Slightly OT: PROVEN!!! GPS devices make players play faster

[Mickey Boland]

I've resisted commenting in all of these GPS threads before, but can't anymore.

I've been using a SkyCaddie for just past a year and a half.  It has improved my game.  I'm a low single-digit handicap, having cut my handicap by 3 shots since I started using it.  Some of it is that I'm just playing better through practice than I was at the start of 2007, but some of it I can attribute to the GPS. 

I can't say I'm good enough to hit it either 152 or 154, but where it has helped me is knowing not yardage just to middle of green, but knowing distance to the front edge when it's a front pin, and to the back of the green when it's a back pin.  I CAN hit it different if I think it's 152 or 162.  In other words, if it's a back pin and GPS shows I have 152 to back edge, I know I can hit my 150 yard club and not have to worry about going over.  I'm generally a lousy judge of distances on the course, and this has helped me hit balls pin high a lot more than I used to.   Regardless of having the distance, I still have to hit the shot, along with all the other shots where I don't use GPS (drives, chips, sand shots, putts).

Hasn't slowed my group down at all.  Probably half of the guys in my group use SkyCaddie type devices.  Our foursomes can walk in 3 1/2 hours at my course.  It's real easy to be checking the distance as you walk up to your ball.  Pull a club and hit.

Sure it's new technology.  So are 460-cc heads, titanium, graphite, multi-layer balls, etc., etc. 

[Kyle Harris]

Melvyn,

I gave some thought to you question and I'm guessing the answer is when Jack Nicklaus started having his caddy make little yardage books before rounds at tour events. I then began to ask myself why and the best I can come up with (and something I think should be discussed) is that Jack was only seeing that course for that week on Tour and then moving on to the next stop and this was a way for him to take some guess work out of that process.

One difference, I believe, between golf 100 years ago and golf today is the travel associated with the game. Today's golfer is given more opportunities for a "one time" stop at a golf course and as such, fails to develop a relationship with he golf course over the span of a few rounds. I thought back on all the golf courses which I've considered my home and I still remember minute details about certain shots. For these courses, yardage becomes a tertiary factor because I know enough about the golf course where my "sense" of the place guides me to my shot and not starting with some form of yardage.

Now, I still typically eyeball my distances on shots at new-to-me courses, however, the knowledge of the distance factors into the equation more, since it's the only starting point I have with my first go-round.

Out of curiosity, how often do you play a new-to-you golf course?

[Kirk Gill]

One difference, I believe, between golf 100 years ago and golf today is the travel associated with the game. Today's golfer is given more opportunities for a "one time" stop at a golf course and as such, fails to develop a relationship with he golf course over the span of a few rounds. I thought back on all the golf courses which I've considered my home and I still remember minute details about certain shots. For these courses, yardage becomes a tertiary factor because I know enough about the golf course where my "sense" of the place guides me to my shot and not starting with some form of yardage.

This is a good point. Not necessarily in favor or against the use of distance aids, but certainly in regards to  a reason why a person would want to use those aids. It gives you the "local knowledge" that it might take lots of rounds to acquire. 

Mickey, of course, makes the other point about the use of distance aids. They take strokes off of your score. Oh, yeah, that's what lots of folks don't like about them! 

I'd love it if in tournament play all golfers had to play the course with no distance aids whatsoever. I'd like to watch golf more if it was less science and more oriented to what the individual golfer can do. No sprinkler heads, no caddies, no yardage books. Just the golfer's memory, his ability to gauge distance, and to execute. This is how golf was meant to be, in my opinion. No, it's not going to happen, nothing like it, and it hasn't been that way for many decades. You guys know better than I do - maybe it wasn't EVER that way..... But that doesn't mean I can't dream of how it would be if things were different.

As to what the individual golfer wants to do on his own time, to each his own. Whatever floats your boat. For those who play most of their golf on public courses, we're staying with the group ahead of us already. What effect is gps going to have on that? GPS is small potatoes, really, in this speed argument. What can be done to get the average joe to play faster golf? En masse? Is GPS the answer to THAT question?

[Norbert P]

"I wanna smash 'em!"