decisions about which club to use, as well as the general setup for a shot, that waste time.
Despite advanced technology, nothing about the basic premise of golf has changed. It’s great to know how far the hole is, but you still have to hit the shot.
MY limited experience using these devices is that they can be useful on the golf course. They provide readily available and accurate information, so their use should be encouraged.
When I used it in my source field, it was actually of limited value. I guess it’s because I’ve played there so often and I know the exact distances.
Another new tech gadget that has proven its weight in gold for the avid golfer is called the ProLooper Golf Game Analyzer. This innovative system allows golfers to record the location of each shot using a standard GPS rangefinder and use that data to gain the most in-depth statistical analysis of their game available today.
This feature-rich system can improve shot accuracy and help golfers save strokes on the golf course. You can run the system on various GPS rangefinder devices and have over 10,000 course maps available.
To use the ProLooper system, the golfer simply stands on the ball and marks the location while checking the distance to their next target.
The data collection process does not slow down the golfers game. Once the round is complete, the golfer uploads their data over the Internet to the ProLooper server.
The golfer can add additional details such as weather conditions, lies, slopes, and other variables. The more details that are added, the more powerful the system’s instant reporting capabilities become.
Golfers can now get the same kind of shot and play analysis that professional golfers get from their caddies.
It will help you improve your golf swing and shot accuracy. This is what separates great golfers from average golfers, and that is knowing your stats.
Being able to use those numbers to improve in every facet of your game. You get instant feedback on your round of golf performance after every 18 holes. It all leads to improved gameplay and lower scores.