A golf GPS sys­tem will not improve your swing — the phys­i­cal side of your golf game. You need cor­rect swing rep­e­ti­tion, prefer­ably on a dri­ving range, and a strength train­ing and stretch­ing pro­gram to improve your phys­i­cal game. Many golfers spend a lot of time on their swing but neglect the men­tal aspect of their golf game. Club selec­tion, course man­age­ment and shot visu­al­iza­tion are all impor­tant pieces of a golfer’s men­tal game. Golf GPS sys­tems are a cost effec­tive and imme­di­ately way to improve the men­tal side of your golf game.

Proper club selec­tion is vital in hit­ting more fair­ways and greens in reg­u­la­tion and in turn low­er­ing your score. All golf GPS sys­tems pro­vide at least two things. They tell you the dis­tance to the front, cen­ter and back of every green along with the dis­tance of your last shot. Know­ing the dis­tance of your last shot will allow you to over time know how far you hit every club in your bag. Arm­ing your­self with the knowl­edge of exactly how far you have left to the green and how far you hit each club will dras­ti­cally reduce the guess­work in select­ing which club to choose.

Course man­age­ment is plot­ting your shot strat­egy on each hole. The fol­low­ing are all exam­ples of course management.

• Decid­ing where to land your next shot based on the haz­ards in front of you.
• Decid­ing whether to go for the green or to layup.
• Decid­ing whether to go for the pin or a safer part of the green.

Most golf GPS sys­tems tell you the dis­tance needed to carry upcom­ing haz­ards on the hole along with the dis­tance to the green. This infor­ma­tion allows you to plan each shot on the hole while you are still on the tee box wait­ing to tee off. Most mid to high end golf GPS sys­tems also show you either a detailed draw­ing or an actual pic­ture of the hole lay­out. These hole lay­outs are gen­er­ally much more detailed than the ones found on your paper score­card. See­ing the hole lay­out will improve your abil­ity in plan­ning your hole strat­egy and course management.

Suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sional golfers visu­al­ize their next shot as part of their pre-swing rou­tine. They visu­al­ize con­tact with the ball, the ball’s flight path and its land­ing at the tar­get. The hole lay­out fea­ture of many golf GPS sys­tems helps golfers visu­al­ize their next shot by giv­ing them an over­head view of the hole.

Golf GPS sys­tems will imme­di­ately help you improve the men­tal side of your golf game.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Golf GPS Systems

It depends.

Many peo­ple are under the impres­sion that you must pay an annual sub­scrip­tion fee to use most golf GPS sys­tems. Some golf GPS sys­tems do not even offer annual sub­scrip­tions. They either offer the courses for free or require the user to pur­chase the courses on an indi­vid­ual basis. Remem­ber that just because a golf GPS sys­tem offers the courses for free, it does not mean you are not pay­ing for them. These are higher priced sys­tems so the cost of the courses is built into the ini­tial price.

Tech­ni­cally, none of the golf GPS sys­tems that have annual sub­scrip­tions require a sub­scrip­tion to fully use the device. They either give you at least one free course down­load or allow you to map your own courses. You may need to buy an annual sub­scrip­tion if you wish to use your GPS on many courses and the num­ber of free courses are not enough. Sub­se­quently, you may need an annual sub­scrip­tion if your GPS allows you to map your own course but you would rather down­load courses instead.

Do not let the fear of annual sub­scrip­tions stop you from buy­ing a golf GPS sys­tem. You can bypass the need for an annual sub­scrip­tion with a lit­tle home­work. An entry or mid level sys­tem might fit your needs if you only wish to use your GPS on one course or you are will­ing to map your own courses. Or by upgrad­ing to a higher end sys­tem, you’ll not only get addi­tional ben­e­fi­cial fea­tures but you will also by able to down­load courses for free with­out an annual subscription.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Golf GPS Systems

The GPS Golf Guru 4 is a new entry into the touch­screen golf GPS sys­tems mar­ket. It offers sim­i­lar fea­tures to other touch­screen golf GPS sys­tems while adding unique fea­tures of its own.

The GPS Golf Guru 4 is the first golf GPS sys­tem to run other appli­ca­tions. You can play golf, play music, view pic­tures and watch movies. Optional soft­ware will be com­ing out soon that will even allow the GPS Golf Guru 4 to work as a road nav­i­ga­tion device!

Two dif­fer­ent types of courses are avail­able to down­load for use on the GPS Golf Guru 4. Over 20,000 stan­dard courses are avail­able for free down­load. Stan­dard courses offer a view of the green and Smart Green tech­nol­ogy. Smart Green tech­nol­ogy allows a user to drag the pin to any loca­tion on the green to get the most accu­rate yardage.

AerVu courses are needed to unlock the full poten­tial of the GPS Golf Guru 4. AerVu courses show the com­plete lay­out of the hole from tee to green. Using a fea­ture called Shot Plan, users can mea­sure the dis­tance to any point on the fair­way and the remain­ing dis­tance from that point to the pin. The first AerVu course is free. Addi­tional AerVu courses are as low as $7 per course depend­ing on how many course cred­its are purchased.

The GPS Golf Guru 4 offers sev­eral addi­tional fea­tures. You have the abil­ity to map your own courses with up to 30 tar­gets per hole. The GPS Golf Guru 4 also gives you exten­sive sta­tis­tics track­ing. Cap­ture the dis­tance of every shot along with the club used and the lie of the shot. Also cap­ture the num­ber of fair­ways and greens hit in reg­u­la­tion. Note if you miss a green to the right, left, front or back. Sta­tis­tics can be down­loaded to your com­puter for future analysis.

The GPS Golf Guru 4 is a full fea­tured touch­screen golf gps sys­tem for a great price.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Golf GPS Systems