Personal Transportation Devices (PTD) fascinate me. Cars, bicycles, scooters, golf carts, our legs. Humans in our mobile modern messy world choose to get around in many ways. And those ways continue to evolve as cities grow more crowded, streets congested and ease of movement shrinking.
Electric scooters are a big thing these days. Commuters, millennials, vacationers and others hop on in the inner core of cities to get around quickly and efficiently. It’s that “final step” PTD that gets you from mass transportation to your final destination in areas where parking is unavailable, too expensive or traffic is constantly blocked. Problems need to be ironed out on a couple of fronts, but the scooters hold promise in reducing car and traffic flow, something most people can relate to.
On the golf course, it’s a different story. Your PTD is your feet if you walk the course, or a two-person cart if you choose to ride. Until now.
Last weekend, as I was biking outside Hartland, WI, I came across a local golf course at the top of a hill. It wound through a neighborhood, and as I pedalled around one curve, I saw a golf cart and a one-person scooter heading down the cart path to cross the road.
The scooter moved more quickly. The golf clubs sat in front of the driver. He shot across the road and into the woods towards the next hole.
I turned around on my bike and caught up with two women in the cart and asked about the PTD. “Did your club just get that one-person scooter? Is it electric? What’s been the feedback?”
I’d heard about these scooters before, but never seen one in action, and the responsiveness as I watched the driver head across the street was quite impressive.
It seems the course had ordered four of the PTDs to try out, and responses had been overwhelmingly positive so far from those who’d used them. “Easy to handle. Well balanced. Good acceleration.”
Pretty cool stuff and I like the idea for speeding up play on the golf course, so each player can head individually to their ball and take their shot rather than crisscrossing holes back and forth to each of your partner’s balls in a two-person cart. But,…..
I thought a bit more about it, particularly that golf is an individual AND a social game. We play to hang out with our friends, enjoy nature, and share time. Going to a one-person scooter defeats some of that purpose.
The more I thought about it, the more my ambivalence rose. I get it if you play by yourself and want to speed around the course and get home for chicken pot pie. By all means, grab the scooter and take off.
But if it’s your regular four-person Saturday morning tee time, and you’re jazzing your opponents and want to tell your best jokes to your riding partner, the one-person PTD ain’t gonna cut it. You need to take that dinosaur two-person cart or use your legs as your PTD.
You have to figure the one-person golf scooter will carve out a niche, like many other PTDs in the years ahead. Sometimes you innovate and sometimes you stay with the tried and true.
Electric scooters are a big thing these days. Commuters, millennials, vacationers and others hop on in the inner core of cities to get around quickly and efficiently. It’s that “final step” PTD that gets you from mass transportation to your final destination in areas where parking is unavailable, too expensive or traffic is constantly blocked. Problems need to be ironed out on a couple of fronts, but the scooters hold promise in reducing car and traffic flow, something most people can relate to.
On the golf course, it’s a different story. Your PTD is your feet if you walk the course, or a two-person cart if you choose to ride. Until now.
Last weekend, as I was biking outside Hartland, WI, I came across a local golf course at the top of a hill. It wound through a neighborhood, and as I pedalled around one curve, I saw a golf cart and a one-person scooter heading down the cart path to cross the road.
The scooter moved more quickly. The golf clubs sat in front of the driver. He shot across the road and into the woods towards the next hole.
I turned around on my bike and caught up with two women in the cart and asked about the PTD. “Did your club just get that one-person scooter? Is it electric? What’s been the feedback?”
I’d heard about these scooters before, but never seen one in action, and the responsiveness as I watched the driver head across the street was quite impressive.
It seems the course had ordered four of the PTDs to try out, and responses had been overwhelmingly positive so far from those who’d used them. “Easy to handle. Well balanced. Good acceleration.”
Pretty cool stuff and I like the idea for speeding up play on the golf course, so each player can head individually to their ball and take their shot rather than crisscrossing holes back and forth to each of your partner’s balls in a two-person cart. But,…..
I thought a bit more about it, particularly that golf is an individual AND a social game. We play to hang out with our friends, enjoy nature, and share time. Going to a one-person scooter defeats some of that purpose.
The more I thought about it, the more my ambivalence rose. I get it if you play by yourself and want to speed around the course and get home for chicken pot pie. By all means, grab the scooter and take off.
But if it’s your regular four-person Saturday morning tee time, and you’re jazzing your opponents and want to tell your best jokes to your riding partner, the one-person PTD ain’t gonna cut it. You need to take that dinosaur two-person cart or use your legs as your PTD.
You have to figure the one-person golf scooter will carve out a niche, like many other PTDs in the years ahead. Sometimes you innovate and sometimes you stay with the tried and true.