Skycaddie 2.5 or Bushnell Medalist Question

Fourmyle of Ceres · June 30, 2008

23muc,

To find your shot distances on the range you have to shag your own balls. Unless you're a Tour player and get to hit brand-new ProV1's as range balls every day. I can't imagine ever having the time and energy or the access to the driving range necessary to dial in full shots with long clubs. But a few years back I did laser some flags and spend a couple hours hitting various wedges at them then shagging my own balls. If you're hitting it cleanly you can zero in pretty well over a 60-110 yard distance range in just an hour or two and that's the most important shots in golf (other than putting the ball in play off the tee and making 3-footers of course).

My teaching pro buddy has recommended during casual rounds having a notebook and pencil in the bag. Any time you hit a particularly pure iron shot on a Par 3 or from a perfect fairway lie you can laser the distance and find out just how far, for instance, a pure 6-iron really travels. If you accumulate a couple of those shots per round after a few months you can compile a very accurate yardage chart under tournament conditions, especially if you also note the general weather conditions (hot, cold, dry, wet, etc.) along with each yardage.

But I agree with you that the benefit of lasering distances you hit range balls is of limited use. Maybe if you had no idea at all how far you hit your clubs it would be a start. But you've got to use game balls to get the real numbers.

GDWindowpane · June 30, 2008

Well I have a few rounds under my belt with the sky caddie 2.5 and still love it. Played a new course (well new to me) last week and it was awesome. Played in a adult/youth tourny yesterday at my club and the father/son we played with had a laser. We compared distances and they were real close. The problem I had was with my shaking... Not that it was real difficult to get a distance but just looking through the view finder and seeing it shake was a little distracting. I guess that would go away after you got used to it.

Still about the only thing that I think they could add, and it shouldn't be that difficult, is to enter the various pin locations for clubs that use them. I know at my club there are 6 possible pin locations. I would think that you could add that information to the mapped courses. After selecting the course you want to play the SC would ask you what the pin locations are for that day. Viola!, even more accurate information as the cross hairs would be in the "region" for that pin location.

Other than that, I'm lovin' it... And as far as the fee is considered, for the same amount of a decent bar tab you get a years worth of mappings, world wide.

Playing another new course on Wednesday, Mattaponi Springs, looking forward to another great round with the Sky Caddie.