A system for identifying golf balls is disclosed in co-pending international patent application WO 99/48046.
Scoring at putting is the same as on a golf course. Individual golfers have to record, usually by writing on paper, their scores for each hole. They then have to add up the scores, adjust the total depending on their handicap and work out their final score. This is time consuming, sometimes complicated and prone to error or cheating.
The process is made even more complicated if there is a team or ‘league’ competition involving several members in each team, all with different handicaps. In addition there are various methods to identify winners of competitions such as ‘match play’, ‘stroke play’, ‘skins’, ‘most number of holes in one’ etc.
The present invention seeks to overcome or reduce one or more of the above problems.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,582,550 discloses a putting game which uses golf balls each incorporating a low-powered transmitter and an antenna. Another antenna underneath each fairway detects each time when a club containing a permanent magnet strikes the ball. Signals from the fairway antennae are received by a central antenna connected to a stroke counter. A “ball-in-hole” magnet may produce a signal indicating the presence of a golf ball in the hole. The disclosure of this document corresponds to the introduction of claim 1. U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,183 discloses a golf game in which shots are taken from a single tee, the distance of a hit being detected by radar ground surveillance units. FR-A-2,751,556 discloses a golf game in which coded balls are detected by antenna located at increasing distances from the tee area of a driving range.