The chitchat among golfers on the first tee is set to take on a whole new dimension from January 1st.
As well as jealously eyeing up the latest line of Callaways, TaylorMade, Nike and Titleist drivers in the golf bags of fellow-competitors, attention will now also be drawn to the latest Samsung, iPhone or Nokia in hand.
This follows the decision of the sport’s governing bodies to allow the use of smart phones by players on course to access weather forecasts.
For golfing old fogeys – who may have thought mastering the simple art of texting constituted a triumph as great as winning the Claret Jug itself – the decision of the Royal & Ancient and the United States Golf Association to gloriously embrace the latest mobile technology to legitimise the use of smart phones represents a giant leap into the modern era and presents a whole new challenge for golf's greying generation.
From the new year, under a biennial review of its rules, players will be allowed to determine incoming weather patterns whilst playing their rounds. Up to this, a player who whipped out a snazzy smart phone to get an up-to-date weather report was subject to disqualification.
Will the sight of a player bending down to pull out a tuft of grass and throwing it skywards to find out the direction of the wind be a thing of the past? Will discussions at the 19th hole now focus on the best weather app to download rather than on the newest putter? Will clubs have lessons in meteorology as well as in how to fade or draw the ball?
It’s all a far cry from the sport’s primitive origins when players used golf balls made of pieces of leather filled with goose feathers and the telephone was a figment of a scientist’s imagination.
The telephone hadn’t even been invented when Willie Park snr won the inaugural British Open championship in 1860.
It would be some 16 years later, in 1876, by the time another Scot, Alexander Graham Bell, spoke the first words on a contraption that would change the world: "Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you." And it would be well over a century later – in 1993 – before IBM invented the first smart phone.
A word of warning for players who embrace the smart phone technology: Mum’s the word! Offering advice remains a no, no.
