Improve Your Golf Game With a Golf Range Finder.

Modern technology is coming to the aid of golfers once again. Only this time, it's not with a new, improved Big Bertha. This time around, it's through one of the latest and greatest technological crazes for the outdoorsman and athlete: the hand-held GPS.

By using a hand-held GPS range finder, a golfer can take off several tough strokes from her score by getting a better, more accurate read on distances to the green and the pin, and the precise location of hazards.

A golfer can even use the GPS range finder to get better club suggestions, as the more precise calculations of yardage allow for more precise estimations of what club is the right one for the situation at hand.

Using the precision of aerial satellite data, a GPS can be more accurate for a golfer's estimations and calculations than a course book or laser range finders.

While many golfers have benefited from the use of laser range finders and while there is no doubt about their effectiveness in getting better measurements of distances, especially in the short game (100 yards or less), more and more golfers are now discovering that GPS technology takes their game to another level.

While there are purists who consider the intervention of technology such as range finders or GPS to be some kind of sacrilege and an interference with what they see as an integral challenge of the game of golf--namely, guesswork--there are many others who are more interested in perfecting their physical skills, and for these the less guesswork the less frustration. Why gain a stroke because of a water hazard or experience the maddening irritation of being in a sand trap if a better calculation can avoid these things? These would argue that one's mental and physical dexterity are what count in the game of golf, and not one's ability to play guessing games with the golf course designers.

A golf programmed GPS can also, they say, keep more new people interested in the sport by reducing their discouragement.

Some more good news for these technophilic golfers is that the vast majority of U.S. golf courses have already been mapped out by GPS satellites, so the chances are small that a golfer with a GPS would wind up on a course where her GPS golfing program did not work.

Some golf GPS programs are so advanced that they can track multiple targets for a single pin all at once, or even display the precise shape of the green as seen from your current angle of approach.

Golf is largely a game of knowledge. Just as one needs knowledge of club weights and correct hitting form, so one needs knowledge of course geography and distances. The more the better.