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Oddly enough, what helps soldiers helps golfers
By RICK GERSHMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, ODESSA -- It began as something like the plot of a Tom Clancy thriller, but this was 100 percent real life. The U.S. Department of Defense wanted to create a system of all-weather, round-the-clock navigation capabilities for military ground, sea and air forces. Top U.S. scientists designed a constellation of 24 spacecraft, equipped with satellites, that would continuously orbit the earth. They launched them throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, completing the enormous project in 1994. The NAVSTAR Global Positioning System, also known as GPS, worked like a charm. It was like drawing an exact map of the planet and being able to isolate your exact position on it at all times. GPS has important military uses, from helping to track military forces to exactly targeting missiles fired from a submarine. The scientists who developed GPS had to know it would eventually find a place in the civilian world. Now some vehicles can use GPS to map out exact routes to their locations, a big step up from that $2 compass that hardly sticks to the dashboard anymore. Some handheld computers, such as Palm Pilots, also use GPS to help users find their way. But when the top men and women in their field painstakingly created this enormous satellite system, when the government spent several billion dollars on its development and upkeep, they had no idea what one of the chief uses of GPS would be at the start of the 21st century: To help Uncle Barry keep his tee shot out of the water hazard on that darned 14th hole. * * * One of the most popular and fastest-growing uses of GPS systems today is to help amateur golfers estimate distances on particular holes. The systems now are available at more than 60 golf courses in the state, with almost a dozen in the Tampa Bay area. Courses in north Tampa that provide GPS systems include those at Carrollwood Village, Westchase and the Eagles in Odessa. The systems work like this: Climb into a golf cart at the Eagles and head for one of its two golf courses, the Lakes or the Forest. Pull up to the tees at the first hole. A full-color, 10-inch diagonal digital screen attached to the cart comes to life. It shows an eagle-eye view of the layout of the first hole. The screen tells you exactly how many yards you are from the green, from the water hazards and from the bunkers. Now step on the accelerator and roll forward 10 or 15 feet. Watch all the numbers on the screen change to reflect your new position. Those given to paranoia, be warned: Yes, they DO know where you are. And they ARE watching you. Frank Reynolds, who runs the courses at the Eagles, has a monitor in the pro shop that shows exactly where every cart is on the course all the time. That's another part of virtually every GPS golf system. So if you hang out at No. 7 for a while to negotiate that huge corporate takeover while other players wait behind you, don't be surprised when a message from Frank pops up on the screen, politely prompting you to speed up your play. "This is the wave of the future right here," Reynolds said. "We think it's absolutely phenomenal." At the Eagles, the GPS system is OnCourse, developed by Clearwater's Shortgrass Technologies. It is similar to other "second-generation" GPS systems, which have popped up in the past couple of years. First-generation GPS golf systems generally had no bells and whistles, and though they were considerable improvements over previous distance-gauging technologies, they weren't much to look at. Before Reynolds upgraded to the OnCourse system last December, the Eagles had employed a GPS system (beginning in 1994) with tiny monochrome screens that really only indicated yardage. First-generation GPS systems also were not quite as precise. New systems, such as OnCourse, have many more features. OnCourse can show a real-time leaderboard on its screens, so players in a tournament can keep track of who is in the lead and where they currently rank. A wire service provides updates of sports scores, so news on the Stanley Cup or the Devil Rays' latest debacle are regularly available. Reynolds employs OnCourse on all 148 carts at the Eagles, but he does not use all of its potential. There is a food-and-beverage ordering capability -- patrons could order sandwiches and sodas directly from their cart -- but that feature is disabled, as Reynolds feels it would slow down play too much. A weather messaging system also is disabled, due to liability concerns. Golf directors at Westchase and Carrollwood Village also have those features disabled, though Westchase plans to add food-and-beverage ordering soon. "Too much information can be detrimental," Reynolds said. "Used right, this will help speed up play, aid the golfer and help us "ranger' the course." * * * The Shortgrass system actually made its pilot run at the Westchase Golf Club, where general manager Clay Thomas allowed Shortgrass to test OnCourse about one year ago. "We just thought this would be a great place to test the system, and we were very impressed," Thomas said. "Nobody else's graphics touch this. We run the sports ticker, but we also run a stock ticker during the week. And we're going to add the food and beverage, too." Of course, golf is a sport that reveres tradition, so many choose not to use the systems. They are not used on any of the major pro tours; nor are they used in many amateur tournaments. When Thomas installed OnCourse on all 80 carts at Westchase, he said he expected to receive criticism from golf traditionalists, who prefer to gauge distances the old-fashioned way -- by eyeball -- but in fact there was very little fuss. "We really haven't had any problems with that," he said. "Our customers really, really like it." At Carrollwood Village, head golf pro Chris Huff uses the ParView system, named after the Sarasota company that produces it. ParView, which has some different details, is similar to Shortgrass' OnCourse system. Carrollwood Village, which has three nine-hole courses -- Pine, Cypress and Meadow -- equips 100 of its 120 carts with ParView. While ParView is available on the carts at no additional expense, Huff has found that some members prefer not to use it. So the club is considering removing the system from half of its carts and charging $5 per round for those who want to use a GPS-equipped cart. "It's a real expensive system," Huff said, estimating the cost at $4,000 to $7,000 per month. That is money that could be used toward continual improvements on the Village courses, which has been the club's chief focus over the past year. "This is the best our golf course has looked since I've been here," he said. Huff, Reynolds and Thomas each declined to reveal the cost of installing the systems. Some GPS golf companies equip participating courses at their own cost -- which reportedly can be upward of $1-million -- and then lease it to the golf club, with costs ranging greatly depending on the size of the course and how extensively the system will be used. Others charge for installation outright. Thomas did indicate that the use of Westchase as Shortgrass' pilot helped allay the system's cost there. At the Eagles and Westchase, club members are charged no additional fee for use of the GPS system, and Reynolds said there was no increase in fees when OnCourse was installed at the Eagles. Many courses nationwide do charge higher prices for golfers who choose to use the GPS system. Avid golfers Claire and Robert Tillman, who live in the Lutz area, have used several GPS systems. The systems can be an attribute to the game, they said, but the Tillmans agreed that most golfers do not rely on them. "I haven't been playing as long, and on tricky holes, using (a GPS system) really helps you watch out for bunkers and water," Claire Tillman said. "But these days I use it more to confirm my shot than to let it, I guess, tell me what to do. God knows (what would be) the point if you let a machine tell you what to do." Robert Tillman said he rarely consults the system to gauge distance, except on tricky holes where the pin is hard to see or is otherwise obscured. "That's when you really can use something like that," he said. "Nobody's going to get an unfair advantage from using GPS, because ultimately you have to be accurate with the club anyway. If you're not a good golfer, no computer is going to change that."
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