Emergencies aside, says Steve Carroll, they’re nothing but a distraction. They don’t do your game any good
There’s this thing now on social media – anytime someone makes any kind of announcement, there’s a trawl through X and the inevitable ‘there’s always a tweet’ will follow.
This will expose an apparent U-turn. ‘Oh, look they’re saying this but look at what they said before’. So I’m going to head this off at the pass right now. I admit it. I’m a hypocrite.
I am, to put it mildly, an enthusiastic user of technology and have a weirdly symbiotic relationship with my phone. I had one of the first video phones ever released. It was the size of a brick and people laughed at me. I didn’t care. I could watch Premier League goals on a tiny screen.
I’ve had golf apps on any number of models over the years – from simple score trackers to virtual caddies. I’ve relied on them for yardages, for rules, for anything of which you might think.
I’ve argued that being constantly connected in modern life is just part of the deal and golf clubs need to get with the programme, or else risk alienating players – particularly those who are younger.
But I’ve come to realise I was wrong. I’ve changed my mind on mobile phones – they shouldn’t be anywhere near the golf course.
To my shame, I recently played a competition where a rather crucial football match was playing on an iPhone (silent mode on – I’m not a monster!) in the cupholder of my trolley.
Even this etiquette faux pas, though, isn’t completely behind my sudden conversion and born-again zealotry when it comes to phones. I’ve just come to realise having an entertainment centre in the palm of my hand is really, really bad for my golf game.
I think mobile phones on the golf course are a massive distraction. I find myself unconsciously reaching for mine the moment I’ve hit a questionable golf shot. If the round is unravelling, I can spend the entire walk between shots scrolling through whatever is trending on one of the many apps fighting for my attention.
Previous attempts to deal with this saw me remove it from my back pocket and zip it in my bag, but even that was not enough. It probably needs to be dumped in my car – firmly under lock and key.
I’ll tell myself when I hit a shot, after spending the preceding moments with my face buried in a phone, that I’m in the moment.
I’ve been anything but. And what have I missed? The company of playing partners. The beauty and tranquility of nature. The time away from the rat race.
That’s without even considering the subconscious. The subtle gradients of the course I instinctively feel as I walk it. The planning, preparing, and seeing what’s in front of me before I get to my ball. I’m missing out on so much. I’m missing out on a lot of what I think makes the game great.
If you go to some music gigs now, you’re handed a pouch as you go through the door. You put your phone in it and it locks. You can’t open it again until you’ve left a designated space. I think similar devices are being used in schools to stop kids frittering their time away in lessons.
On some apps, you can set a specific ringtone to alert you if there’s a genuine emergency – allowing you to leave all those other unnecessary notifications well alone.
So I’ve ditched my apps and gone back to a rangefinder. I’ve even started walking out some specific yardages the way I would have done before beeps and buzzers began to control my life.
I haven’t quite worked out how I’ll feel when I’m on a lovely course. I turn myself into David Bailey when I spy a gorgeous dune range, but I’ll probably be able to live with it. It’s not like I’m suddenly reliving all those moments in any spare seconds very often anyway.
And now I’m trying to go cold turkey I can clearly see how destructive the influence a phone can be on my game.
I can also see what it does to others – from the slight scurry to take a call to the fretting because the live leaderboard says you’re a couple behind.
If you’re able to summon a net birdie on command like Rory McIlroy hunting a major championship then good for you, but I’d say your handicap is probably suspect! In reality, I think it only adds to the disturbance.
Will this make me a better golfer? The proof will be in the scores. But it will probably make me better company, and more engaged with the sport. There’s nothing that can’t wait a few hours.
