On the hottest day of the summer, it was 90 degrees at 7:30am when I rolled out of bed. Licking my wounds from the night prior, I got my ass in gear and took a cold shower, dressed for the course and made my way out the door at 8 o'clock on the nose. Tee time was 9:12, the course was about 55 minutes away so I should be totally fine to make a quick stop at the neighborhood store to grab beer. I also picked up a couple Gatorades while I was there (although an IV may have been better) and oddly enough the cashier didn't even bat an eye at my 8am 18pk purchase. I love this town.
After missing an exit and screeching into the parking lot at 9:08, I grabbed my bag out of the bed of the truck, ditched the empties from Thursday's round and jammed a bunch of slightly chilled Bud Larry's into my bag. After paying I was greeted by a couple sharply dressed course workers that offered to take my bag, which was about fifty pounds by now. My mind immediately flashed to the scene in Happy Gilmore where the caddy tries to take Happy's bag and he runs after him and tackles him. I declined and got a ride from my buddy up to the tee box, just in time.
Still a bit rattled from the panic of getting to the tee box on time, I didn't even notice that the golf cart was equipped with a GPS tablet that had a detailed map of the course and would even tell you the temperature, wind speed and direction and how many yards the cart was from the hole. It was like the perfect blend of Tiger Woods PGA Tour and golfing in real life.
Not that it helped me much on the first hole. I greeted the two guys, Mike and Larry, that I had never met before and apologized for cutting it so close and thankfully they took the honors of going first so I could catch my breath. Mike steps up and rips one about 280 straight down the pipe into the middle of the fairway. Still too early to tell if this is going to be the norm or if a blind squirrel found a nut on the first hole, but a nice shot nonetheless. My friend Matt stepped up and had a decent shot to the right side of the fairway and Larry followed with another not great, but playable shot on the left side of the fairway.
Show time. I'm already pouring sweat by now and am thinking about helping myself to some hair of the dog as I bend down to tee up my ball. My head is pounding and I pray to hit something half decent and not embarrass myself on the first hole. Thwack!! I CRUSHED it and almost fell out of my shoes. The ball flew about 275 years on a frozen rope, hard to the left and deep, deep into the trees never to be found again.
The three guys all were on the brink of pissing themselves but brushed it off to try and make me feel better. "Breakfast ball!"
I tee up another brand new Titleist ProV1 that I probably paid four bucks for the week prior for some stupid reason. I take a deep breath and line up to try this again. Thwack!! I absolutely smashed this one, too, maybe even further than the first. But this one was not hard left but hard right, long and deep into the trees on that side of the fairway, never to be found again.
Well, shit.
I dropped with Matt and finished the hole with an eight. I ended up stringing a bunch of holes together in the middle of the round (after shotgunning a few cold ones) and had enough decent shots to end up saving face, but just thinking about how that round started off and the first impression that Mike and Larry must've had still makes me chuckle. While it wasn't all that helpful on the first hole, the GPS on the cart was actually very helpful a few times over the course of the round. I didn't love the big brother aspect of it when it was flashing at us for veering from the course, threatening to shut down, but I'm sure the staff at the course loves this functionality. I could see these tablets being table stakes three to five years from now for courses with green fees over $75 or $100 per round.
It also gets me thinking about all of the opportunity it could open up for upsell/Xsell for the courses - members with additional functionality like logging your round right from the cart, tracking shots, round over round analytics, weather impact reports on performance, etc.
What do you think? Have you seen or heard about any cool tech solutions for golfers? Let me know in the comments below!