Have you ever bemoaned the fact that when you wanted the beverage cart it was nowhere to be found? Stan Van Meter has, and he elected to do something about it.

"About three years ago, I was out with some of my customers playing in a scramble," Van Meter said. "We were just out there to have fun and tip a few back with old friends and customers. They got frustrated."

This was the genesis of Scan4Beer, a novel way to send a food or drink order to and summon the beverage cart using only your smart phone. It is accomplished with a bar code attached to the golf cart and an smart phone app that permits you to scan the bar code. A menu pops up on your smart phone and you place the order. Among the information the beverage cart attendant receives is your cart number, location on the course, and the most efficient route to get there.

"It's a win win for everybody," Van Meter, the CEO of Scan4Beer, said. "Better food and beverage sales for golf courses, less frustration for golfers, and better tips for the cart girls."

The app is free. Meanwhile, Scan4Beer will license its product to individual courses or groups of courses. It recently began a soft launch of the product, testing it on six courses, while expecting a full launch in February. Reaction suggests the company is onto something, Van Meter said.

Below is an animated video showing how it works.

-- John Strege

When this royal and ancient game mixes with 21st-century innovation, the result is often an interesting new product, one of them Mosoro's new Bluetooth device for your golf equipment.

Mosoro is a Golden, Colo., company that by its own definition "creates Bluetooth accessory solutions, also know as Appcessories, for smartphones." On Tuesday, it introduced its 3D-Sport device for licensing and co-branding, with expectations to bring the product to market in the spring.

The 3D-Sport is a small, lightweight Bluetooth device that attaches to a golf club near the grip and communicates with your smart phone. "When you take a swing, it measures 100 times a second how the club moves in three dimensions," Mike Stemple, Mosoro founder, said. The device features a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a Bluetooth LE (low energy).

Its capabilities include showing your swing path and whether you clubface is open or closed at impact and will provide the feedback instantaneously to assist in analyzing your swing.

"One of the exciting things we're building into it," Stemple said, "is that once you put all that data onto your smart phone, probably for a small fee you can send it to your golf pro and he can use Face Time [on an iPhone] to tell you how to improve your swing.

"We're pretty excited about it. The core technology is being adapted to tennis, baseball, hockey and lacrosse."

The 3D-Sport, which also can be used on your putter, will sell for under $100 dollars, Stemple said.

-- John Strege

Better golf through health and fitness has become a recurring theme, manifesting itself in myriad ways. GolferAid's contribution is a beverage to help with focus, endurance, balance, power and flexibility.

"We came up with the concept on the golf course," said Orion Melehan, who developed GolferAid in partnership with Aaron Hinde. "We have been taking supplements for soreness and other things while on the golf course and said, 'why don't we combine all the things we're taking naturally anyways and put it into a drink?' We thought the market for a drink was a natural progression of where and health and fitness was going."

They suggest drinking a 12-ounce can 15 minutes before a round begins and another can at the turn.

"Serious golfers are drinking water or Gatorade or Powerade," Hinde said. "We're mid-30s, close to 40, and not feeling quite as pain free as we did in our 20s. A lot of people are moving away from sugar. With efficacy in mind, this has almost three grams of supplements to aid various aspects of the golf game."

GolferAid contains only nine grams of sugar from its sweetener, organic blue agave. Among its supplements are glucosomine for joint health, epimedium for strength, B complex for energy and bilberry for balance. For a full list of its supplements, go here.

"It's been well received by head pros," Melehan said, noting that the renowned Olympic Club in San Francisco, site of the 2012 U.S. Open, is among their clients. The company, based in Pebble Beach, Calif., already has upwards of 60 courses on board.

GolferAid sells for $12 for a four-pack or $60 for a case of 24.

-- John Strege

The summer behind us, cooler weather is ahead of us, raising an old familiar question: How does cold weather affect the performance of the golf ball?

Frank Thomas, former USGA technical director, has the answer in his book, "Dear Frank: Answers to 100 of Your Golf Equipment Questions." Generally, he wrote, for every 10 degrees drop in temperature you will lose from 2 to 2 1/2 yards.

"So, at 40 degrees, the ball will travel about 10 to 12 1/2 yards less than at 90 degrees," Thomas wrote.

The next question, then, can a golf ball be manufactured to counter the effects of cold? One company says it can.

ColdFusion Golf, located in Cary, N.C., has what it calls "the cold weather golf ball solution," a ball designed specifically to function better than others in cold weather, defined by the company as "below 60 degrees."

"I was out playing with a friend three years ago and the ball was sitting in the cart, it was maybe mid-40s, near Pinehurst," Curtis Colvin, the developer of the ColdFusion ball said. "So I pull the ball out of the cart, hit it and I was short. I thought, 'what the heck? Maybe it was me.' I hit another and I was short again."

Colvin contemplated solutions: "A ladies' ball? A low-compression ball?" he said. Instead, after his research showed him that no one else was doing so, he decided to manufacturer his own cold-weather ball.

He worked with a company in Taiwan with expertise in manufacturing custom golf balls, he said. Through trial and error, he decided on a 70-compression ball with a larger core.

"It's a lousy two-piece ball when it's warm," he said. "But freeze it and it comes alive. It was meant to be something easy for golfers not to have to think about. It does work."

