While few sports remain untouched by the miracles of the micro-chip, golf has been transformed forever in a full frontal, technological assault. Hot-faced drivers, involving the mysteries of the co-efficient of restitution (or COR, as the scientific calculation is known), balls that find their way into new territory and putter heads that look like branding irons from a sheep-shearing farm in Sydney.
Meanwhile, suffering from this near-frenzied outpouring of weapons to make golf balls fly like guided missiles are those traditional course designs with fairway bunkers and other hazards that no longer come into play as they were intended. No need to consider beyond the US Masters and Augusta National and the furore over the course lengthening carried out there, for confirmation of that particular fact.
Broadly speaking, when the growing army of athletic young big hitters generate club head speed well in excess of 100 mph and strike a state-of-theart ball with the sweet spot of a trampoline-effect clubface, many par fours are driveable and most par fives are two-shotters. Love technology, or hate it, take your choice… but any authority, even the eminentlysensible R&A, trying to stop it would be like King Canute attempting to hold back the tide.
Yet, strangely, while the debate about drivers and the necessity or otherwise of re-designing golf courses, has been played out in the newspaper and magazine headlines, the arrival, and the ready-acceptance of the GPS has been comparatively unnoticed. GPS, as I’m sure eat GOLF!’s well-informed readers are aware, is the acronym for Global Positioning System. Like the satellite navigation systems now becoming commonplace in motor cars - and unlike some of us! - the GPS always knows precisely where it is. Not only that but, when held by hand or installed in the facia of a buggy, it can tell you not only where just about anything else is, but how far away it is to the nearest metre or three. Centre of the green? One hundred and forty-two metres. The flag? One hundred and fifty-one metres. Greenside bunker? One hundred and thirty-one metres. Corner ofthe dogleg? Near side, one hundred and ninety four metres, far side two hundred and forty-one metres. OK, such information is of limited value only to a senior seventeen handicapper like myself but to anyone with the semblance of control over line and distance, this amounts to a completely new deal in course management.
In terms of the legality of the GPS during a round, the R&A now allows golf course committees to introduce a local rule permitting the use of such ‘measuring systems’. If a local rule is not in place then they remain illegal. However, it opens the door to use by the professional bodies if they so desire.
