Quote from: John Kavanaugh on June 05, 2007, 01:28:13 PM

Also, never use a skycaddie if you do not want the world to know wher you are or have been.  

Doesn't the tinfoil helmet take care of that problem?  

Tom

John always carries a huge wad of cash around because he doesn't believe in credit cards either.  American Express knows exactly where you have been too and they probably know a lot more then skygolf inc.

In some respects these devices can be more useful for the poorer player despite their inability to dial in distances.  For example, this weekend I saw a competitor use his Skycaddie to get an exact distance to the green from an adjacent fairway.  I also saw someone get a specific distance from a ball that was sitting on an adjacent driving range where the shot needed to be played over a set of pines to a green the golfer could not possibly see.

It also saves time.  To get a yardage with a skycaddie, you just look down at the device hanging on your bag and the number is staring you in the face.  No more walking around to find sprinkler heads.

Quote from: Kevin_Reilly on June 06, 2007, 01:02:31 PM

Quote from: Shivas Schmidt on June 06, 2007, 11:15:03 AM

You guys actually paid for and use this crap?

PT Barnum was a Goddamn genius.

Do you instruct your caddies on the first tee to withhold all distance information for the duration of the round?  I'd like to be there at SFGC, CPC etc when you do.  

YES!

Okay...now I see where you are coming from.  

We show up at the first tee, never know any yardages, eyeball and guess everything, never touch our ball until holed out and the game of golf is better for it.

Am I getting warmer?

Quote from: Jordan Wall on June 06, 2007, 02:07:14 PM

Right, for 99.99999999% of golfers, though, it doesn't matter if its 102 or 107 because the chances are their wedge isn't going to go exactly 104 every time.

No, but it's going to go some distance on any given swing and even if you just know plus or minus five yards how far that distance will be that's still closer than I can eyeball a semi-blind shot over a bunker from a bad angle.

I'm not a good player at all but I've spent some time hitting my wedges to find out how far the ball flies with good swings and bad ones. My "number" for one of my wedges is 81 yards. It may not go exactly 81 all that often but it goes 83 way more often than it goes 90 and it goes 79 more often than it goes 70. So knowing that a shot is somewhere between 70 and 90 yards versus knowing it's somewhere between 79 and 83 does make a difference, even for bad players. It makes a huge difference for anyone good enough to hit their wedges accurately 3/4 of the time.

Like I said before, if you don't want a 150 plate in the fairway and you don't want a sign on Par 3 tees giving you the yardage and if you don't look to see whether they're using pin placement "1, 2 or 3" today then that's pretty cool stuff. But if distance matters at all don't try to argue that it only matters give or take 20 yards.

As if there are no sprinkler heads or yardage poles to refer to..



those are free, too, btw...

Jim.

You can browse available courses here: http://www.skygolfgps.com/SG_SkyVault_SearchCourses.aspx

When you subscribe, you download the courses from the net.  The type of subscription you get dictates how many courses you can have on your unit at one time.  

As if there are no sprinkler heads or yardage poles to refer to..



those are free, too, btw...

Yes, if you want to spend a little extra time and effort you can almost always get the yardage by pacing it off. Like I said in my original post, we're just haggling over price.

There are certain occasions in life when I spend a little money in order to get something done faster or easier than I could do it for free. Having a Skycaddie is one of them. But in the end...I want to know how far I have to hit it whether it's by pacing it off, reading a Skycaddie, asking a caddie or looking at a yardage book.

Also, never use a skycaddie if you do not want the world to know wher you are or have been.  

GPS works by receiving signals from satellites, it broadcasts nothing.  The only way "the world" will know where you have been is if the skycaddie has a memory that records where you went (some GPS units will do this for you, I have no idea if skycaddie does) and someone steals it.

If you are worried about the world knowing where you are, forget your skycaddie and turn off your cell phone and remove the battery!

Anyway, feeling you need to know distances to the yard is just silly.  You do realize that temperature and even barometric pressure alone will affect carry distance enough to cause a 104 yard wedge to fall short of the 102 mark one day and carry past the 107 yard mark the next?

Knowing distances to plus or minus one yard is overkill. I'll settle for knowing it plus or minus three yards with wedges and plus or minus six yards with longer clubs. Trouble is, I can't eyeball a 150-yard shot even plus or minus ten or twenty yards and even from, say, 80 yards my eye is easily off by ten yards or so quite often. So somehow or another I need to know a yardage by something other than dead reckoning. Reading it off my Skycaddie is the fastest and easiest way to get it (although not the most reliable, that would be a laser which is neither fast nor easy IMO).

I don't know whether pros' range sessions include some calibration for the day's conditions by hitting a few clubs to figure out their figures for a given day, but I'll bet they just get the exact yardage and then fudge the numbers based on the day's conditions, the wind at the moment, terrain, etc.

According to the best player I've discussed it with, they spend a lot of time practicing and calibrating those distances in various conditions. But not right before the round, I mean ongoing practice at other than tournament times.

So what's really the difference if I get a yardage number off a sprinkler head and fudge it based on guessing that a given green is 40 yards deep and the pin really looks way back so I add 14 yards for it?

