The Covid-19 pandemic has been a strange and stressful time for everyone. But as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and it’s out of this crisis that we’re handed one of the best golf inventions ever: The Golf Ball E-Z Lyft.
Golf, for the most part, has been able to resume relatively easily at the recreational level. It is an outdoor sport and has a social distancing component built into it. But even so, there have been some adjustments required, especially when it comes to actually retrieving your ball out of the hole. What used to be the simplest of tasks suddenly requires an added dose of caution.
The invention’s success was something of an accident. It was created by Roger Hood and Dave Taylor not due to Covid-19, but as a way to retrieve your ball easier following the USGA’s new rule that allowed golfers to putt with the flagstick in. But then came the pandemic — and an influx of orders — as golf courses saw it as a way of re-opening safely.
“All the stars just lined up for us,” said Adam Stuck, a golf instructor who handles marketing and sales for Hood and Taylor. “About 24 hours after we launched, we realized how good our timing was. It was kind of the perfect storm with Covid-19.”
According to the article, more than 1,000 courses have purchased the product, which comes in packs of one, three, nine and 18 for $39, $99, $265 and $495, respectively.
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.