I was at the coffee shop this morning standing behind a person who had many many questions for the patient man behind the counter. The man was tasked with doing a refund, finding an original receipt, making sure the soy didn’t mix with regular milk, dishing out the Wi-Fi password in amongst other requests from the customer. All the while, the line behind said person grew rapidly. The kind man behind the counter began to get flustered trying to program everything into the fancy bit of kit they call a till. The requests kept coming, the fluster became greater. Endless programming of instructions into a machine for what?
I asked myself in this moment, “why does this person think it’s ok to take 5 minutes to order a coffee that will take less time to drink?” Then thought, “perhaps the technology and compliance to social norms and unreasonable custom might be the actual problem.”
Actually, upon some more thought, technology and compliance may be the cause of the unreasonable custom. I see it everyday. A population with their noses buried in their phones blissfully disregarding the world around them while trying to live up (comply) to some standard that is a bit unrealistic.
Golf is like this. I have said before that golf is a microcosm of life and when it comes to complying and technology it is no different to the outside world.
In golf we have launch monitors, golf watches, range finders, wrist sensors, ground sensors, sensors that go in the grips and endless other stuff that gets brought out every year. With no disrespect to the companies that bring these tools out – they are fantastic tools and in the right hands can be very useful indeed. However, I think it has become a crutch. It has become the fancy till at the coffee shop. No wonder golfer’s brains are fried. Data upon data upon data – for what? To swing a club? To hit a ball at a target?
Could the golfing world be overcomplicating things? Probably. Technology is there to help, but seems at times that it actually slows the process down. Like the coffee this morning, all that tech for something that could have been written on a bit of paper. Five minutes of time for the coffee shop. Paying the nice fellow behind the counter say $30/hour, that’s $2.50 in wages plus materials plus Wi-Fi plus rent plus the expensive bit of kit for a till for a $5 coffee. I think he actually lost money on the sale. Are we losing metaphoric money on something can be done with a simpler and more efficient, analog tool? Food for thought.
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