FROM BITES AND BYTES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Editor’s note: We invited JJ Keegan, a consultant and former owner of a tech company, to explain how technology has evolved in the golf industry. The names mentioned in parentheses throughout this article reflect the influential people who directed the companies.
“In the 1899 edition of Punch Magazine, Charles H. Duell, com- missioner of the U.S. patent office, said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
History has been unkind to that statement.
Since 1980, about 80 companies have developed software for golf courses. Thirty-three have been sold, 20 liquidated, and two remain operational though no longer involved in the golf indus- try. Only four golf-focused software companies operating today were incorporated before 2000 — Club Prophet, Club Essential, Jonas and Micros.
Capitalism creates; capitalism destroys.
Looking back at the four distinct phases of software adoption by the golf industry is a nostalgic journey down memory lane with uneasiness about what may lie ahead.