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 When did we become so consumed with every ounce of newfangled technology that we have developed an insatiable lust for anything that might improve our game by even a fraction of a stroke? We have tees that tout “less friction” and golf shoes that purport a “more solid base.” And don’t get me started on ball and club manufacturers that claim earth-shattering improvements that just so happen to coincide with every new product launch. My frustration grew to a head recently while playing with a guy who was spitting mad because the GPS system on the golf cart wasn’t working. Forget the fact that we were playing a gorgeous course in perfect conditions on a beautiful fall day in Southern California. This guy wanted exact yardage, and he wanted it now, even though he couldn’t hit a club the same distance twice in a row if he tried. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard playing companions gripe about the lack of a GPS or the inaccuracies of the sprinkler heads. I Googled the subject in preparation for this story and was stunned how upset people can get over bad yardages — so much so that they go to web sites and blog about how inaccurate the yardages are at some golf courses. Are you kidding me? When did exact yardage on a golf course become a right? I grew up on a golf course with no yardage markers. There were some juniper trees on most of the holes that were about 150 yards to approximately the middle of the green. That’s it. Everything else was an educated guess. We learned to play by feel. You looked at a shot and decided that it felt like an 8-iron. There was no exact yardage to the flag with a 3-D topographical schematic of the green. You played with your eyes and trusted your gut. It helped us be creative because we looked at the shot with our mind’s eye rather than a fixed yardage in our head. We picked the shot and we were committed to it — this resulted in us being far less mechanical and the game was played in a much more natural way. Today, I’ve found I’m much more focused on precise yardage, which makes me tentative. I start thinking about the yardage on the GPS before the cart stops rolling. I’m locked in on flying the ball a particular distance, and I start factoring in the wind, elevation, pin placement, size of the green and the accuracy of the satellite system providing all this brilliant information. It’s amazing I can even take the club back. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against technology. I own a handheld GPS system and it’s way cool and mostly accurate. That is, at least, when I remember to charge it and bring it to the golf course. That’s not the point. My point is I think we lost a huge part of the game when we stopped feeling the course and started relying so much on technology. The GPS says it’s 165 yards to the flag. That means I have to hit a 6-iron. That means I didn’t even consider another shot. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. Imagine golf courses where the only thing marked were the monuments on the tee boxes and two approximately placed 150-yard markers on each side of the fairway. Everything else between would be left to your imagination, an educated guess and a trusted golf swing. That would be interesting. It also would be real golf. |
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