Google Glass sets its sights on the golf course

Google Glass is coming to a fairway near you.

With the amount of press Google Glass is getting, you could be forgiven for thinking that they are freely available to purchase, but this isn’t the case. Google Glass is still very much in development and available only to the media and app developers – and a developer has shown off an application for the golf course.

Ryan Ballengee recently took a look at GolfSight – a Golf GPS rangefinder made for Google Glass;

It’s more than just a GPS app, however. It makes the golf round easy to share with friends in stunning fashion. GolfSight can create a Glass ‘vignette’ of their scorecard with pictures in the background, transforming numbers on paper into a memorable experience worth sharing.

Goldstein says it took him a few holes of playing with GolfSight to make the adjustment of using it instead of a handheld GPS unit or a mobile app. The adaptation, in his eyes, was all positive.

Geoff Shackleford pointed out another review of GolfSight by one of the guys at GolfDigest – My Day with Google Glass.

Google Glass is essentially just a smartphone that you wear. It looks like a pair of glasses when you put it on, and the screen sits in the top right corner of your right eye. My plan was relatively simple: I was to go the Glass headquarters in New York City (Google people call it “Basecamp”) to spend a few hours getting acquainted with Google Glass and, more importantly, learn how it can help all of us play better golf.

As I stood there hitting balls into the Chelsea Piers driving range, with exact yardages to the front, middle and back of every green in sight and barely noticing I was wearing a computer at all, I was struck by how clear it was that this, or some close variation of it, really was the future of golf.

Both articles finish by pondering where this application could go. Could the pros where them (like Billy Horschell did) to provide a ‘live’ view of a major winning putt? Can it provide information on green contours, telling us where and how to hit it?

It’s clear that this isn’t pie in the sky stuff any more, and Google Glass will be with us in the near future and golf – specifically the rules of golf – will have to deal with it.

The Royal & Ancient have already missed the boat on golf ball and club technology. It’s easy to see them fumbling around with this one for decades to come too.

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