One of the many reasons I hug my son’s love for golf is that it is a screen -free area for both. He just turned 13, and our time on the course feels the only break when he is neither glued to my iPad nor begging for his phone. I also enjoy those hours without technology for myself.
That is why I am discouraged by a last trend in Junior Golf: Tours that new players are looking for 12 to keep the result live on their smartphones.
Seriously?
We have a teens of teens’ mental health crisis in this country, which some INVESTIGATION Attributes, convincing, in raising intelligent phones and social media. In the last count, 31 states have prohibited Or limited the use of student cell phones in schools, and a national movement called Wait to the 8th lawyer so that children do not receive smartphones until at least at the end of 8th grade.
But golf is, inexplicably, moving in the opposite direction. Many new competitors are now expected to have their readiness phones during rounds of tournament to enter the results of the holes.
We have all experienced the irresistible distractions of intelligent phones – and how annoying it is when that guy or gal responds to a text in our quarters and then absorbed in their news and Instagram reports and confirm their next dental meeting. (Many of us have been that boy or gal.)
If adults cannot resist the gravitational attraction of those devices in our pockets, how can we expect children to do so?
Tournament directors say intelligent phones enable live note, which players and families want. A LIVE leading chart “makes him feel a little more like a professional event, and the events they watch on TV,” said Greg Hubbard, vice president of the Golf Golf, the largest organization of the new Golf.
The direct result also has benefits for tournaments. Spencer Sorensen, the director of the Championship and the events of the Golf Association in Oregon, said the direct note allows him to monitor the pace of the game and Nude slow Before they go too far. He recently overseen a tour where two players were tied up in the penultimate group; He was able to see that no one in the latter group was in quarrel, so could start play off immediately. The results of clumsy, tired, lost or illegal results also become a thing of the past.
But for players, using mobile is a mixed bag. Equal MasonThe 18-year-old who won the American amateur earlier this year is inhaled. “It happened to me,” he told me. “I’m looking at my phone, and then I’m looking at social media. I am distracted and then my mind is not where it is supposed to be.”
Fourteen -year -old Alexa Phung, twice Drive, chip & putt Champion, agrees that the use of mobile can be “quite distraction”. She tells friends and family not to write it while going on a tour, but has noticed her partners playing messages during the rounds. How do you know what they are not getting into results? “Their fingers,” she says, shaking the thumb on the universal sign for the text. “Very clearly clear.”
According to Sorensen, some players want to know where they are on the board, saying that this motivates them and informs their decision -making. “They may say, ‘okay, I’m two shots now, maybe I’ll try to make a bird here,’ or whatever it is.”
I am distracted and then my mind is not where it is supposed to be.
Mason
But Sebastian Martinez, who runs the Golf Scout, a golf school in Beaveron, hour, says watching the leaders’ table is “the exact opposite of a performance mentality”. He said pursuing birds playing more aggressively than you may otherwise not be able to result in pairs. Then the player you were chasing could make a large number, so you just had to do before – or, worse, find out that his or her result was incorrectly entered. Martinez asks his players not to change their decision -making based on what others are doing.
Katie Burgoyne, PGA PRO Teaching at Black Canyon Golf Club in Montrose, Colo. And the mother of 10-year-old twin players agrees. “Golf is not a game you can make yourself play better to beat someone,” she said. She advises her youth to avoid marking applications. “I want your head down, thinking about your future goal – not thinking where you are scoring and who are you beat,” she said. “Because no matter what, you should try to do your best every time, not do your best to defeat John.”
Burgoyne also wonder about the potential of fraud: are you making any policy if the marking applications are in tour mode with the slope function with disabilities? Alexa Phung said that her father changed numbers with another father at the beginning of one of her rounds. Later that day he received an accidental text from his new contact that was intended for the girl. In the message, the father called a location of the hole. Legal? Maybe suspicious? undoubtedly
When my son and I arrived at the US Children’s World Championship in PinhurstIn August, we learned that competitors in the 12-year flight were expected to manage their direct result. American children encourage parents’ cades, who usually take responsibility for the outcome, so, in this case, the children were out of the way. But it was still frustrating for me to see my son’s group sink and think about what to say to him while walking in the next hole, I was confused with my phone to open the app and enter the results.
American children’s hubbard told me that his organization began marking the phone for all tournaments in 2020 during the pandemia. But in 2021 they began to receive reactions from parents that phones were “creating a distraction” and were hurting from a major part of the mission of American children: encouraging family interaction. “When we felt like we were leaving our mission and the experience of these families, we reassessed,” Hubbard said.
US children dropped a live note for all ages, except for 12-20 its most elite events (out of 2,500 tours it wits each year). Hubbard said we children kept politics for that age group because his organization wants to “prepare them for the next level”, which means teenage events in which they will certainly be expected to enter their phones.
There are alternatives to phone marking. Some tours appoint a spectator or volunteer to post the results of a group. Other events asking Rules officials to enter the results. Others have still provided custom marking equipment, though they expect players to sail with unknown tools also have its weaknesses. However, in all those cases, paper results cards are also kept as a backup.
Golf is proud of respecting tradition and resisting the temptations of modernity. I still have a folder of old scores cards from the rounds I played decades ago, as is my 83-year-old father.
But this is not just a prayer for nostalgia. Searching for children have intelligent phones in the first place goes against the spirit of access that many new golf organizations have worked so hard to promote. Also, asking children to cheat with phones during a round, contrary to what golf is so great in incentive: concentration and presence.
I started this conversation in a new group on Facebook with 30,000 members. With the passion that only social media can evoke, some commentators suggested that if a new golf player has been distracted by a phone, the phone is not the problem. I appreciate the feeling: if I can’t stop eating oreos, that’s for me and my will, not oreos. Still, I am sure while the hell try not to keep oreos around in his pocket throughout the day.
The rest of the world is realizing the shortcomings and distractions of intelligent phones; The golf world has to keep the pace. In a sport where Green Blazers and Claret Jugs still keep influence, surely, the paper outcome card can remain supreme – especially for our younger competitors.
Christine Bader is a Oregon -based writer.
;)
