RadarGolf
www.incentivemag.com
JUNE 15, 2004

For many people, a relaxing game of golf on a day off is the perfect way to wind down from a hectic workweek. But sadly, many players spend much of their time on the links desperately searching for golf balls hooked or sliced into the rough.

If not recovered promptly, the price of those balls can tally up, adding insult to the two-stroke injury of having to drop in a new ball. RadarGolf is designed to prevent all that hassle by using high technology to help duffers quickly locate their balls, no matter how high the rough grows.

Embedded in each ball is a radio frequency (RFID) tag, similar to the devices merchants like Wal-Mart are increasingly using to track inventory from the manufacturer to the warehouse to the shelf. To locate the missing ball, a golfer only has to turn on the RadarGolf handheld unit and point it in the general direction of the ball. The unit sends out a 915-MHz signal, which locates the RFID tag, sets off a beeping alarm and leads the golfer into the woods. The unit beeps faster as the golfer gets closer to the ball.

"I always found it very frustrating to lose a ball that I thought was in bounds," says Chris Savarese, founder and president of RadarGolf. "Our system will help ... golfers improve their score by avoiding the lost ball penalty of stroke and distance, [and it will] speed up play and reduce the frustration of searching for lost balls."

While some balls will remain lost forever--such as those deep in the water--the RadarGolf system should still shave at least a couple of strokes off the game of anyone who misses the fairway with frequency.

RadarGolf will be available online this fall with a handheld unit and a dozen golf balls costing $249 at retail

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