Yang On AR, Other Ways Tech Start-Ups May Change Golf

While we hope the folks in Silicon Valley emphasize world-changing advancements over helping golfers, it's fun to read some of the augmented reality ideas and other concepts that ex-Yahoo CEO and start-up investor Jerry Yang sees potentially impacting the game.

From Mike Stachura's report at the USGA Innovation Symposium in Vancouver:

“If you look at the categories of things that are coming across our investment activities and how people are understanding their bodies, every element of that is applicable to golf,” he said. “Measuring brain waves, measuring all the body metrics and understanding those things, I think is all very interesting.”

Yang imagines a near future where laser-rangefinder technology is incorporated in your sunglasses, where a golf simulator in your garage “will let you play St. Andrews in a way that really feels like St. Andrews.”

But Yang thinks that sort of development is only a start. He talked about a coming “smart ball” technology that would track every shot and its launch conditions, direction and distance. He also suggested that the kind of “haptic suits” designed to help the disabled walk could “be the same suit that can make you become a super person where you can literally swing like Dustin Johnson if you wanted to.”

Or were able to. Nonetheless, keeping dreaming big. If nothing else it's fun to read about. After all, it's not our money!