Page 13 - GBC winter 2015

“‘Club Car’s i3 Connected Car has been built with this idea in mind. It can play video and audio files on the 10.2 inch HD screen two speakers are already built in to the screen itself with three audio levels which can be set by the course or player,’ says Dave Hodgson, Connected Solutions Manager at Club Car.”
“Neat and tidy does not hinge on arbitrary layering practices,” says Canadian golf fashion analyst Mike McAllister of Chapeau Noir Golf. “When it comes to dress codes certainly we see the more casual, laid back and relaxed approach with the un-tucked shirts and street–style footwear but what’s interesting is how millennials embrace golf tradition as well by fusing off course brands with country club standards.
Millennials want to play golf, but they want to feel welcome and not ignored. Golf is beginning to understand there is a market out there that needs to be embraced. An evolution of cellular policies and better social communication is also starting to go a long way.”
So too is music. Listening to Coldplay, Taylor Swift or to a live PGA Tour broadcast on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio (as this writer has) while playing a round of golf might, not long ago, been considered grounds for a warning or possible club discipline. Neither was it very practical. Bluetooth has altered that traditional paradigm.
In a current and coming generation of new age multi-taskers, new- wave technology allows a backdrop of sound intervention at the touch of a phone. Golf’s expansive playing reality and 4-5 hour time window is making this an increasingly considered initiative by younger consumers. To what level? A recent Golf Digest Magazine reader survey indicates 37 percent of golfers 18 to 34 play music on the golf course. Twenty percent listen on headphones while playing. Clubs and courses are buying in to this philosophical shift, some reluctantly. New policies are being drafted or updated.
“We definitely have members who do not agree with it,” says Adam Chamberlain, head golf professional at Bathurst, New Brunswick’s Gowan Brae Golf Club, “but as long as the music doesn’t disrupt other groups on the golf course we don’t have any issue with it.”
Power cart OEM’s like Club Car, E-Z-GO, and Yamaha are responding too. In its most recent models each brand offers a variety of options for digital media systems including audio speakers and MP3 players with sound quality second to none. This writer was in a cart earlier this year equipped with a six-way Bose speaker system.
“Club Car’s i3 Connected Car has been built with this idea in mind. It can play video and audio files on the 10.2 inch HD screen – two speakers are already built in to the screen itself with three audio levels which can be set by the course or player,” says Dave Hodgson, Connected Solutions Manager at Club Car. “Charity events can trigger a customized video of their past events with corresponding audio / music to help tell their story to their golfers. Operators are having fun with this new technology playing clips from Caddyshack to inspire those great memories from our past and to help lighten up the last bogey.”
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