Golf GPS--is it for everyone?

[jsmith1]

for my playing partner, it sure isn't!!

Now that I'm seeing more and more of these on the course, I'm wondering if this convenience is for everyone.

For me it is fast and easy to use, even making me a faster player, I am already a pretty fast player, so of course my 2 playing partners had to get one, and they are have become slower players than they already were!! To the point it is becoming very irritating.

Maybe these type of players should just have the ones with big numbers to some targets and greens and that's it, instead of taking the GPS up to the tee box scrolling through every target, then after a couple of minutes walking back to the cart getting a club and going through their normal slow routine from there.


Is anyone else experiencing this type of problem on the course with your playing partners or maybe with another group in front of you that has one?

Seems that this has some great pros to it, but there might be some cons as well.

[Bomb and Gouge]

Nah, I've never seen anyone take more time w/ a GPS/Sky Caddie.

 

However, I'm sure it happens...and it's gotta be pretty annoying.

 

There are so many things that contribute to slow play and my guess is that a Sky Caddie definitely speeds up the game for most.

[Fourmyle of Ceres]

Slow players will use anything available to play slower. Give them a golf cart and they will drive around in aimless circles. Give them a laser or a GPS and they'll do all their other slow-playing futzing about and then dink around with the gadget for another couple minutes. Give them a cigar and they screw around with the cigar when they should be playing a shot or moving to the next one.

 

Fast players will use anything available to play faster. Give them a golf cart and they figure out the most direct way to get to where they need to be (except in the case of the dreaded "cart paths only" in which carts add an hour to the round for everybody). Give them a GPS or a laser and they'll use it to avoid pacing off yardages or looking around for markers. Give them a cigar and they'll save it until after the round.

 

Slow players are slow because they want to play slow. They aren't lacking any gadget or technology or information that would help them play faster, they would just rather do a bunch of non-golf stuff while they're on the golf course. Everyone that plays a lot of rounds of golf develops a mental image or idea of how the game should be played. If you force them off that internal clock they get uncomfortable and frustrated (except for the rare individual who does not let things like that bother them). My mental image is of a game played on foot, on a compactly laid out golf course, in three hours or a bit over. If you were to make me ride in a cart or take four hours to play I'm going to feel like it's an ordeal and not a game. I know people who think golf take 4-1/2 hours if they get hurried along in 3:45 they feel like they were being rushed all day and they don't have fun.

 

Playing slowly is a choice. The more non-essentials that you hand a slow player the more opportunities he will have to indulge his choice. Playing quickly is a choice. Those same non-essential gadgets can sometimes help a quick player play even faster. Therefore any addition of gadgetry to the game increases overall frustration because it increases the disparity between quick and slow players. If I can save 10 minutes off my round with a GPS but I'm already playing at a 4+ hour pace and waiting on every shot I get more frustrated. And if my playing companions also get a GPS and it slows them down 10 minutes that increases frustration all around. And so the game gets slower and slower and more and more people quit playing regularly.

 

P.S. And by the way, pre-shot routines and all that other perfectly cromulent sports psychology stuff does the same thing, makes fast players faster and makes slow players slower. It's just one more way for the slowpokes to dilly-dally instead of hitting the darned ball.

[jsmith1]

Slow players will use anything available to play slower. Give them a golf cart and they will drive around in aimless circles. Give them a laser or a GPS and they'll do all their other slow-playing futzing about and then dink around with the gadget for another couple minutes. Give them a cigar and they screw around with the cigar when they should be playing a shot or moving to the next one.

 

Fast players will use anything available to play faster. Give them a golf cart and they figure out the most direct way to get to where they need to be (except in the case of the dreaded "cart paths only" in which carts add an hour to the round for everybody). Give them a GPS or a laser and they'll use it to avoid pacing off yardages or looking around for markers. Give them a cigar and they'll save it until after the round.

 

Slow players are slow because they want to play slow. They aren't lacking any gadget or technology or information that would help them play faster, they would just rather do a bunch of non-golf stuff while they're on the golf course. Everyone that plays a lot of rounds of golf develops a mental image or idea of how the game should be played. If you force them off that internal clock they get uncomfortable and frustrated (except for the rare individual who does not let things like that bother them). My mental image is of a game played on foot, on a compactly laid out golf course, in three hours or a bit over. If you were to make me ride in a cart or take four hours to play I'm going to feel like it's an ordeal and not a game. I know people who think golf take 4-1/2 hours if they get hurried along in 3:45 they feel like they were being rushed all day and they don't have fun.

 

Playing slowly is a choice. The more non-essentials that you hand a slow player the more opportunities he will have to indulge his choice. Playing quickly is a choice. Those same non-essential gadgets can sometimes help a quick player play even faster. Therefore any addition of gadgetry to the game increases overall frustration because it increases the disparity between quick and slow players. If I can save 10 minutes off my round with a GPS but I'm already playing at a 4+ hour pace and waiting on every shot I get more frustrated. And if my playing companions also get a GPS and it slows them down 10 minutes that increases frustration all around. And so the game gets slower and slower and more and more people quit playing regularly.

 

P.S. And by the way, pre-shot routines and all that other perfectly cromulent sports psychology stuff does the same thing, makes fast players faster and makes slow players slower. It's just one more way for the slowpokes to dilly-dally instead of hitting the darned ball.

 

 

Good post, and I agree with a lot of it, I think sometimes to many choices for some make for even slower play, at what point do you have to say something, cause like you said it will make faster players faster and can be frustrating to say the least.

 

What was funny, when I was the only one with the GPS, I would ride over and give them a quick yardage, having already quickly decifered the info they might need and it went ok, when in thier hands though, it is a different story.