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Satellite technology is making old-fashioned yardage markers obsolete.
By JOHN SCHWARB, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 1, 2002
Players at Westchase Golf Club have one less excuse should they make a bogey from smack in the middle of the fairway.
Forget about bad yardage, folks. It's right. It's always right.
Need another scapegoat? Blame it on the stock market. But more about that later.
At Westchase in Tampa and The Eagles Golf Club in Odessa, golfers have more than scorecard maps and sprinkler heads to guide them through 18 holes. They have the same technology that allows drivers to navigate unfamiliar roads and hikers to find their way in the wild.
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have arrived, via computer screens on golf carts. It won't hit the 6-iron for you, but it will say how far the shot needs to clear the water and reach that back-left hole location.
"It's like having a caddy with you," Westchase general manager Clay Thomas said. "A yardage book is great, but this is the latest tool."
The latest, and perhaps easiest. At a tee box, the GPS system shows the entire layout of a hole, complete with yardages to various landmarks from exactly where the cart sits. From that point until the player reaches the green, the GPS provides measurements within a yard from a cart to the hole.
"It's dynamic. All the information is provided relative to where you are as the golfer," said Rich Pizzolato, CEO of Largo-based Shortgrass Technologies, which manufactures and sells GPS systems.
"Golfers are looking for more information to play the game, much like the pros on TV. With our technology, they have it."
Curious golfers and course owners have asked Pizzolato where he embeds computer chips into fairways and flagsticks, but instead the GPS runs off global-positioning satellites that constantly circle the earth.
To prepare a site for the devices, surveyors with GPS-equipped backpacks walk the perimeter of a golf course, from the hazards to tee boxes to greens. Courses can provide various pin placements, allowing for more precise measurements.
The walk creates a GPS map of the course, which is programmed into the computers mounted below a golf cart roof. Once a cart moves within the map of a hole, calculations are made instantly and a player gets a yardage automatically on the 10-inch screen.
To the golfer, it is effortless. To the course, it can be as much as a $250,000 investment. Some clubs charge players to use the GPS, but Westchase and The Eagles do not. To defray some of the cost and in time perhaps make a profit from the devices, Westchase sells advertising on the GPS screens to local businesses.
Further filling the golfer's eye is an updated sports ticker and, coming soon, a stock ticker for weekday players. A stock ticker?
"There are certainly a few that don't like (GPS), just like people didn't like titanium woods and the balls that go too far," Thomas said.
Despite some traditionalists' mumblings, Thomas said he has not heard any player ask that the system be turned off. (They can be turned off, and must be off for certain PGA and USGA-sanctioned events.)
Through GPS systems, two-way communication between the players and the clubhouse also is available. If a car in the parking lot has its lights on, a message can be sent to every cart on the course. If a specific player needs paging, a course attendant can send a message to one specific cart.
For all its benefits of instant yardage and, at some courses, the capacity to order food and beverage in advance, course managers are unsure whether the better technology adds up to better pace of play. Shortgrass Technologies' units start a clock when a cart reaches the first or 10th tees, but the running clock is often ignored.
"It hasn't sped up the game at all. It's just an added touch," said Frank Reynolds, director of golf at The Eagles. "The serious golfer, he's taking that much more time. He can't believe the yardage is correct."
But it is, and more courses nationwide are starting to find that out. According to Club Car, the nation's biggest manufacturer of golf carts and a partner with a Texas company that produces GPS devices, 500 of the nation's 17,000-plus golf courses are using the new technology.
More are on the way in the bay area starting with Largo's Bardmoor Golf Club, which is slated to receive Shortgrass Technologies' GPS by January.
"It's for the facilities that are trying to set themselves apart," Bardmoor director of golf Tom West said. "Golf is so hard anyway, if there's anything we can do to make their round more enjoyable, we do."