Google Glass & Golf - The Many Awesome/Annoying Possibilities

A woman wearing Glass.            Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.

Golf has a rich and singular history, one that's often alluded to in contemporary
conversations about the sport.

That said, the sport has been quite receptive to technological advances.... like those that've taken the golf ball from the featherie to the guttie to the multi-layered urethane marvels we play with today.

In a continual quest for additional distance, golfers were quick to retire their hickory shafts and persimmon heads when steel shafts and metal woods made the scene.  Over the past decade, the pace of change in golf equipment, accessories and gadgets accelerated rapidly, as "innovation" became both a business buzzword and the holy grail for competitive advantage.

With that in mind, I'm guessing golfers... for the most part... will be quick to explore the myriad possibilities in Google Glass, one of the most anticipated and promisingly innovative-seeming  products in the news these days.  For those who don't know, we're talking about a rather diminutive device that's basically just a very, very, very smart smartphone... that you wear on your brow like a sleek pair of spectacles/shades.  The video below gives you a very basic idea of how it might work.






So yes:  Wrap your mind around that and imagine what you might be able to do with it on a golf course.  The fact is, quite a number of forward-thinking golfers have already weighed in on such matters via Google+ and Twitter.

Google's @ProjectGlass sent out a call for "Glass Explorers" using the hashtag #ifihadglass.  Contestants were asked how they'd use glass and why they felt they should be among the first group of testers.  Apparently the company got an avalanche of suggestions among which were many that involved golf.  Some were great.  Others provided a preview of the annoyingness that will undoubtedly ensue once Glass makes its way to the grass.