Autumn Q4 | Page 26

OVER FIVE HUNDRED COURSES If you haven’t forayed into the wonderful world of social media or twitter yet @skycaddiesteve is reason enough to do so. Steve is the UK & European Course Enablement Manager for SkyGolf , “I will keep you posted on course changes & updates for SkyCaddie Players”. His 140 characters of witty comment are entertaining, amusing, bold and somewhat refreshing. Steve is so confident in what he does he literally puts his mouth where his money is. Steve regularly tweets to over eight thousand followers about his activity all over Europe. Steve is your eyes on the course meticulously updating any changes from the smallest detail to major revamps “Imagine paying out for an all singing dancing GPS & 4” HD, with wrong info & detail, it’s what you will get UNLESS you buy a @SkyCaddie”. We decided we would go and see for ourselves so on his latest tour of Scotland we caught up with Steve at Kirkhill in the west and Golfer Magazine | Page 26 subsequently The Royal Musselburgh in the east. Steve says “you may know every bunker, water hazard, run out & green on your course, thankfully SkyCaddie has all this detail for courses you don’t know because I go out and physically update them”. Sure enough armed with his measuring equipment and a pair of decent shoes we stood (from our buggy) and watched him physically pace out those changes. We saw how the new ditch on the 13th at Kirkhill now appeared on the mapping software which Steve assures us will be live and available to then download on all Skycaddie devices within a week or so. We also bumped into other distance measuring device users asking Steve if he was going to update their device to which he replied unfortunately he wasn’t. Some Skycaddie users then gleefully trotted past. GMag asked the Skycadddie users how they felt about the £30 a year subscription fee, the response “it’s well worth the money as we enjoy visiting other courses here and abroad. Skycaddie makes my time on the course a better playing experience as we get the most out of the time on course.” Well you can’t say any better than that really. See if you can catch Steve on his travels he has some keen offers for existing Skycaddie users. Last time we heard he was giving away balls to those he met. We are convinced. 3 GMag team members have subsequently purchased independently their own Skycaddie GPS devices. So on behalf of Steve – “Golf Clubs, Course Managers, Pros, if your Club is planning changes over this coming winter please let @SkyCaddie know early #planningvisits” Ed NB this is not a paid feature. This is our opinion and we are sticking to it. Golfer Magazine | Page 27