What we won't be able to find on a golf course on January 1, 2040.

[John Kavanaugh]

In the ongoing attempt to create super children those who can afford to golf will send their children to boarding schools. Golf with the wife will be family time.

[jeffwarne]

Curmudgeons will be history.

just a little older

[Bill Warnick]

The US population will increase from 325 million to nearly 400 million. The value of green space will be at a premium making some golf courses unable to resist the pressure for development and so will disappear. Golf will become rarer and more expensive.  Labor will remain cheap and hand raking bunkers will continue.

[Doug Siebert]

Forecaddies should definitely be gone. Tracking-chip enabled golf balls will make them obsolete.

Much easier to have a few drones floating over the course watching all the golfers and their balls in flight on the course simultaneously.  Your smartphone (or whatever replaces it in 2040) will be able to direct you to the ball.  Or tell you it is in the water, OB, etc.

Adding a tracking chip to the ball able to withstand impacts and be able to communicate at large enough distances to be useful would be a lot more expensive.  I'm sure Titleist will try to sell us on it at some point, but the drone solution is much easier.  Hell, it could be done TODAY though you might need a drone or two per hole due to limitations in imaging technology to insure it can follow the balls (it is easy to follow in through the air, harder when it bounces, deflects off trees, etc.)

I'd be surprised if this isn't something fairly common by 2025, let alone 2040, assuming the FAA doesn't impose too many restrictions on the commercial use of drones.

[Tony_Muldoon]

It is also possible people start working less hours and still play golf and manage to dedicate good time to their families.

I don't have any idea how old you are, but that's exactly the dream sold to us 25 years ago....

[Jim Nugent]

It is hard for me to see a drone or AI being utilized as a caddie or fore-caddie, except by the offspring of (by then) trillionaires.

My own rather naive-idealistic vision of the future is that we will sort out what people will do and what machines will do ... a selective and healthy backlash against arbitrary "progress".  I am not sure of the details.

The progress civilian drones have made just in the last year is incredible.  I don't know if you are old enough to have taken a caddie both in 1990 and the recent past.  The degradation of service coupled with increased costs demands change.  I hate to imagine what a human caddie will demand in 25 more years.  Self levitating silent frictionless "push carts" will be available by 2040 with the ability to give you any information that you and your playing partners agree upon.  The won't want tips, they won't need to be trained and they will cost no more than a cart.  Best if all they can be recycled and used again rather than becoming ex-caddies with a "story".

Human caddies will be for your trillionaires or run of the mill philanthropic millionaire.

What about pro golf?  Will golfers on the tours use caddies? 

[Pat Burke]

A great little course, in the middle of small town nowhere, with a fantastic junior and caddie program will see one of their "kids"
grow up to become the US Amateur Champion in 2030.
By 2038, the same club will have raised dues, overwatered, and lengthened their course by 400 yards to
better reflect the perfection the saw at Augusta when "their" kid played the Masters.

Course closes by 2040

[Tim Gavrich]

Millions more people will be working from home or otherwise remotely, enabling them to play more work-week golf, perhaps checking in on things at "the office" from the tablet console in their carts or (more hopefully) the ones mounted to their push-carts.

Will NCAA and NFL football still keep people sitting on their couches, rather than playing golf, on perfect fall weekend days?

[Jason Thurman]

Doug, you can buy tracking chip enabled balls today for $40 a dozen. It's just a matter of time before they're commonplace.

[Doug Siebert]

Doug, you can buy tracking chip enabled balls today for $40 a dozen. It's just a matter of time before they're commonplace.

How close do you have to be for the tracking chip to work?  I assume these are simple NFC chips, which would require you have to be within a few feet.  If I can get that close to my ball, I don't need the tracking chip.  It is when I don't know within 25 yards where I am that I need help!

[Marc Haring]

Doug, you can buy tracking chip enabled balls today for $40 a dozen. It's just a matter of time before they're commonplace.

How close do you have to be for the tracking chip to work?  I assume these are simple NFC chips, which would require you have to be within a few feet.  If I can get that close to my ball, I don't need the tracking chip.  It is when I don't know within 25 yards where I am that I need help!

This one states you can pick it up from 110 yards out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxBIo4Gzhf8