As the vibrant pigmentation of the distinctive azalea flowers bloom once again and greeted global audiences with an immersive visionary experience, the most prodigious golf tournament in the world performed its opening act celebrating springtime in the Northern hemisphere.
While the visually compelling journey to Augusta is a backdrop to the apex of a talented field of champions, this year, tradition and technology meet as players chase the dream of claiming the coveted “green jacket” in the modern era of limitless possibilities. Golf fans and sports fans alike must be prepared to brace themselves for the self-driving car metaphorical collision as analytics and manufacturing composites meet in literally driving an increase in quality of play through advances in 3-D printed technology, the onset of the release to consumers beginning to yield positive results.
Headlined by players such as legacy longball hitter Bryson DeChambeau, who literally punishes the golf ball with a force so savage and brutal in the style of paid chaperones enforcing and insuring that the enterprise of Heidi Fleiss was compensated for services rendered, the customization of golf clubs has reached a new level. A contingency of players on the PGA tour have gravitated to software driven printers and composites to forge their arsenal of drivers, irons, and putters in an attempt to solve the nearly impossible course designs and speedway greens to withstand the attrition of an average round. This innovation of embrace is only emphasized by the design of clubs that border on the legalities and sanctions of the golf dictated by the tour in order to preserve competitive balance.
According the politically sanctimonious sports network of ESPN, DeChambeau and other competitors are morphing their strategy to excel and navigate the torturous topography and landscape of the major tournaments. Allegedly, DeChambeau was able to 3-D print a hybrid 5 iron and in doing so nearly took out the entire energy grid of his neighborhood in a drain of electricity that did not involve and EMP. While the narrative certainly puts ingenuity into the viral headlines outside of the confines of social media, the results are yet to be determined and a consensus as to the effectiveness of the technology is still speculative at best. Through two rounds, Dechambeau is hanging on for dear life with fingernails at the vertical height of the cleft of not making the cut in scoring a pedestrian four-over for the first two rounds of the Masters. How much his hybrid club has come or not come into play is yet to be extrapolated by the data scientists and stat-heads.
In dissecting the underwhelming performance of DeChambeau armed with latest gadgetry, the result of the experiment has to be properly examined as the overemphasis on innovative mechanisms trends leading to the disregard of skill and a consensus of what it the most effective algorithm to achieve legacy success.
As Second Amendment advocates have supported the concept of 3-D printed tools for self-defense, the ranks of professional golfers is still adjusting to the idea that the brainstorm of tech innovators creates viability and not simply the flash mob of the untested latest and greatest.
While Decambeau and the entire field of golfers at the Masters yielded to the brilliance of Rory McIlroy being fitted for the green jacket, changes are on the horizon that will shape at least one major component of professional sports, a paradigm shift that is not yet proven. At what point does the beginning and ending of 3-D printing actually recreate the actual golfer himself? Only time will tell.