I know it’s hard for you to believe that I’m not rich and famous, however the UPS man recently reminded me of that fact. It all started when the nice folks at uPro, who make one of the most successful golf GPS devices in the country, asked me to play a round with the uPro and then tell everyone what I thought. So, they packed it up and called the UPS man and said, “take this nifty device to Sam Johnson in Dallas.”
Failing to understand the magnitude of my celebrity status, the manager of the building that I have officed in for close to five years refused the delivery and sent the UPS guy packing back to California. It took another ten days and my picture I.D. taped to the manager’s door, but I finally received the uPro package.
Ordinarily, ten days here or there wouldn’t make any difference, but it’s Christmas, and Santa is making his list and checking it twice, and I hope he has time to add the uPro to your Christmas list because that’s how nifty I think it is… really.
Let me preface everything that follows with a few facts; I have never used a range finder before, however I have asked my playing partner who owns one of those one-eyed binoculars for yardage a few thousand times. I have watched him shooting the flag stick over and over looking for a flat surface that would give an accurate reading. More than once I’ve heard him joke, “It’s either 129-yards or 375-yards.”
But the uPro is different. Because it is satellite driven GPS technology you don’t have to shoot anything. Heck, you don’t even have to point it at anything, just look at the screen, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I am not much of a technology guy, which luckily is not a requirement for using uPro. With the six or seven courses that I frequent already loaded in the uPro, all I had to do was turn the uPro on, select a course, wait about 10 seconds for it to load, then watch in amazement as the uPro offered up a fly-over of the first hole. Then in easy to read letters about a half an inch tall, it displayed the hole-number, par and yardage to the front, center and back of the green. It also pointed out the hazards and the yardage to the front and clearance yardage of each.
It was totally cool. Here was a device about the size of a small cell phone telling me everything I needed to know and all I had done was turn it on and choose a course.
After my initial tee shot, I walked to my ball and pulled the uPro out of my pocket once again. I didn’t point it at the green, or push any button, but there it was; my yardage to the front, middle and back of the green in real time. I stepped a yard toward the green and the uPro took a yard off the reading. I stepped a yard back and it instantly recalculated the correct yardage.
Then, just for grins, I walk to the 150-yard marker and looked down at the uPro and it was reading dead-on at 150-yards. It was amazing.
As I moved to the second hole the uPro, without prompting, displayed a message asking if I was now playing the second hole, when I answered yes, it immediately took notice and started the video-flyover view before displaying the yardage. Frankly, the flyover is a bit of a pain on a course you have played many times, but I can see the benefit on a course you play infrequently. In any case, it is easy enough to hit the skip button and move the uPro straight to the yardage you need.
During my first uPro round, I focused on the yardage read-outs and found them to be dead-on, but there are a lot more bells and whistles at your disposal. You can pan and zoom, get the yardage to any point on the course, choose and mark the best lay-up yardage, as well as yardage to and over every hazard.
My only complaint has to do with the instructions. The basic getting started info is a snap. Basically you turn it on and you’ll be up and running in no time. However, there are areas such as ProMode and others that are not clearly explained, but that’s about the only thing I found that’s wrong.
I’m a great believer in having the correct yardage. On the other hand I hate waiting on someone in front of me to find a yardage marker. I figure if the whole world had a uPro we could take a good twenty minutes off of every round.
Okay, I’m gushing a bit, maybe even a lot, but I really liked uPro and I think you will as well. I promise if you ask Santa for a uPro you won’t be disappointed.
Just in case you were wondering, uPro did not pay for this review nor did they promise to buy advertising on Tees2Greens.com. However, I did receive a free uPro, but I think my review would have been the same otherwise. It’s pretty cool.
For more information about uPro go to
www.uProgps.com.
