With the Club’s UC Open coming up on Monday, September 25, we thought it would it would be neat to introduce you to the newest golf gadget that has all the Pro Shops talking!
If you’re in the market for the newest in on-course technology, Johnny Miller has something you’ll want to consider!
If you’ve listened to Johnny Miller often enough on NBC golf, you’ve probably heard him say that when he was playing his best, he used to ask his caddie to give him yardages in half yards.
If you are old enough to remember watching televised golf in Miller’s prime, which was the 1970s, you’ll know he was probably not kidding. Anyone who saw those desert victories in person or on TV will recall that Miller was able to hit it to within three feet of the pin on many occasions. He was that accurate, at least for a while.
We should not be surprised that he’s involved with a golf equipment company that has put GPS on the back of a golf glove: Zero Friction DistancePro.
Miller’s not just a spokesperson for Zero Friction, he’s part owner of the company. But he has the kind of track record that makes him an expert. If you look at his victories, you’ll see that he was a Tiger Woods type player in his era. In 1974, he won eight tournaments. In 1975, he won four times. In 1976, he won three, including the Open Championship.
Because so many of Miller’s victories were in the desert, he got a nickname: The Desert Fox, previously attributed to the WWII German general Erwin Rommel.
Miller won back-to-back-to-back at the Dean Martin Tucson Open (and then NBC Tucson Open) from 1974-1976. He won the Phoenix Open back-to-back in 1974 and 1975. And he won the Bob Hope Desert Classic back-to-back in 1975 and 1976. His strategy was simple. Hit it close to the flagstick.
Miller’s accuracy was uncanny, and so if he said he needed distances to within a half yard, who can disagree. Perhaps in the spirit of needing to know better distances, Miller and Zero Friction came up with the Zero Friction DistancePro GPS Glove. Yes. That’s right. GPS has migrated from your phone or watch to the back of your hand.
The DistancePro GPS device is a matchbox sized – for those who remember matchboxes – or a third of a credit card-sized GPS unit that attaches to the back of the golf glove with Velcro and a special metal dowel to hold it in place. The DistancePro GPS unit gives distances to the front, center and back of the green on more than 35,000 golf courses. To activate it, you download the Zero Friction DistancePro app and sync the phone to the GPS unit. When you get to the course, you’re ready to go.
You have to be within a 100-foot range of your phone for the distances to show on the GPS. So put the phone in the back pocket or park the cart close. The battery lasts for 400 hours, and it’s very easy to change as Joe Jung, the National Sales Director for Zero Friction demonstrated at the ING Conference at the World Golf Village earlier this season.
When you wear out the glove, you take the DistancePro GSP unit off that glove and put it on a new one. You’re ready to go again.
What will they think of next!?