While clubs have evolved over golf’s history from carved wood to nanotech, the sport has seen few changes to it’s main mode of transportation: the golf cart. Sure the tiny buggy gets golfers and their bags across the green faster than traveling by foot, but it’s got its limitations. So what if sand traps and water hazards didn’t get in the way when cruising to the next hole?
Pro golfer Bubba Watson teamed up with sponsor Oakley and Hovercraft manufacturer Neoteric to create a golf-cart-like hover prototype called the BW1. The 2012 Masters Champ touts the hovercraft’s ability to zip past sand traps, through water hazards, and in and out of the woods.
A couple minutes of Watson floating around a golf course amongst now archaic-looking carts is nothing short of comical. Chris Fitzgerald, president of Neoteric Hovercraft Inc. (and participant in the world’s first hovercraft race) drives, while Watson rides shotgun. Beyond the craft’s efficiency, perhaps the most important advantage of the outer-space-like means of transportation is its ability to traverse the course with hardly a trace. While it’s impossible not to spot the giant hubbub of a vehicle, the hovercraft hardly damages the manicured greens unlike old school golf carts.But is a golf hovercraft really a viable transition?
Though this technology is “nifty” it’s likely hovercrafts won’t dot the greens any time soon. No doubt, they require a skilled handler to maneuver, not to mention they’d carry a hefty price tag.
What do you think of the golf hovercart? Let us know in the comment section below or tweet the author @nicmdermott.
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