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" Eight or nine years ago\u2014he can&amp;#039;t remember exactly\u2014Laird Hamilton started looking at golf courses differently than the rest of us. The surfing legend and his friend Don Wildman, whom we called\u00A0&amp;quot;The\u00A0World&amp;#039;s\u00A0Healthiest 75-Year-Old&amp;quot;\u00A0in 2008,\u00A0were looking for ways to make golf more appealing to habitually\u00A0active people like themselves. Naturally, they turned to boards. &amp;quot;We had all these downhill skateboards, electric skateboards, mountain boards, and all these different apparatuses we used in our desire to ride boards of all types,&amp;quot; Hamilton says. &amp;quot;We put an electric skateboard on the golf course and immediately realized it was an incredible way to play.&amp;quot; After years of slow but steady research and development, the\u00A0extreme athletes now have a product they think will\u00A0revolutionize the way golf is\u00A0played. It&amp;#039;s called the GolfBoard, and with a solid, four-wheeled base and stabilizing handle that extends upward from the nose, golfers adventurous enough to hop on\u00A0are able to effectively windsurf their way around the course, using their body weight to push or pull the board&amp;#039;s trajectory in the direction of their next shot. &amp;quot;It seems to be answering all the needs of the game itself,&amp;quot; Hamilton says\u00A0of his invention, which wowed\u00A0skeptical onlookers at the 2014 PGA Merchandise Show. &amp;quot;We have data. We know it makes good players play better. We know it&amp;#039;s a way to get new players to play. It speeds up the game immensely. There doesn&amp;#039;t seem to be anything left other than trying to break through some of the mentalities that restrain change.&amp;quot; That last thing left, convincing a golf establishment deeply\u00A0rooted in tradition to embrace &amp;quot;boarding,&amp;quot; is no small thing.\u00A0Hamilton says the\u00A0GolfBoard&amp;#039;s entire marketing strategy was created\u00A0around the expectation that resistance would be fierce, and admits he&amp;#039;s\u00A0a little surprised at the\u00A0limited extent to which the GolfBoard has encroached into the golfing world. Though the GolfBoard has seen some\u00A0success so\u00A0far, the sport would do well to open its arms even wider to such a radical aesthetic intrusion. The state of \u00A0professional\u00A0golf is healthier than it&amp;#039;s been in years, but the number of Americans actually taking to the course has been on the decline. Participation among the\u00A018- to\u00A030-year-old demographic has decreased 35 percent over the last decade, and far more courses have closed than\u00A0open every year over around the same span of time. Golfing isn&amp;#039;t close to as accessible to the average American as it was when Nicklaus and Palmer were in their prime. Now more than ever, it&amp;#039;s associated with the super-rich, and few have the patience to trudge\u00A0through a five-hour round, much less shell out\u00A0a thousand dollars or more\u00A0for a set of clubs. Hamilton is convinced the GolfBoard is the answer. Not only is it fun, it speeds\u00A0the pace of play dramatically and offers a core workout that can&amp;#039;t be had\u00A0by\u00A0slouching in a cart. &amp;quot;If this thing doesn&amp;#039;t explode and isn&amp;#039;t at every course in the world, it&amp;#039;ll be because we didn&amp;#039;t do something right, not because it shouldn&amp;#039;t be and not because it isn&amp;#039;t a real product.&amp;quot;        Earlier this month, a friend and I drove to the eastern end of Long Island, New York, to test the GolfBoard at the Hampton Hills Golf and Country Club. The club is a\u00A0bastion of a\u00A0leisurely ideal that could have been plucked straight from golf&amp;#039;s heyday. Members are tanned to perfection and at\u00A0retirement age or close to it. Men smoke cigars on a patio that overlooks the 18th green while women play mahjong and canasta in a well-lit\u00A0ballroom inside. It&amp;#039;s the kind of place that helps\u00A0give\u00A0golf its elitist reputation and discourages the average American from picking up a set of clubs and trying it out. If that&amp;#039;s\u00A0a harsh generalization, it&amp;#039;s also a common one, especially among younger potential players. But Hampton Hills general manager Stanley Pine and his partner Barry Beil pride themselves on holding a practical, laissez\u00A0faire\u00A0attitude toward their club. Though it is a country club, they don&amp;#039;t want it to feel stuffy or exclusionary.\u00A0When a member told them about the GolfBoard last year, they were wary at first, but quickly changed their tune when they saw\u00A0one firsthand. In early July, they added four GolfBoards to their fleet of electric carts and couldn&amp;#039;t be happier. &amp;quot;The members who have tried the GolfBoard have across the board loved it,&amp;quot; Pine says. &amp;quot;I haven&amp;#039;t heard anything negative.