So the past little while, I've played a few courses and gotten frustrated with guessing yardages to hazards and greens. The 100/150/200 yard markers are always there to help but even those seem suspect at times. A few friends of mine have range finders so I've got to see laser and GPS in action. The laser gives you exact distance to the flag but I don't think it helps with distance to hazards unless there's a marker of some sort for the laser to bounce off of. GPS units seem to vary quite a bit. Some will only give you yardage to the front, middle and back of the green while others will give yardage to hazards, driving distance as well as keep your score. The majority of GPS units have a fee attached in order to access their course database. This
website has a good GPS comparison table.
I was leaning toward a GPS unit primarily because I want to be able to get yardages to hazards. There's nothing worse than thinking you picked the right club to lay up or carry a hazard only to see your ball disappear into it. I didn't want to spend a load of dough and I didn't want to pay an annual $30 subscription fee. This pretty much narrowed it down significantly. I ended up choosing a
Sonocaddie V100. It retails for usd$149 shipped from many online retailers and you pay a one time subscription fee of usd$29.95. I ended up getting mine from a
Canadian distributor through their
ebay store.
I'll post more about it once I've had it out on the course a few times.