The ColdFusion balls sell for $24 a dozen.

-- John Strege

It is a common drill, one often used by Vijay Singh, who places the ends of a towel in his armpits to "stay connected," to help the arms and upper body work in concert. Rick Gonzales, a mortgage broker in Stockton, Calif., saw an amateur golfer using the drill on the range one day.

"That's what spurred the idea," Gonzales said. The idea became the Core Swing, a polo shirt designed to do what the towel does. It features elastic that tightens around the bicep of each arm, securing the arms in the proper position.

"I'm just a 15-handicapper," Gonzales said. "I thought, 'there's got to be a better way.' My wife always teases me. I'm the guy who always buys the newest and best training aid, looking for a shortcup to a better golf game. I figured there's got to be a way to design a polo shirt that does what the towel does, but you won't be embarrassed [tucking a towel in the armpits] on the range.

"The main purpose is keeping the core, your chest, and rotating that and letting the arms come along for the ride. It allows you to make the proper turn."

The Core Swing is available in white or navy blue and sells for $89.99.

-- John Strege

Ecco, which began what has become a trend, the hybrid golf/casual shoe, continues to pursue ways to maintain its momentum, its latest offering the Golf Street Textile.

It features a textile upper designed to enhance breathability and a removable textile insole to wick away moisture, while also providing extra cushioning.

The Golf Street Textile will sell for $150 are expected in stores this month.

Fred Couples, of course, jump-started the hybrid craze by wearing the Golf Street Premier to widespread curiosity in the 2010 Masters.

-- John Strege

Sun Mountain has put the 2010 Ryder Cup rainsuit controversy behind it and announced on Wednesday that it has been selected to provide the outerwear for the U.S. Presidents Cup team.

The rainsuits are "based upon a new line of Sun Mountain raingear incorporating a breakthrough stretchable woven fabric," the company said in a news release. They feature a "new four-way stretch woven fabric with a fully waterproof/breathable laminate and durable water repellant finish."

At the Ryder Cup a year ago, in torrential rains in Wales, U.S. players complained that their rainsuits, supplied by Sun Mountain, were not keeping them dry and were absorbing, rather than shedding, water, making them heavier.

Sun Mountain founder Rick Reimers was not available to comment on the new outerwear. He said this in the news release:

"We are honored to have once again been chosen to outfit the Presidents Cup U.S. team. We spent a lot of time over the past year evaluating solutions to the weather protection needs of tournament golfers while remaining true to our requirement that it offer the flexibility needed for a golf swing. The result is a waterproof, windproof and stretchable collection of golf outerwear that we are excited to showcase during the event."

Images of the rainsuits were not available.

The Presidents Cup is scheduled to be played at Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia, Nov. 18-20.

-- John Strege

The acclaimed Garmin Approach S1, a rangefinder in wristwatch form, has been introduced in white, the company announced.

"As fashion continues to be in the forefront of our lives, we see golfers personalizing their attire and bringing new style to the course every day," Bryan Yalowitz, director outdoor sales and marketing for Garmin, said in a news release, explaining the new color offering.

The Garmin Approach S1, previously available only in black, earned a silver in Golf Digest's rangefinder Hot List recently. Ashley Mayo of Golf Digest wrote this about it: "The watch is surprisingly unobtrusive, and being able to glance at your wrist to know how far you are from the hole is beyond convenient."

It was also featured in this blog in January, beneath the headline, "A wristwatch that provides yardages, too." The Garmin Approach S1 does indeed tell time, as well as providing yardages to the front, center and back of greens at nearly 17,000 North American courses that are pre-loaded in the device.

-- John Strege

A husband attempting to teach his wife golf is not necessarily a good idea, but a good idea might have emerged from Chip Beck's efforts to assist his wife Karen with her golf.

"After 22 years of marriage, I said, 'Chip, I've been invited to play in a member guest. I don't know how to play. Can you show me how to play?'" she said at the recent PGA Expo in Las Vegas.

Chip, a winner of four PGA Tour events and now a Champions Tour member, gave her a lesson.

"I was hitting it great on the range," she said. "Then he went out of town for a few weeks. We ended up winning the member-guest. When he came back I said, 'there's only one problem. My thumb hurts.' He said, 'show me your grip.'"

Karen gripped a club for him. "What are you doing?" Beck said to her. She explained that her caddie had showed her the grip.

"Don't listen to the caddie, listen to me," he replied.

"I had forgotten what he had told me about the grip because it was so complicated," she said.

The upshot is Grip Guides, a training aid they developed together to help golfers "grip it like a pro."

It adhesively attaches to the grip of any golf club and features three lines -- in the 11, 12 and 1 o'clock positions, as well as a guide on where to place your hands. It uses the Vardon grip as its model.

In addition, the aid features interactive thermochromic ink that changes color. Thermochromic ink on Coors beer cans and botles features cold activation to demonstrate that the beer is cold. On Grip Guides, it uses warm activation. If the colors don't change while gripping the club, you're gripping it wrong.

"I wanted something on my grip that can remind me, to make it easy," Karen said. "My method is KISS -- Keep It Simple Silly."

Grip Guides was introduced at the PGA Expo and will go on sale later this month. Ten percent of the proceeds will benefit the renowned Evans Scholarship Foundation.

-- John Strege