Golf Greetings,
The first month of the year has gone by almost as quickly as my trip to the USA this year… Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and I hope you have a special day planned for the loved one in your life!
Speaking about special things, I was fortunate enough to visit one of my favourite courses last week in the USA while attending the PGA Show: Bay Hill, the home course of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.
One of the first things you notice while driving along the very inconspicuous Palmer drive is the sand bottles standing on the fairways for the comfort of the golfers to fill their divots. What do you think of this idea?
Bay Hill also features one of the best all-round practice facilities, with two very large putting greens, 13 chipping greens and a monster of a grassed & mat range area. Mr. Palmer loved to practise! And his vodka 😊 more about that later.
Chipping Area at Bay Hill
Driving range & Club House
It is amazing to see that golfers who make use of carts need guidance and assistance all over the world. Enjoy the video, apologies to my English readers as I’m speaking Afrikaans in these videos, but I’m sure you’ll catch the gist of the story.
It’s the same all over the world when it comes to carts…
Is this the proverbial “silver bullet” when it comes to the Halfway House? It definitely gets 12 out of 10 from me – the location is perfect, the offering just what you require for a quick refuel and almost no time to sit as you get bumped off by the 4 ball behind you. The starters hut is adjacent to the Halfway House with only a ladies & gent restroom dividing the buildings. There is NO kitchen in the halfway – everything is pre-prepared and ready to go. This is the future…
Great idea for a Halfway House and it works great
Back to Arnold Palmer – as anyone who spent time with him eventually learned, his libation of choice was Ketel One vodka, usually on the rocks with a twist. To this day they serve an “Arnold Palmer” at the club. But what was fascinating for me remains the locker rooms that may only be used by a person older than 18 years.
Why? Man, because it has the best fully stocked bar inside the locker room that I have ever seen. With seating for up to around 80 golfers there is just no better place to enjoy a round of drinks than inside one of the best locker rooms I’ve ever seen. Tiger has pretty much dominated the Arnold Palmer Invitationals, but it was great to see South African icon Ernie Els’ name also as a past champion not once but twice. This year the tournament will be played from 6 – 9 March; always a great one to watch, with Scottie Scheffler defending his title.
On top of the world, we got to experience Top Golf – now this was a ton of fun! If you are ever anywhere in the world where you could do Top Golf – do it – don’t miss out. This was a great evening of fun with so many great types of games we played while enjoying something to eat & drink.
This is by far the biggest growing area in the game of golf. In the US, 60 million rounds were played on-course and a whopping 72 million rounds were played off-course. Yep, it’s mind-blowing indeed. During the conference it was explained to us that by gamifying the golf more and more younger people are introduced to the game. They continue to enjoy the game and the industry only tries to convert them to club members around the age of 40 when they are more financially stable and their family responsibility focus is starting to shift. They will then hopefully remain part of on-course / club golf for the next 40 years.
Sadly, the weather in Florida was not great and I only spent about 30 minutes at the Demo Day. Luckily, we could still experience everything at the show annually hosted at Orange County Convention Center. With around 40 000 professionals and industry leaders joining annually, as the biggest get-together in golf it remains eye-opening too see what is coming next in the game of golf and what is happening at different clubs.
I was very interested in what has been achieved so far with autonomous machinery on the golf course, that is able to operate itself and perform necessary functions without any human intervention, through the ability to sense its surroundings.
South Africa is also represented with a number of great brands at the show – two specific ones that we also partner with at the club is Flightscope and Jondo eyewear. I just had to take a pic of the perfect golf cart for Pieter Grobbelaar – I know he would love this baby! It Hyperclears anything Pieter.
Golf continues to lead the way in going autonomous
Ending off, the only question remains with so many people being replaced by machines – what will they do?
We are looking forward to a full and exiting year with you – a little bit more about this in next week’s DOG’s Tale.
Keep it down the middle,
Louis