Decided to order me one of these watches last night:
https://www.costco.com/golf-buddy-gps-golf-watch.product.100754230.html
I started using an app on my phone last year that has a lot of live yardage information relative to the green and my game significantly improved. It gave me confidence in what irons I hit and when, and that mental hurdle is like half of the game of golf. When I'm out in a cart, I don't mind using the phone because I can leave it in a cup holder, but when I'm walking, I hate having it in my pocket. The watch will solve that annoyance. Being able to swipe and see the topography of the green you're on seems a bit cheap though 
Most everyone I golf with has some sort of GPS watch or app.
My swing and the way I hit my clubs are so unique to me that I really don't rely on exact yardage. I'm pretty old school. I need to know 'approximate' yardage and half the time I just 'eye' it. I know what each of my clubs will get me and can gauge just standing there what I need to hit. My golf game is literally:
- do my best to keep the tee shot in play
- concentrate really hard not to chunk my second shot three to ten foot in front of me. Basically, eliminate the give away strokes.
- hit my second shot somewhere near the green. If it goes on then great!
- pitch/chip onto the green and hope I have a 3'-10' putt for par. Worse case I walk away with a bogey
I really keep that approach and it's worked out great for me. The biggest change in my game last year and the couple rounds I've played this year is eliminating those dink and dunk shots where you just flub them. I've probably knocked 5 strokes off my scores just by getting solid contact and advancing the ball down towards the green.
Maybe one day I'll be at the point where I need to know 'exact' yardage. I'm not there yet though.
I've played a couple rounds with the watch now and wanted to come back to this post because I approach the game basically exactly as you do. Though, as part of one of my side bets with my golfing buddy this summer is number of greens in regulation we hit, so I've been aiming for the pin rather than just the green a lot more this year.
Two things I wish I stated:
1) The course I play at the most often is called Tunxis. It's got two 18 hole courses and a 9 hole (so 45 total). It's a beautiful course and very well maintained, but for whatever fucking reason, they don't have yardage sticks around the course (200, 150, 100). They have markers on the ground in the fairways and on sprinkler heads, but there are many times in any given round where you can have a really hard time determining if you're 210 or 180 a way because you're not near a marker. That is a real pain in the ass because those are two very different shots for me. The watch has helped a ton on that course.
2) I'm very blessed where I live. I have 15+ courses within 30 minutes of my house. There are a lot of courses that I only play one to three times per season, and I don't know the layouts intimately like I do some of the other courses I play more frequently. That's where my favorite aspect of the watch comes in (below).
The ability to bring up this view with worth the price of the watch in my opinion, especially on courses you don't know well. Knowing distance to the green is really nice, but knowing the distance to hazards is far more valuable to me, and it's information that you can't really ascertain with what the course alone provides you (yardage markers). I like knowing that a trap or creek out in the fairway is 240 from me and not 210 or 220. If it's 220, I have to let up on my driver or use a 5 wood off the tee. It's it's 240 out, I know I can fire away. Not having to play those mind games with myself has seemed to helped my scores a lot. I feel like I don't have to play as safe as I typically would, and it gives me much easier attempts at getting on the green in regulation.
Topic: DTF golfer's thread v. coolgolfstorybro (Read 58248 times)
