Golfers can be, well, overly focused on their games sometimes.

If you tell a golfer that there are 24 Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites rotating soundlessly 11,000 miles above the Earth's surface to provide navigational help for this country's military weapons, intelligence community and transportation infrastructure, he or she might nod politely and stifle a yawn.

But if you say: "This GPS stuff might help lower your handicap, too," the golfer will clap you on the back and order a round of drinks and shout: "Do we live in a great country or what?!"

This, more or less, is what they're saying these days at Clifton Park Golf Course, one of the first area courses (River Downs in Finksburg is another) to have GPS technology installed in its golf carts.

Now, when they pull their cart up to the ball, golfers at Clifton Park receive a constant stream of digital information on a video display monitor that includes how far they hit their last shot, exact yardage to the center of the green and exact yardage to hazards.

The monitor also displays a graphic showing the pin placement for each hole, an especially handy feature on Clifton's very first hole, a long (515 yards from the white tees) par 5 that generally leaves a golfer with a blind approach shot, up a steep hill, to the green.

If you're going to float a pitching wedge into the ether from a hillside 100 yards away, it helps to know if the pin is left or right, up or back.

The on-board computer also allows golfers to keep their scores on the monitor. And it provides communication between golfers and the staff in the pro shop in the event of a medical (or any other type of) emergency.

In April, when the new snack shack is up and running, golfers will even be able to use the computer to order food and drinks on the eighth tee, and have it waiting for them when they complete the front nine.

Clearly, Clifton Park has plunged headlong into the Brave New World of Golf.

Along with titanium drivers with heads the size of skillets and liquid-metal irons, golf carts with GPS threaten to drastically alter the landscape of the game, and courses like Clifton Park are at the forefront of a bold experiment in course management.

To the golf purist, of course, the whole concept of GPS might seem scandalous. GPS, one might argue, eliminates any guesswork at all about club selection, and that this subtle aid with blind shots gives the golfer an undue advantage over the course, that it somehow isn't sporting, like hunting cows.

But if PGA Tour players can have caddies with Oakley shades riffling through notebooks and quoting exact yardages from every tree, bush and sprinkler head on the course, why can't Joe Duck-hook get a helping hand from his cart's on-board computer?

And if a sampling of opinion on a recent weekday afternoon is any indication, the golfers at Clifton Park don't much care what the purists think, anyway.

The GPS system is "a real plus," said Florian "Les" Lane, 71, a retired industrial salesman who plays three times a week at Clifton and shoots in the 70s. "It certainly helps your game."

"It's fantastic," said Dave Hartwig, 62, of Forest Hill. "One of the big beefs I've had over the years is that most golf courses do not have a good system for marking [yardage on] the course.

"The pros have great [marking] systems. Why shouldn't we?"

Why not indeed? And when such comments filter over to the headquarters of the Baltimore Municipal Golf Corp., the private, nonprofit entity that oversees Clifton Park and the four other city golf courses, it is all they can do not to break out the champagne and confetti. "The response has been phenomenal," says William L. "Lynnie" Cook, the Golf Corp.'s executive director.

As he tells you this on a recent weekday afternoon in the Clifton Park snack bar, with the sunshine streaming in the windows, you can almost hear the relief in his voice.

Because bringing GPS to this humble, unpretentious course was a bit of a gamble, pure and simple.

Comfort zone

Clifton Park Golf Course unfurls like a shimmering green blanket across the gray concrete expanse of lower Harford Road, in a slice of Baltimore that has seen better times. Despite this, Clifton Park golfers remain loyal. Since 1990, the course has averaged more than 60,000 rounds played annually, third best among the city's five courses behind Pine Ridge and Mount Pleasant.

Still, says Cook: "The reality is, this is an inner-city golf course. You're out there on 250 acres of land. There can be a feeling of being alone out there."

Although old-timers report isolated muggings at the course dating as far back as the 1950s, for the most part, golfers at Clifton have had to put up with only the usual irritants attendant with city golf: kids running onto the course and stealing balls and clubs, vandalism of facilities, graffiti on walls.

Then a few years ago, there was a hold-up on the course that got some publicity. Even if you're an overly focused golfer, a man waving a gun tends to get your attention when you're standing over a putt. There was no question the incident kept more than a few golfers away from Clifton after that.

"There's this lingering feeling it could happen again," Cook acknowledges.

In the fall of 1997, the Golf Corp. attempted to come up with a long-range plan to breathe new life into Clifton Park.

The goals, says Cook, were to increase the number of rounds of golf, decrease the amount of time it took to play a round, and increase the feeling of security.

The GPS-equipped golf carts seemed to address all three goals.

The novelty of the new carts would bring more golfers.

The pace of play would improve, said Cook, because GPS "takes the guesswork out of club selection" with its exact yardage readouts.

Also, a monitor in the pro shop allows the staff to oversee the pace of play on the entire course, and a foursome that is poking along can be sent a computer message that they must pick up the pace.

And with two-way communication between golfers and the pro shop, golfers at Clifton -- especially the many seniors who play there -- would feel more secure.

It seemed like a grand plan, GPS. The key, however, was to keep the price down.

"We've got the blue-collar worker, and he doesn't play Caves Valley every day," says Cook, referring to the private luxury course in Owings Mills.

Although adding GPS to Clifton Park's 75 carts would cost $250,000 over the life of a five-year lease with Par View Inc., the Florida-based manufacturer, the Golf Corp. hopes to offset that figure by increasing the number of rounds played.

So to get its GPS experiment off the ground, the Golf Corp. actually reduced prices, up to $3 less than they were in 1997. Now, from 9 a.m. on, the standard greens fee and cart rental rate for an adult is $15.50 ($13.50 for seniors), the lowest in the area for an 18-hole course. Tee off before 9 and the fee is $17.50.

So far, the new rates are a big hit -- business is up 17 percent over the same time last year.

Another hurdle for the staff at Clifton, though, was to convince golfers that operating the GPS was easy, that they wouldn't feel like they were programming the computer for the space shuttle Discovery.

"I heard a few grumbles at first," says Mark Paolini, the pro at Clifton since 1989. "They looked at the system and said: 'This has gotta be tough [to operate].' But when they saw how easy it was, it wasn't a big deal."

In fact, it's as easy to use as an ATM, says Par View's promotional literature. So easy, says Cook, that "you can become addicted to it very quickly."

By this fall, says Cook, the other city courses are likely to have GPS carts. But for now, it's Clifton Park leading the way with this space-age technology.

It makes you wonder: How much longer before a golfer reaches in his bag for a club and the on-board computer chirps, in a voice not unlike the supercomputer Hal in "2001: A Space Odyssey": "A 7-iron, Bob? This shot is at least a 5-iron for you. What is wrong with you, man?"

Thankfully, that day still seems a long way off.

Pub Date: 3/18/99