Seven Steps To Make Golf Better

17th at Mercer West (8 here today)

Today at my local county public golf course, I had one of the best rounds of my life. (Note: I'm really not very good, but 100 was Heady Progress on the course in question.) Drives were straight and true, irons were frequently well-struck, and some of the wedges led to tap-ins. I holed out a bunch of long putts, got lucky a few times, and recovered relatively quickly from the inevitable shaky strokes.

It as all remarkably pleasant, despite a very slow pace of play. If you were judging by the state of the course today, you'd have no idea that golf was in serious decline.

Why? Well, it takes time, especially if the course is crowded. We played as a twosome between foursomes on a crowded course, on a Sunday afternoon, which meant that a round that could have been done in three hours took four and a half. It's pricey, but that's never stopped the game from doing well in the past. It skews badly on the demographics, as the game has always seemed exclusionary, old and classist, what with the enforced fashions and strong male bent. There has been, to date, no New Tiger Woods, so the game has just not sustained the popularity boom seen in the 1990s. Too many courses were made as part of the land / housing boom, for too few lifelong new players, and it's an open question as to whether we're going through a correction or a death spiral.

I think there's a lot that can be done to make the game better, not just for players, but for the areas where the courses are -- and without making the game unrecognizable with oversized holes and other fundamentally rule-busting moves. Here they are in list form.

1) Use the Internet of Things to enforce pace.

It's not hard to track carts with transponders (either driving or push) and get a sense of who is holding up play, and have them get a visit from a ranger. Especially for players who play from tees that aren't at their true levels.

2) Help hackers with beacons. The single most irritating aspect of play as a weak player is trying to find the ball on errant shots, and this should be the kind of thing that technology should be able to fix with a quickness. Wire that up to the cart, and I won't even mind paying more for it, since I'll be saving money on the lost balls that are the current bane of my existence.

3) Dial in for food and beverage. Nothing's more annoying than waiting on a group that is ahead of you as they do business with the beverage service; as always, of course, having other people wait when you do the same thing is fine. If these orders can be sent in and billed to a standing account (say, the same card you used to pay for the round), then the service is no slower than a drive and drop. Plus, no one's fumbling over change.

4) Develop a Web-wide player profile. I play a handful of courses within an hour of my home, and I doubt that I'm a strong outlier in my golfing habits. If my rounds tend to go faster or slower than the 10 to 17 minute per hole speed quoted on most cards, that should show up in my record, so that when you set me up to play at your course, you don't just slot me at the same time as everyone else. Eventually, we might get to the point where everyone's playing without spending so much time waiting.

5) Expand the available time to play. I haven't tried it yet, but a local course to me has offered night golf, with special equipment and holes; it sounds like a blast. I've played on indoor simulators that have gotten better and better, though the putting is still a mess. I'm pretty sure that we'll eventually get to at-home set-ups that allow for realistic play, which might even get to letting you play the course of your choice, with your remote friends, at the hour of your choosing. Virtual also helps fix the next problem, which is...

6) Make this a much more green enterprise. Chopping the use of strong pesticides, using alternate materials in areas where elements aren't local, and using the lay of the land instead of wild modifications, should all be standard operating procedure. It's also a point that should be used when marketing and advertising the course.

7) Use technology to improve the overall golfing experience. Use the tech to give me distance to the green from driving the cart to aid in club selection. (Some clubs do this already; make it the standard.) Give me the option to tune in the game on that cart screen, which would be wildly popular during football season. Have scoring incorporated into the cart tech, so that we're not spending time doing math at the turn, and can have the card e-mailed later. Maybe do shot analysis from beacons, and even selected moments of video capture, with the ability to post to social media, so my friends and family can see the 30-footer I holed out from the fringe today.

It's not as if there isn't the money to do this, an audience that says no to technology, or any reason to just keep doing things the way we've been doing them. The future of the game is at stake. Use the tech to secure it.

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