From outside of 80-100 yards I think using the Skycaddie is the functional equivalent of pacing off distance from sprinkler heads or other yardage markers. From closer distances it's just like pacing off the distance to the flag. The difference is it's faster, probably more accurate, less distracting to ones playing partners and it works even in situations where there are no sprinklers, etc. The tradeoff is that it costs money, you have to carry it with you, you have to charge batteries and occasionally it doesn't work and you have to revert to pacing off distances the old-fashioned way.

Just so you and Jordan are clear, I am not claiming any fundamental advantage to a yardage computed by Skycaddie vs. one computed by any other method. In the end you get the same number most of the time.

Its really ridiculous for anyone with a handicap less than +4 to be worrying about this stuff.

I'd say you guys are "worrying" about the matter, not me. I glance at the number and hit the shot, no worries. For some reason the fact that Skycaddie exists annoys or mystifies some people. I don't know why you would have the idea that carrying a little box with the number on it implies a player sitting and agonizing over differential equations before deciding to hit a 7-iron. I don't have to design the thing, just keep a fresh battery in it and read the number whenever I want to know how far it is.

For every stroke higher than that your handicap is, I'd say you can be another 1/2 yard off with no measureable impact to your game (so about +/- 5 yards for me, which sounds about right)

That's a very precise and authoritative sounding principle. Unfortunately, it's completely made up and has not relation to reality...

If a middling player can hit a wedge shot the correct distance half the time and can eyeball it correctly half the time then about one time in four he'll be on the money. If he can know the correct distance every time he doubles his chances of hitting it close.

If a poor player only hits a wedge shot the correct distance one time in five and can eyeball it correctly half the time then he can still double his chances by knowing the correct distance every time. And that poor player probably faces many more in-betweener shots per round than the middling one (and far more than a good one).

I'll grant you this. If someone frequently doesn't get the ball off the ground and if they have not gone out and practiced enough to know how far their clubs travel plus or minus three or four yards or if they truly are unable to break 100 playing by the Rules then there's a lot of things they can just ignore, including yardages.

There's nothing more hilarious than seeing guys who can't break 100 pacing off distances from sprinkler heads before choosing their club.  Well, its only hilarious when they are keeping up with the group ahead of them

I'm not sure what to say other than assure you I have often shot 100 playing with someone who shoots 80 and been waiting on them every hole. Well, maybe I ought to say I have done that shooting 95. If I'm playing bad enough to shoot 100, 102, 105 or something then I'm probably in the woods and in the water and blading shots over the green and it's pretty ugly. Hard to play that bad and finish in much under three hours. But for my "usual game" in the 90's I can play any course in 2-1/2 hours that you can play in 2-1/2 hours (at least if I have my Skycaddie)  

Sean,

I've tried the no-numbers approach for a few rounds recently and just can't stick with it. At my home course it's no big deal because I know if I'm a little short or long of my usual spot is for that shot. But if I'm way out of position or on a less familiar course it just seems silly to guess instead of knowing where the target is.

In the end, I guess I don't see what's so sad about it. If you're standing there by your ball and you can see the flag and see the bunker between you and the flag it's the most natural thing in the world to want to know two things: How far is it to that flag? How far is it to get over that bunker?

I've played golf with people who can look at it and say with confidence "It's a 5-iron to the flag and every bit of a 6-iron to get over the bunker" but I can't do that. Unless I have some reference, that 5-iron distance can look short-ironish or fairway-woodish just as often as it looks like a 5-iron. One of the best wedge players I know has probably never in his life hit a shot inside 120 yards where he knew a yardage number and he always gets it close (and almost always makes the putt in my experience).

But I can't do that and I think if I practice that way every day for six months I still wouldn't be able to do it. But when you tell me it's 82 yards to that flag then about two times out of ten I'll hit the ball pin high to one side or the other and another couple times out of ten I'm only off by 4, 5, 6 yards. If glancing down at box sitting there on my speed cart for three seconds will let me get it right 1/3 of the time and guessing will get it right less than half that often I don't see why anyone would find it strange to want the better odds.

And one day I hope to get good enough to hit it the distance I mean to a lot more often. But I doubt very much I'll ever be able to tell the difference between 120 yards and 130 yards on a semi-blind approach shot on a strange course.

You guys actually paid for and use this crap?

PT Barnum was a Goddamn genius.

I bought my bushnell (with slope) for use during construction--it was absolutely worth every penny!

I agree though that it is a shame playing by feel or sight has gone the way of the dinosaur.  

Right, for 99.99999999% of golfers, though, it doesn't matter if its 102 or 107 because the chances are their wedge isn't going to go exactly 104 every time.

As far as I know, for the first 350 plus years of existence, all until about 6 years ago, golf was fine without weird distance devices.

Who pooped in your Wheaties today?  

But then again, maybe that is why your handicap is between a "0 and 6, depending on the day" ...

Here's a picture of one similar to my own, Tony. Basically, as you walk around the course it updates in real time the numbers you see on the display. The big number is your distance to the center of the green. The three smaller numbers are the front/middle/back of green yardages. On most courses the outline of the green rotates to reflect its shape (and resulting front/middle/back chord line) as it appears from where you're standing. You can also use a button to move the "center" point around on the green outline to make the big number be to any point you wish.


There is no Stroke Saver style overhead map view of the entire hole, which may be what you were imagining. Just the green outline and the numbers. On some holes there is an alternate screen which gives text labels for various hazards (for example "short of water" or "to carry bunker") along with a number for that yardage.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation.  He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

                          --Wendell Berry