Sport is often to the fore when it comes to the adoption and use of new technology. Sometimes though it quaintly lags behind. Now that we can watch live sport in mid air and access the latest scores and results on airborne wifi it was perhaps inevitable that the ban on phones on a golf course would come under pressure and such is what has happened.
The Royal and Ancient at St Andrews, golf’s arbiter of rules and etiquette has approved golfers carrying smartphones as a device in their bag, initially to be able to access incoming weather reports.
There are a number of electronic score card recorders but now the eagles, birdies and occasional treble bogeys will be able to be recorded simply on your iPhone or Samsung smartphone and analysed back at the clubhouse.
Performance can be monitored electronically in a way that old and weather stained cards might never have allowed and the hundreds of golfing apps and games will now doubtless blossom to thousands so that a delay behind a slow group will no longer allow time for reflection but more likely to catch up on the latest news, twitter stream or email.
There will be many who will sigh wistfully at another of life’s more patient endeavours being swept along by a tide of technology. Then again there will probably be many more who were never aware they were not permitted to wander the fairways glued to the screen.
The race to Dubai may now be supplemented by the race among the top stars to sign endorsement deals with app promoters and developers and phone manufacturers.
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