Tap It Makes For Easier, Fun Removal Of Ball From Hole
- Details
- Category: Inside Golf
- Published: 2020-06-17
By GORD MONTGOMERY, Inside Golf
BARRHEAD, Alberta — In the world of golf, there are sounds that are music to one’s ears. You know, the harmony of a tee shot well struck. The ear-pleasing ‘thump’ of a perfectly played bunker shot. And best of all, the clatter of a ball finding the bottom of the cup, especially on a lengthy birdie putt.
But, with the game having changed so dramatically thanks to a global pandemic, one of those sounds is sadly missing, for the most part, on almost every golf course. Since the inception of pool noodles, raised cups and other assorted gizmos to keep the ball from dropping too far into the cup to be easily, and safely retrieved, the beautiful ring of a putt well-holed, has essentially disappeared.
Except, as it turns out, at the Barrhead Golf Course, located an hour northwest of Edmonton in rural Alberta. There, Lyle Knittig has essentially put that most glorious sound back into the game.
“The thought process is that obviously you can’t touch the flagstick. My first thought was exactly what was out there, a sort of lift idea. I looked online and saw someone had already done that,” he said of his idea, Tap It, which with the smack of the butt end of your club, pops the ball out of the hole, and if you’re quick enough, lets you catch it on the fly.
Knittig decided that something to aid golfers in removing a ball from the hole without having anything on the flagstick to interfere with the ball’s hoped-for line into the cup was the best idea to go with. Thus, after a bit of tinkering, he came up with his idea.
“It wasn’t so much that I was trying to come up with something but more of an idea of, ‘Hey. I wonder if that would work?’ “ he commented in a phone interview.
Knittig borrowed a flag and cup from the Barrhead course’s superintendent and went to work, noting, “Once I saw the idea worked, I wasn’t sure what to do next,” he admitted, noting he now has a patent-pending stamp on the idea.
Of course coming up with an idea and getting someone to agree that what you’ve developed is feasible are two different things. Fortunately, when Knitting presented the idea to Barrhead’s head pro Danny Grant, he decided to give it a try. And, he reports, this has become a truly popular invention.
“He’s kind of an innovator and I saw a couple of earlier models people came up with. The simplicity of his idea is pretty cool.”
After Holing One's Putt, All You Do Is Take The Butt End Of Your Putter And Push On The Highlighted Area Of The Disc At The Bottom Of The Cup. Acting Like A Teeter-Totter, The Low Side Of The Disc Rises, Propelling The Ball Up And Out Of The Hole.
The one query that had to be asked of Grant was about the possibility of hole damage from players using the handle of their club to activate the Tap It system. Damage to the cup area is a concern everywhere Grant agreed, but he feels this system doesn’t encourage that.
“We tested this with an oversized putter grip, the biggest we could find, and there was virtually no damage. People take the toe of their putter and try to lift the ball out and that causes more damage (than Tap It). When used as directed, there’s virtually no damage.”
Since developing Tap It, Knittig has placed a trademark and a patent pending stamp on the invention and is seeing some interest from other courses. He noted he’s heard from a track in Manitoba that wanted to know more, so he’s hopeful the idea catches on. He does have a manufacturing company just outside Edmonton making part of the system, but he’s hands-on in finishing things up.
“The biggest thing is to get the word out and we couldn’t do anything until that patent application was filed,” he said of spreading the word on his unique, and fun, ball removal concept. “We tried it out (at Barrhead) to see what the golfers, and the course, would think. Almost immediately from the golfers themselves, the feedback was tremendous. Then it was the golf course — would they like it?” he said before adding some Edmonton-based TV coverage on the device helped immensely in spreading the word.
While Tap It is an easy way to remove the ball from the hole, maybe the best thing about this is the fact the ball actually goes all the way into the hole. The system is like a teeter-totter, where the ball sits on the low side of a disc well below the level of the putting surface meaning a putt with some pace isn’t going to roll out of the hole or lead to queries of whether the putt was actually in because of how far it bounced away from the raised cup.
“This pretty much (clarifies) that part of the game anyway,” Knittig stated, noting having to add that it brings back one of the most beautiful sounds in the game — that of a well-holed putt.
For more information on Tap It, call them at 1-800-99TAPIT.