“PRO” File – Touring Professional Charles Howell, III
Editorial – New Rules Will Take Time to Absorb
The Station
Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent. We are traveling by train. Out the windows we drink in the passing scene of cars on nearby highways, of smoke pouring from a power plant, of row upon row of corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hillsides, of city skylines and village hills.
But uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we get there so many wonderful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. How relentlessly we pace the aisles, damming the minutes for loitering waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.
“When we reach the station, that will be it!” we cry. “When I’m 18.” “When I buy a new 450SL Mercedes Benz!” “When I put the last kid through college.” “When I have paid off the mortgage!” ‘When I get a promotion.” “When I reach the age of retirement, I shall live happily ever after!”
Sooner or later we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly outdistances us.
“Relish the moment” is a good motto because it isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad. It is the regrets over yesterday and the fears of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.
So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, play more golf, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.
Virtual Reality Still Searching for a Place in the Golf Industry
In early 2016, I wrote about the advent of virtual reality and its potential impact on the future of the golf industry. Two and a half years later, virtual reality equipment is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Some of the top holiday season sales are for VR gear from companies like Oculus and HTC. One of the top movies last Spring was Ready Player One, a film about how VR will soon consume our society. With VR becoming more and more popular, it’s time to revisit this trend and see how it’s affecting the entertainment industry generally and golf industry.
Getting a top-of-the-line VR setup isn’t cheap. First, you’ll need a pretty powerful computer to operate the software. Next, you’ll need to buy the VR equipment. The aforementioned Oculus and HTC brands run around $350 to $500. Finally, you’ll need a large empty room devoid of obstacles like furniture so you don’t hurt yourself or break something while playing. Setup is simple. A visor covers your eyes and most of your face and allows you see the virtual world. A handheld controller allows you to interact with objects like golf balls and clubs and to navigate through menus. The more advanced (expensive) VR setups include cameras set around the room, which place your body in the VR environment and records the movement of your body.
One of the most fun things you do once everything is set up is to take a virtual tour of your favorite golf course. Using Google Maps, you can explore any golf course you want on a 3-D tour. Having never made it to the Masters yet, my first stop was Augusta National. It’s an incredible experience to be “standing” on Hogan’s Bridge on No. 12. Of course, what you’re actually exploring are high resolution static photographs – you can’t interact with the golf course, just explore it. It’s fun to survey famous courses that I might not have the chance to visit in the real world, but it’s also useful to scout out a golf course I might play soon. If you do nothing else with virtual reality, this ability is worth the price of admission.
If you actually want to swing a club, you’ll need to buy a game that allows you to do so. The top two golf programs are Galaxy Golf and Golf Club VR. The first is a sort of cartoonish mini-golf game where you hit bank shots to islands floating in space. Obviously geared toward younger players, it’s safe to say it doesn’t create a very realistic golf experience. Golf Club VR, on the other hand, is designed to be a more serious game. You play on a realistic looking golf course. Users can even design their own course and play on courses other players have designed. There are excellent reproductions of famous tracks like St. Andrews. But most significantly, in order to play Golf Club VR well, you have to make an actual golf swing. Poor swings result in poor shots. The big takeaway here is that improving your golf swing in Golf Club VR could have real-world impact on your game.
Of course, there is still a long way to go until VR golf is comparable with the real thing. For one, the controller could not be more unlike a golf club. There are users who have attached their controller to a golf club shaft in order to provide a more authentic swing experience, but there’s nothing official from Oculus or HTC. Also, Golf Club VR is a single-player game, which means you can’t play with friends or, for example, bring a golf teacher into your game for a lesson. Lastly, the interactive graphics of the game lack the detail and naturalness of the static images in Google Earth. Overall, these limitations feel like they’re temporary and will be solved with time. As designers iron out exactly what users want to see, many of these barriers will be eliminated.
While I was testing out this technology, the primary question I kept asking myself was, “Would a lesson in VR improve my game in real life?” I think the answer to that question today would be a solid “maybe.” There are certainly things you could work on in VR that would translate to your weekend foursome, but there is also still a pretty hefty gap to close. There is, however, definitely a novelty to playing golf in VR. A few hours after letting my son have a turn in Golf Club VR, he asked if we could go to the range to hit some golf balls – in real life. For now, this might be the key to understanding how VR is changing the golf industry: it can help get people interested in the real thing.
Paddles and Oars
By Norm Crerar, USGTF Contributing Writer
Vernon, British Columbia
I have just finished reading one of the most motivational and touching books I have read in some time. The title of the book is The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. It is the story of nine Americans and their epic quest for gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Set in the Seattle and Olympic Peninsula area, the lives and tough times of the members of a Men’s 8 rowing team during the Depression are brought to light. The hardships people at that time and in that place had to endure are hard to imagine in this day and age.
A nine-member team is made up of eight rowers and a cox. The boat is 62 feet in length; the sweep oars are in the nine-foot range. The team members have to be strong enough to pull their weight and their part of the boat with stroke rates of 25-40 per minute. This may sound easy, but to be top of the heap in a rowing race that lasts six to sixteen minutes – depending on the length of the course – depends on one thing: All of the team members have to be pulling together at exactly the same time in the same direction and working just a bit harder than everyone else.
In 1967, Canada celebrated its 100 years of Confederation. There were events and civic celebrations across the country all year. The largest and most ambitious event was the Canadian Voyageur Canoe Pageant. This was a race from the Rocky Mountains to Montreal, 6,000 km (3,700 miles) over 104 days, and retraced the old fur trader routes. The Voyageur canoes were 25 feet long, 4 feet wide, weighed 400 pounds and seated six paddlers. It was a stage race where the ten canoes, one from each province or territory in Canada, lined up every morning and raced to the next town or city. Some of these daily laps were three or four hours long, but some were also 12 and 14 hours. As well, because the canoe teams were spread out due to ability and strength. Special sprints were put on in cities and towns so the locals could see the ten teams all together in full attack mode. The sprint courses were either A to B or circular over a course that was as short as 2 km or as long as 6 km. The times for the laps and the sprints were added on each day. There were money prizes for the teams at the end of the race, but the sprints provided extra money. (Some total purses for the sprints were in the neighborhood of $500, with the winning team receiving $100. This did not go far, as there were nine paddlers per team plus a chief voyageur/manager).
As the race went on, every one of the 100 paddlers was in excellent physical shape, and the only thing that separated the teams was the teamwork and that special ability to work as a team. In The Boys in the Boat, the boys talked about the feeling of the boat “flying.” I was captain of the winning Manitoba canoe in that 1967 event, and our team members often talked about our canoe “flying.” There were times when every paddle stroke and every heartbeat and every breath seemed to be in sync, and the boat did “fly.” What we experienced, and as also mentioned in The Boys in the Boat, were the other times when we paddled and everyone was pulling as hard as they could, but the boat felt like we were pulling a pail on a rope behind us. If even one person was just a fraction off, the “flying” became “towing.”
What does this have to do with golf teaching and the USGTF? Not that much about golfing, as that is very much an individual activity. In my consulting work with companies and organizations, I have put management people in Voyageur canoes and tried to get them to feel what it is like to be a team. I have used the metaphor of the paddlers and rowers to illustrate what can happen. Your USGTF is a remarkable story that has been some 29 years in the making, from a vision to a few courses to now a worldwide organization. This only happens and can only sustain itself if everyone is on the same page, shares the vision and continually works to make things bigger and better.
If you are in the Big USGTF canoe, pick up your paddles, and for the sake of the organization, paddle in the same direction at the same time!
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