It is estimated by the Danish Golf Union that 300 million golf balls are lost or discarded only in the golf industry of the USA every year. This common frustration has keen golfers – losing around 1.3 balls per round, from a 2009 GOLF Magazine study suggests – looking for technological solutions such as GPS-equipped golf balls.
But there is such a ball, and it has high production costs, so its application is still rather scant nowadays. On the whole, it turns out to be more expensive to bring specially tuned-up golf balls for a round than to purchase a new set of them. Some firms went further with implementing the above technologies, and some are just thinking about them. Let’s give some review on them.
OnCore GENiUS Golf Ball. The company that had first made news making golf balls with metal cores launched the GENiUS Ball at the 2018 PGA Merchandise Show. This ball comes fitted with a GPS and also imparts information on different aspects of the game, such as velocity, carry distance, spin rate, and more. An innovation that pushes the frontiers of smart ball technology, this focuses not only on minimizing loss of balls but, more importantly, on enhancing player performance through providing detailed analysis of the gameplay. However, as promising as it may be, the technology is yet in development and cannot be found in the current market.
Touted the first GPS-tracked golf ball, the Chipping smart ball aims to improve one’s scoring by reducing penalty strokes and search time. According to Chiping, an average golfer loses 4-5 balls per round, which is what their product aims to solve. They have a solid cover that helps to reduce driver spin while having an incredibly soft rubber core for additional yardage. However, the price of these balls is exorbitant – more than $140 for 12 balls – and this significantly limits its appeal radius. Besides, they don’t operate on water and are mostly interfered with by the rough terrain. They don’t have tournament sanctioning, as well as not being motorized and rechargeable, where the battery lasts for about one year.
The Graff Golf smart golf ball, just about the same as the OnCore GENiUS Ball, tracks and records shot data. Development is funded by an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, yet the team has to put out its product as it remains in the prototype phase.
Prazza Golf Ball Finder, a handheld device about the size of a smartphone, will locate the golf balls out to 100 meters by use of radio frequency identification. It will come with micro-chipped golf balls and be accurate within 2 feet. The battery said to be in a microchip, lasts for at least 120 18-hole rounds. Though its purchase cost is quite high, being more than $450 for the tracker and two balls, Prazza chose this product as it was able to save the other golfers much money with time. The only downside, however, is that availability may prove quite limited as its Amazon listing is absent for now, and its website is still under construction.
Losing a golf ball can be an incredibly frustrating part of playing the game. While there are all manner of GPS-enabled golf balls available, that technology gets expensive and pretty fastidious. Fortunately, several creative options designed to minimize the chance of losing your ball or making it easier to track and see when it does stray from the path are available while we await greater implementation of technology such as this.
Go For High-Visible Golf Balls: An excellent way is to get the types of golf balls that are made to have the most visible effect. They have colors that are brightly shining, from neon to maybe the brightest you can think about. Their coloration, quite distinct, makes them much easier to be spotted from a distance while in mid-flight or even while on the ground.
Invest in Golf-Specific Sunglasses: Ensuring that quality sunglasses form part of your golf kit will boost your game as well. Look for polarized lenses, which will reduce any glare and increase your ability to keep track of the flight of the ball across the course. Specifically, this is great for managing shots gone awry, a situation that frequently occurs for casual – and serious – golf athletes alike on difficult courses. This simple accessory can, to a great extent, reduce the likelihood of the loss of your ball.
Use Golf Ball Tracking Apps: For tech lovers who look at gadgets and smartphones, there are several golf ball tracking apps available in the iOS app store or Google Play Store. Other apps utilize features such as Shot Tracer, which tracks the flight of the ball, thus making it more visible. Others come in filters, which place a blue filter on top of the screen, making it easy to locate the white golf ball against green grass or white sand for those matters.
Losing balls is an inevitable part of every golfer’s experience, be it an occasional player or a true sports addict, but as far as it goes for you personally, I totally understand if this very winter will make you go out of your mind and start learning more about trackable options or what if your golf balls could have had built-in GPS. While options such as Chips Smart Ball do exist, they are rare, so most golfers resort to other solutions in the form of specific apps or visually more contrasting golf balls.
Ultimately, though GPS-embedded golf balls look enticing in terms of investment returns in as far as the number of golf balls not lost is concerned, their present availability and cost make them a non-starter for the most promising kind of golfer today. Thankfully enough, other affordable options like high-visibility golf balls, golf-dedicated sunglasses, and tracking applications offer feasible ways to minimize ball loss without deviating too much from the classic golfing experience.