Golf is a game made from feelings. You feel the club in your hands, you made your grip adjusting the glove in your hand, you need to feel the ball through the club, you need to feel how your body moves every muscle to produce a good shot: the knees, hips, chest, and keep the concentration on producing a consistent, repetitive and powerful swing on which you are confident that will result on the stroke previously figured on your mind.
It’s not unusual to watch how a golf player moves his body once the shot is given as if he would conduct the ball in the air or driving the ball through the green to the hole for fulfilling a perfect shot. That’s the kind of connection a golf player has with the ball, and with the game.
And once a hole is finished, you start walking to the next tee, and there is only one person you could ask for advice: your caddie.
You’ve done all your instruction, preparation, studied the courses, distances, bunkers, weather, but when you are facing the next shot the only person allowed to give you advice is your caddie.
Masters of Augusta is well known for its no cell phone policy. In times of advanced technology, AI, GPS watches, range finders, and many other devices and Apps, only limited, if not any of this items or applications, are allowed in a top competition tournament.
This situation gives us back to the origins of this wonderful sport. You learns lessons from the dirt (as Ben Hogan said), you face trial and error, you understand the game by your own experience and by the lessons gave by your trainer, another person, an experimented golf player that continues the tradition of teaching golf because golf is so heavily technical that it is an act of generosity to be taught and introduced to the foundations of this sport.
You not only start hitting balls, but learning the strategy and managing emotions on how to proceed on course, being the only one responsible for the shots.
Golf is so personal that it would not be fair or advisable to rely fully on a machine or AI to have advice for the next shot. AI models surely would be of great help analysing shots, tracking the ball, building statistics and predicting a game. This could be work to be reviewed after the game, but not the info you absolutely need during the game.
It’s my opinion that when you are at the course it doesn’t matter what an AI or App would suggest. Watching top golf players at competition you realize that the personal advice from one person of your complete trust, your caddie, is the one suggestion, comment, or criticism that could help you improve in such a critical situation.
Moreover, going back to basics at golf enriches the experience and deepens the relation between the player and the game. Writing the results by hand on your scorecard is as real as walking through a wet fairway, as listening the birds singing or noticing the breeze of a sunny morning in your face moments before the tee shot.
You just need to let the golf experience to follow on and be part of a game where not only you are conducting the ball to a specific hole, but this ball is also driving you to an intimate, thoughtful and self-conscious experience.
We must celebrate the Creation for having the opportunity to build a game that allows us to enjoy nature on free spaces, playing among trees and woods, breathing clean air, apprehending the pure atmosphere of the field, and realizing that the greatest victory is not a specific score, but the beauty of the greatest gift that allows us to play this game, the live.
Long live to golf, and enjoy playing.
Antonio Morales
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