You don’t usually associate technology and golf. The game just doesn’t seem to lend itself to the benefits of technology. Or, does it? A student attending a golf instruction session once showed me a range finder. You point it at the pin and it tells you how far away you are. Then there’s the launch monitor, which measures the angle at which a ball elevates when it’s struck by a club. And let’s not forget the GPS systems now available to buy, which can give you detailed information on a course. You just download the data.
Recently, a student brought another technology driven training aid to a golf lesson. This aid employers laser technology. The device is designed to help improve putting. She asked me what I thought of the device as a training aid. It wasn’t the first time I had seen or heard about it, but it started me thinking: How many laser-based devices are out there and can they really help cut your golf handicap?
Brief History of Lasers
The name LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Albert Einstein first theorized about the process that makes lasers possible in 1917. In the ’50s, Charles Townsend and Arthur Schawlow invented the maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), a technology similar to the laser. Then in 1960, Theodore Maiman invented the ruby laser, considered to be the first successful optical or light laser. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Lasers capitalize on the way light interacts with electrons. Electrons exist at specific energy levels or states characteristic of that particular atom or molecule. When you bump electrons to a higher energy level by injecting energy, “excess” energy is given off as light. The wavelength or color of the emitted light is precisely related to the amount of energy released. Depending on the particular lasing material being used, specific wavelengths of light are absorbed and specific wavelengths emitted.
LASERS and Golf
Lasers are ideal for a wide variety of uses, including eye surgery and metal cutting. While they have numerous properties, the one most associated with LASERS is accuracy. Applications requiring pinpoint accuracy are well suited to this technology. So it would be only natural that this technology when applied to golf could help with one’s putting, where accuracy is in high demand. That’s exactly what we found. Here are three examples:
* One device simply affixes to the putter shaft and beams a straight line directly in front of and behind the ball. It’s adjustable, which helps golfers see either a perfectly square set-up or a red beam along the target line. This device helps with alignment.
* A second device embeds a laser cartridge in the face of a putter. The device features a single beam that emits a red light from the face’s center for perfect alignment practice. The best part of the device is that the laser cartridge can be swapped out and you have a perfectly functional putter.
* A third device, which also attaches to a putter’s face, uses a three-laser Argon system that illuminates the ball and both sides of it. The device teaches proper alignment and fixes lopsided putting strokes. The device also comes with an Argon dome, which attaches to the putter, for enhanced practice.
We also found two other laser devices designed to help perfect your address and your swing:
* This device beams a laser light at the inside heal of your forward foot. By using the attached measuring tool, golfers can practice their ball and address positions with ease.
* Another device uses high-powered green lasers at opposite ends of a stick-like shaft to get the job done. The lasers are so strong that this device can be used effectively outdoors also comes with a wrist bar. It teaches the three P’s, plane, power, and precision.
These laser devices all seem like great training aids. As with any training aid, golfers must use them to get the most out of them. In other words, golfers must put in the required practice time with the aids, whether its driving, chipping, or putting, if the want to lower their golf handicaps.
Training aids are only helpful if you put practice with them, no matter how high- or low-tech they are. If you’re going to buy a training aid to help your game, make sure you use it between golf lessons and rounds of golf. It’s the only way these devices will help you slash your golf handicap.
