We are what is referred to as ‘early adapters’ here at The Household. This means that when a new gadget comes out that in any way relates to something in our lives, we have to have it. So when the first rangefinders came out The Golfer was all over them. After a certain amount of research he settled on one, and used it quite happily for years.
In order to use this particular rangefinder a course must be ‘mapped’. This means that some person has walked the entire course, picked certain attributes of each hole as markers ( like maybe a particular sand trap, or a tree, or the edge of a water hazard etc. And of course each tee box and the front, center and back of the green.) and plugged in the coordinates of said markers. Then GPS is used to figure the yardage between all the markers, which can give you the yardage from various points on the fairway to the green. When you are playing you bring up the hole on the rangefinder and you can see the yardage from where you are to all of the markers. You don’t get any kind of picture of the hole. It’s just a round green circle representing the green, with all the markers between the tee and green labeled ( tree on left, hazard on right, second sand trap on right, etc. ). If you happen to want to hit the ball and land someplace not by a marker ( like maybe you want to lay up ) you have to estimate the yardage, based on the yardage to the closest marker.
Over the years a great many of the worlds courses have been mapped. If you happen to play a course that has not been mapped you are more then welcome to do the mapping yourself. Which can take 6-8 hours, since you have to walk the course and pick out markers and type in coordinates. Not something you will do for a course unless you will be playing it a lot. In order to get access to the course maps you pay a yearly subscription fee. One price will get you all the courses in your state. A slightly higher price will get you all the courses in the US. An even higher fee will get you courses all over the world. The only caveat being that, no matter which subscription you choose, you can only have 10 courses on the rangefinder at any one time.
In spite of the flat picture maps, and the being SOL if you happened to play a course that wasn’t mapped, overall The Golfer was very happy with his rangefinder. It was the best thing available. Then he got an iPhone. Since there is an app for everything on an iPhone, there are of course, several rangefinder apps. He bought one for $10. No yearly subscription. Just a one time charge of $10 ( The soundness of the business plan for this particular app is a matter of some speculation here at The Household. But for now it’s available, so The Golfer bought it. ). It operates on much the same principle as the rangefinder. People have mapped courses and you can download any map you want. There are a couple of key differences however. You can download as many maps as your iPhone can hold. And when you download a map what you actually get is Google Maps pictures of each hole on the course. Not only do you get the yardage, but you can see every sand trap, every hidden pot bunker, and how maybe it’s better to miss right because that way lies another fairway, but left is a large patch of nasty rough. And as for the yardage, you can get it from any point on the hole to any other point on the hole. So if you hit your tee shot, and then are wondering if perhaps your second shot should be a lay up, you can get the yardage from where you are to the green, where you are to where you would lay up, and the yardage from where your lay up shot will land ( you hope ) to the green, and make a decision as to whether to lay up, or to go for the green. Quite an improvement on the previous range finder.
The number of available course maps with this app is actually pretty tiny. But more are constantly being added, and adding a new course is easy. There is a nifty web interface. Basically you have it do a Google Maps search for the course, then click on the tee box and the green for hole, and Google maps uses it’s GPS to pull up all the images it takes to get a complete picture of the hole. Do that for every hole, and voila, mapped course from the comfort of your home. The Golfer went on an out of town golfing trip with the guys a couple weeks ago, and it took him just 10 minutes to map the course they were playing, from his hotel room.
The one downside to this rangefinder app is that, to fully utilize all it’s awsomeness, the iPhone has to use it’s GPS constantly, which runs down the battery. Totally drains it in a little over 2 hours. Which really only gets you through the first 9. The Golfer solved this little problem by purchasing an auxiliary battery pack for his iPhone. Which meant he also had to buy a bigger holster. One that was made to hold an iPhone with the auxiliary battery pack attached. The extra battery pack lasts through an entire round, so when he’s done he still has a fully charged phone. At $10 for the app, $80 for the battery and $30 for the new holster, The Golfer figures it’s a bargain. Even if this particular app eventually disappears, there are others, and new ones show up everyday. And if he does end up paying a subscription fee at some point ( because one of these app developers not only writes the app, but comes up with a viable long term business plan ), better a subscription for a Google Maps version of the course, with the ability to add new ones in minutes, than the flat, markers only, maps his old rangefinder provided, and no way to add a new course on the fly.
It is the opinion of us cool headed business types here in The Household that the current rangefinders are not long for this world, at least in their current form. In order to survive they will need to, at the very least be able to provide yardage from any point on a hole to any other, and an easy way to add new courses. And if they do that they are basically the same as the iPhone apps. And since you already have the iPhone, why exactly would you buy the rangefinder?
