Golf GPS

Between the sprinkler heads, the cart path markings, my well trained eye, do I really really need a GPS? I am asking the guys that have them.. Does it make a big difference in your game? Usually I can stand by my ball and say, okay, I need my nine iron, or I need my 2i.

What is the HUGE advantage of the GPS?

I enjoy knowing how much room on the green I have on approach shots. I have the basic sonocaddie that tells you front,middle and back from where you are on the course. No bells and whistle or color screens, just the meat of what I need.
The course markers tell you how far your out from the middle usually, but I'm not that accurate and knowing how much area is up their is nice for me.

You have already thought of getting one, so there is no stopping it now.lol

Here is a list of how much use I use mine

#1 scorecard
#2 distances
#3 lay up spots
#4 Records avg for each club
#5 keeps detailed stats

I am not allowed to use them but they are very handy and I would recommend any golfer to get one.

I have one, and like it a lot. For me, it's more of a convenience thing. Don't have to check around for the course markings and make a guess how far out I am. It also has helped me learn how far I hit the various clubs, so a lot of the guessing is now gone.

I have the Bushnell Neo, which is a great value, but doesn't have a lot of the features that the other models have.

I use the Skycaddie G3 and wouldn't play without it! The advantage over a sprinkler head or a striped pole is the GPS gives the front, middle and back yardages...of each INDIVIDUAL green on the course. If your wanting to play a round and hit as many greens in reg that you can, knowing how deep or shallow a green is reakky comes into play...especially when you are "in-between" club selection.

...not to mention that we don't always end up near a marker, right?

I too were like you, thought I had a very good understanding of yardages to where I wouldn't really need a GPS. I pretty much ruled buying one out however
I had some travel points to redeem and got the Izzo Swami unit for free. It's a bare bones unit (only provides distance to front, center and back of the greens) but I love it. It comes with the belt clip which I actually clip onto the metal strip in the front of most golf carts. When I drive up to the ball I know exactly which club I need to pull out of the bag. Gone are the days of walking up to my ball with 3 clubs in my hand and then taking 5 minutes to decide which one to hit. Plus many of the courses I play....lets just say...are not the most accurately marked if marked at all. So sometimes it became a guessing game.

Probably the biggest improvement in my game has come from knowing yardages under 115 yards in.
I always played with one wedge and had to play a lot of 3/4 and 1/2 swings. This summer I bought 3 vokey wedges and I know I hit them 115, 85, 60 yards with full swings. I was always decent with predicting longer yardages to pins but under 100 yards I struggled with for some reason. Now with having 3 wedges in my bag it really helps to know the exact yardage that allows me to take a full 54 or 60 deg wedge vs having to take some off using the 48 deg.

Plus For my handicap level I dont feel I'd take advantage of all the featurs on the fancier units but knowing my distance to the green is of great help.
The Swami sells for $79 and is $9.99 to activate and load courses. It holds 10 courses at a time and you use their website to manage it. Their course library is probably the most complete I have researched (I play alot of courses off the beaten path, lol). Search for it on youtube. Some guys did a nice on course video/review of the unit.

My brother kinda bashed me for getting one...but like I told him, granted if I know I need to hit the ball 155 yds to the green I still have to hit a good shot. The GPS won't play for you. But if I can eliminate one thing that could potentially cause me to hit a bad shot (like predicting the wrong distance) a stroke here or there each round starts to add up. Oh and now when I play with my brother, he jumps out of the cart and first thing he says is "what yardage does it say"
lol

In conclusion, even though I got mine free, after using it I would pay the $79 in a heartbeat.

Good point and I might add....we played a course last Sunday and it was dry out to where the green wasn't holding many shots. I started playing distances to the front of the green on my approaches and tried to let it bounce on. Versus going for the middle of the green and having it skip off the back.

If I had to guess before I got a GPS how deep greens were I would have guessed 10-15 yards on average. Crazy that most greens are probably 30 yards deep with some even being 40 yds +.

I love mine.
It's mostly changed my play from 110 or so in.I have found myself better able to pick the right club/swing when in close which has helped my scoring immensely.

Prior to that benefit I was using it to track how far I was hitting each club to accurately dial them in. I already knew for the most part how far each club went, but it narrowed it down a little more.

And for some fun, it's great to track how far you really hit your drive and then show it you your buddy when you happen to crush a great drive ( hit one 290 yesterday, it was probably a 270 yeard drive but the hill at the last 20 or so yards helped it out :) )

My SG5 has become more than a yardage marker - it has a host of stat tools, scorecard capability, website data storage, etc.

Plus, some courses I've been to just don't have the necessary yardages to help even a hacker like me.

i just played a course that had one built into the golf cart. They are extremely usefull and I want one now

You can easily survive without one, after all, golfers have for decades, right?

The biggest advantages that come to mind for me is for unmarked items: knowing how far is required to carry the bunker/water, reach the front of the green, etc. Another advantage comes when you are far off the fairway: If you are 30 yards left or right of the fairway, but even with the 150 yard marker, you could actually be 180 yards from the hole. It can make a big difference. Brandon

I been thinking about getting one myself but I have one question to ask the guys that have one already. How does it track the pin placement when they move the cup day to day?

Mine has a green view where you can move the flag around. So, if you either know where the flag is b4 hand or when you see it you can mve it to that spot. What I do is it shows distances from the front, middles, and back and then I just aim for either the middle or estimate.

Same here. I use

GolfCard on my Droid. It allows you to set a point on the green and track the distance to that point. Brandon

SkyDroid seems like a great app to have. It's cheap, so worth the $1.99 to try it out. You can map your own course (if it hasn't been mapped yet) on their website, and it stays in the database that way. I just wish someone mapped Middleton Golf Course in MA, cause I'm playing there tomorrow morning and don't know where each hole is in satellite view.