By: Fred Altvater
After spending three days wandering the “10 Miles of Isles” at the PGA Show in Orlando last month it quickly became obvious that the golf industry has embraced new technology in every aspect.
Seemingly every golf manufacturer and vendor are using technological advancements to enhance their products.
One of the newer items that caught my eye was the Elixr Golf Ball from OnCore. The ball uses metal fusion materials and a hollow center to create a completely new ball.
In the future, OnCore will include micro-chips inside that hollow core to provide an instantaneous readout of distance, spin rate, ball speed, as well as, other data to improve your golf game.
Tour Edge is a lesser known club manufacturer that is producing clubs at a lower price point, but still provides the same quality of performance as Titleist, PING or Callaway. Their Hot Launch line is more forgiving for the average golfer and the CBX line is for the lower handicap player, that demands performance.
Tour Edge has been known, for their Exotics shafts used by top players for years to get maximum feel and distance.
They believe in the right club for every individual golfer. Every Tour Edge Retailer has a fitting cart to accurately prescribe the correct type of golf club to maximize performance on the course.
V1 provides video swing analysis and has been around for 20 years. I used their technology over ten years ago in working with students to break down their swing, with appropriate lines and comments. It allows every golf instructor to provide their students with a visual understanding of the correct swing pattern to help speed up the learning curve.
They were one of the leaders in online teaching techniques and by updating to the newest advancements are once again climbing to the top of the video swing analysis and training market.
Their advancement hasn’t gone unnoticed by the golf experts. Golf Digest recognized V1 with the “Best Golf Swing Analyzer Editor’s Award” in both 2016 and 2017.
Over 1,000 vendors presented their wares to the 40,000 attendees from 75 countries around the world at this year’s PGA Merchandise Show. It is obvious that technology is the hottest topic in golf. The golf industry has embraced the HI-Tech mantra that will allow every golfer to use their smartphone, or tablet to receive various company’s APPS and software to help with every aspect of the golf experience.
