Accessories
Lessons learnt from 2006
It’s that time of the year again, and we’re looking forward to another Open Championship taking place at Royal Portrush after Shane Lowry’s dramatic finish in 2019.
We’ve been reminiscing about how harsh and varied the weather conditions can be at The Open. 2023 was a particularly drizzly time at Royal Liverpool, but who remembers how the course fared when Tiger won The Open there back in 2006?
As those of you who watched The Open that year will remember, the weather was exceptionally hot over that particular July weekend, and the course certainly suffered as a result.
Rather than being lush and green, the fairways were bare and firm, fundamentally changing the nature of the game for players battling for the Claret Jug.
This can make the course a lot more difficult to judge, so today we want to illustrate to you how beneficial Garmin devices are when it comes to preparing for your next shot in challenging conditions.
How hot weather changes the game
Golf is an eternally changing game as the seasons and weather are always varying, and while wet muddy winter golf is a challenge, so too is golf in very hot conditions. The grass deteriorates in the heat, losing its colour and firmness. This firmness dulls the turf’s natural sponginess, causing your ball to run further as the grass is providing less resistance in stopping it.
When Tiger won The Open in 2006, he did so having used his driver just once the entire tournament. Rather than taking the big stick off the tee, Tiger would strike controlled stingers with long irons, the longer distance he now gained from his shorter, more reliable clubs factoring into his course strategy in the heat.
So, if you’re playing golf over the next few months in the summer heat, you may want to take the firmness of the ground into consideration. We may be lacking in having personal caddies giving us advice at every stage of the hole, but here in the pro shop we have the next best thing…
Garmin's Distance Measuring Devices
As we’ve mentioned, summer golf courses play very differently to when they’re in the grip of wintery conditions. In the winter, the ground is much softer, and you can go for the flag with the confidence that the ball will sit down well. However, during the summer months you’ve got to anticipate that the firm ground will cause the ball to run on.
This is where knowing distances to hazards as well as the distance to the front of the green allow you to make more calculated decisions when you’re considering which club to pull out of the bag, and that’s where a handy Garmin device comes in.
We stock plenty of phenomenal Garmin products in the pro shop, and when it comes to useful devices, you can’t go wrong with their range of GPS watches.
With a bright 1.2-inch AMOLED colour screen, the Approach S44 watch looks fantastic and sits comfortably on your wrist. This affordable-yet-powerful entry in the range of Garmin GPS watches comes packed with features including Touch Targeting that allows you to reposition the flag on any virtual green to give you a more reliable estimate of how far away the hole is.
The Approach S50 builds on the S44 is subtle ways and boasts an impressive 10 days of battery life with 15 days in GPS mode, ensuring you experience a comfortable weekend of golf on a single charge. With over 43,000 preloaded courses, you’ll have no difficulty hopping onto a new course and heading straight to the first tee.
A premium smartwatch offering from Garmin, the S70 features a larger 1.4-inch AMOLED colour screen that displays stunning course maps in vivid detail. This watch even has a virtual caddie feature that give you recommendations of which club to use and even keep track of your shot dispersion data to help you improve your accuracy. This GPS watch comes full of bonus features including fitness activities and sleep monitoring capabilities.
Perfect for the summer climate, the G20 Solar is as you can guess, a fully solar powered device. The solar pad is located on the front beneath a large easy-to-read screen that displays large numbers in an obvious font. As long as the sun is out, the device will be working, and it’ll even give you up to 30-rounds-worth of use on overcast days.
We can source you any of these fantastic products through the pro shop. If you’d like to learn more about them or be given a demonstration of how they work, we’d be happy to help you when you visit us.