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The only negative thing has been that a couple of guys came in and wanted to use them but they were already out on the course,&amp;quot; Beil adds. Before taking to the course, we had to demonstrate that we could maneuver\u00A0the\u00A0GolfBoard without incident. Stepping on for the first time, I was surprised at how easy it was to control, though it did take some getting used to. The base of the board is far heavier than you might expect\u2014it needs to be to keep from flipping over as you lean into turns\u2014and working it into and out of tight spaces is difficult. In general, it&amp;#039;s\u00A0easy to use, but probably not as easy as the promotional video filled with smiling middled-aged men, women, and children\u00A0effortlessly carving across fairways leads you to believe. Most of the curious members asking about it when they saw us zoom by on\u00A0the course thought it was interesting, but seemed averse to the idea of trying it themselves. I couldn&amp;#039;t blame them. But the experience of actually golfing with the board transcended the basics of holding a thumb to the throttle and shifting your weight left and right. After hitting each shot, we&amp;#039;d hop on\u00A0and head straight for the middle of the course&amp;#039;s lush, atypically hilly fairways, leaning into every undulation and gearing ourselves up to shred our way down the more precipitous declines. Wind ripped\u00A0over us as we traversed the suddenly playground-like terrain at a whopping 12 miles per hour, the GolfBoard&amp;#039;s top speed. We\u00A0arrived at our balls refreshed and\u00A0with clear heads, which is the key to what might be\u00A0the GolfBoard&amp;#039;s most pleasant perk.\u00A0 Golf is a sport that necessitates a kind of Zen-like clearheadedness. The more you think, the worse you play. Between shots, if you&amp;#039;re thinking about the wind in\u00A0your hair and indulging in the contours of the hills before you, then\u00A0you&amp;#039;re not thinking about your golf swing or\u00A0how you should&amp;#039;ve gone\u00A0with a three wood instead of a five wood\u00A0on that\u00A0last shot. And most importantly,\u00A0you&amp;#039;re not stressing about the shot you&amp;#039;re about to take. All you&amp;#039;re doing is having fun until you arrive at your ball, step off the board, assess the shot, and take the shot. The GolfBoard turns the sometimes mentally excruciating time between shots into an involuntary meditation. You&amp;#039;re more\u00A0present in your surroundings, which invariably\u00A0makes you a better golfer.  Hamilton recognizes this, of course, as surfing requires a similar &amp;quot;letting go,&amp;quot; and so do Pine and Beil, only they\u00A0don&amp;#039;t use such existential language to articulate it. &amp;quot;The reason we were so enthusiastic about the GolfBoard is that it doesn&amp;#039;t change the way you play golf,&amp;quot; Beil says. &amp;quot;The experience, we think, is enhanced, but the game itself isn&amp;#039;t screwed around with.&amp;quot; When I asked them what they see for\u00A0the future of\u00A0the GolfBoard, Pine responded by saying that\u00A0he expects\u00A0it to &amp;quot;grow exponentially.&amp;quot; For now, the GolfBoard advertises that it&amp;#039;s\u00A0available at over 100 courses, which is a small fraction of the near 15,000 facilities nationwide. The vast majority of golfers have never seen or heard about the GolfBoard, and those who\u00A0have likely saw it in passing and\u00A0dismissed\u00A0it as ridiculous. That\u00A0was my initial reaction, and\u00A0Pine and Beil&amp;#039;s initial reaction, and that&amp;#039;s\u00A0likely to be the initial reaction of anyone who has grown up with the game of golf and its traditions.\u00A0 But the key to accepting the GolfBoard, for me and\u00A0Pine and Beil, and for anyone interested in using it, is to actually get on one and play around. For how strange it is, the experience of riding it seems\u00A0totally normal after only a few minutes on the course. It feels like it truly belongs on the course, just as viable as a cart or pushcart. Some days you might prefer to sit and relax in a cart; other days, if you&amp;#039;re in a hurry\u2014we finished our round in just under four hours and took\u00A0our time\u2014or feel you need a workout, you might prefer the GolfBoard. As Hamilton puts it, it&amp;#039;s a &amp;quot;real product,&amp;quot; which is saying a lot in a golf\u00A0equipment landscape that&amp;#039;s\u00A0full of gimmicks. GolfBoard&amp;#039;s potential to catalyze a\u00A0golf revival probably lies somewhere between Hamilton&amp;#039;s lofty expectations and the dismissiveness of stodgy traditionalists. The forces that have pushed an already marginalized sport even further to the margin over the past decade-plus are too great and too complex to be corrected by any single device. But it&amp;#039;s certainly a step in the right direction\u2014younger potential golfers need to be enticed somehow\u2014and after playing a round on one, I&amp;#039;m confident in saying the sport would be better off if every course had a stock of GolfBoards, which isn&amp;#039;t a position I expected to hold when I first sat at my computer cackling at how absurd\u00A0the riders looked in the\u00A0promo\u00A0video. Some things you really do need to try. 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<http://www.esquire.com/sports/reviews/a37302/golfboard-test/>