It’s been cited as being a gadget which will ‘revolutionalize’ the game of golf. With an estimated 500 million golf balls lost annually and an average of 30 minutes spent looking for lost balls in each round of golf, one can genuinely trust that the Prazza Golf Ball System will in fact radically improve a sport often criticized for its tendency to be on the ‘unhurried’ side.

Prazza Group, a company from Holland, has unveiled plans for the global inauguration of the highly avant-garde ‘Prazza Golf Ball System’, which will go on sale in 2011 for approximately $520. But how exactly can a machine find and retrieve golf balls?

The system comes equipped with three Prazza golf balls, all of which ingeniously contain a micro-chip that, by incorporating active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, allows the Prazza Tracker headset to trace a ball, stubbornly buried under three-feet of sand, as long as the golf ball is within a 100 meter radius. When a Prazza golf ball is hit it activates the micro-chip and remains active for up to 30 minutes. Similar to a child playing a game of ‘hot and cold’, the handset either vibrates or bleeps – depending on the mode of the golf course and golfer – with greater frequency as the player becomes closer to the ball. Although with greater sophistication than a mere metal detector on a beach, the Prazza handset guides the golfer with a visual display.

Not only will this handheld device, which is not much bigger than a Smartphone, finally thwart a golfer’s frustration at losing their umpteenth golf ball of the month, but it will also prove to be economically advantageous. Research has shown that on average a golfer loses between four and five balls every time they play an 18-hole round of golf. It does not take a mathematical genius to work out that losing such a significant amount of golf balls soon adds up and it will not take long before the $520 spent on the Prazza Golf Ball System will soon be paid for.

One feature of golf that deters beginners is the prospect of spending hours searching for miss-hit and lost golf balls, although with the onset of the Golf Ball System, such apprehensions are soon to be a concern of the past. As Jan de Vaard, Prazza’s president acknowledged:

“Being able to say that lost golf balls are now a thing of the past will have a huge effect on the amount of people who want to play the game. We believe that our new Prazza ball-finding technology will significantly increase the number of golfers in the world.”

We can only assume that without the dreaded prospect of being publicly humiliated by lost golf balls on the golf course, the Prazza Golf Ball System, will dramatically progress a sport which has often been criticized by showing little in the way of progression.

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