order Lyrica Steve Davis, whom I met at Tiger Woods’s World Challenge back in December, has been tweaking and field-testing his golf periscope, which is considered by some to be the most important golf-related invention of the current century—and not only because it has a shoulder strap and a beer holder. Last weekend, he took it to the Toshiba Classic, in Newport Beach, California, an event on the Champions Tour. “I was following the final group Sunday,” he told me in an email. “There was this little old lady who couldn’t see anything. She understood right away how the periscope worked. The smile that produced was priceless. It was my feel-good moment of the day—and we were only at the first green.”
Steve Davis and his periscope at the Farmers Insurance Open, at Torrey Pines Golf Course, in La Jolla, California–where, he reports, “Tiger was Tiger of old.”
Davis apparently spends all his time either working on his periscope or trying it out at golf tournaments. He watched Tiger win at Torrey Pines in January (photo above). And last month he attended the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which Brandt Snedeker won. In another email, Davis sounded almost disappointed that there weren’t more people standing between him and the action. “The big surprise was how small the crowd at Pebble was,” he wrote. “We could stand alongside the green on almost every hole. It got crowded only around the end, at 16, 17, and 18.” The photo below was taken at the AT&T, and it shows him holding a modified version of the device I tried at the World Challenge. The differences may not be obvious to a layman, but they are significant. “I have a new system and have been having problems with it,” Davis confided, “so I’m having trouble trusting it.”
Davis also took his periscope to the Northern Trust Open, at Riviera, last month. “What can I say with a two-playoff-hole victory for Merrick’s first tour win?” The guy on the right in the photo below, which was taken at Riviera, looks to me like he was contemplating a smash-and-grab, but apparently he was just eyeing Davis’s beer.
More periscope news as it develops.
🙂
If you are really interested in golf periscopes, you should come play Manchester Country Club, which is less than an hour away from you. It’s a public course, although thre are members and its run by a board of governors. On our 2nd tee and 7th tee, there are large (maybe 15 ft. high) wooden periscopes to allow you to see blind landing areas. Of course, it’s been such a cold spring in Connecticut, it may be August before we open for the season.
I love tee-box periscopes. There are also a couple at Richter Park, in Danbury, and my club’s No. 2 enemy club has one mounted on the roof of its golf shop, for looking down the first fairway. I once bought a truck side mirror, thinking I could mount it on a window of the third-floor of my house. I thought I’d be able to use it to spot the UPS truck in my driveway without turning my head, but I sort of gave up on that project.
Are you sure you know where I live ? It doesn’t snow much here. On a periscope 15ft. How big are the mirrors.
Steve Davis is brilliant! His periscope lets him get all the “bang for the buck” at golf tournaments, which are not cheap to attend. I think this proves he is one of the most avid, golf enthusiasts in the world.
Thanks Anne for leaving your words of praise.
I’ve had more non-golfer. Watch more golf on tv now. They almost all tell me the same thing. They say,”I’m surprized that so many fans that go to the tournaments can’t see at greenside. Then they say,”Then I start looking for a Periscope sticking out of the crowd.”