Golf is best played while walking rather than riding a cart. The reason is simple: you play better golf and get a bit more fitness activity.
You burn enough energy during even 9 holes to impact health. The rhythm of walking helps your mental equilibrium and connects you with green space.
Walking has taken off during the last 10 years, with the proliferation of motorized caddie carts – they carry your clubs and gear so you can walk as you walk. Something a bit unnatural about a pushcart as the legs are working, but the arms can’t swing in their natural motion.
Enter the electric caddie/trolley, where it carries your clubs. In my estimation and even research, simply the best way to walk the course.
Which way to go? Which cart fits your needs?
You get custom fit for your irons; why wouldn’t you get the same level of personal fit with your electric trolley? Until now, it has been going to the big-box golf store, seeing a brand or model, taking it home, and hoping you made the right choice.
Enter the first retailer to fit the electric trolley option to your needs, BigHornGolfer. The problem of which cart to choose was solved by Nicholas Andreassi, the founder and president of BigHorn. He is an avid golfer who walks the course and has been using electric trolleys for over 10 years. This spurred the business model of trying everything out there in real life, on the course. See what works, what doesn’t, and what is right for a particular golf need. Everything they sell, they have tried on the course.
I like the PGA Tour Superstore for many things, where it is a known commodity, like golf balls. I went in the other day; went to the trolley/cart section to see what I could find. With electric trolleys, there was no help in the category and only three brands to choose from on the floor. Most of the inventory was in boxes. One or two in a brand were unfolded. However, no remote or a short test run to see how they worked. To make things more confusing, they were right next to the push carts. Visually, many electric trolleys resemble push carts because they conceal their batteries. After poking around for almost 15 minutes, I left without any sales help.
Nick and Kathy from Bighorn are different. Way better. Nick has golfed with every brand of electric trolley and pushcart, and Kathy has been electric cart fitting for over 15 years. BigHorn has taken the test drive for you. A few questions: where do you play, terrain, type of transport to the course, follow you or remote control, and the choice is narrowed to a few. Very helpful, to say the least, compared to looking at a boxed unit and the manufacturer’s description. It just didn’t tell me if that brand or model was right for my golf. The questions revealed the features I should include for my golf, which narrowed down the options to three potential brands/models.
What I discovered is that my previous electric trolley from a few years back is now feature-obsolete. It still works fine on a straight-ahead path, yet new features make an upgrade worth it. For example, stability on uphill and side hills is greatly improved. Previously, I had tip-overs here and there in both instances.
Another feature in many of the trolleys is an automatic stop or shut-off when the unit gets out of range of either your proximity or the remote. I wish I had had that, as my old one sped ahead, out of range. No control at that point and into the trees, bushes, or a sand trap. That alone is worth getting a new model.
After using one for four years, I liked the remote directional control, which let me send it to the other side of the green or to a tee box. Sometimes I wished it would just follow me down a long fairway, like a par 5, so I didn’t have to keep adjusting speed and direction with the remote. Well, now that the feature is added, it will follow me at my preferred distance and switch to remote on command. It didn’t sound like a game changer, yet after using that ability, how did I transport without it?
One programming note: the manual fails to tell you the best way to use this cart is to adjust the settings with a smartphone before actual use. For example, you can set the sensitivity of the R/L steering mechanism. Out of the box, without that adjustment, it was hyper-sensitive to the point of being a bit of a nuisance. Also, you can preset three speeds to suit your style of play. I would have liked to see recommended starting settings for all the functions in the manual. That would have made the first and second uses more productive and pleasant.
With the AxGlo e5, you can use the transport modes of follow-me, power-assisted drive, remote control, cruising, and manual push—you can customize how you navigate the course. The manual push is important because if the battery does run out, it becomes a pushcart. It has two brushless hub motors and anti-tipping technology, which keep it from tipping over. One big point on this caddy that many don’t have is the gyroscopes in the rear wheels so the caddy tracks straight when using the remote even if the course is not level. I really liked the simple two-motion system to fold up the cart for transport. It was much smaller than my previous 3-wheel electric cart.
Small detail, but nifty from my perspective. I don’t have to remove the cart’s battery to charge it. And the remote has an internal battery that charges with any slow charger, like for your phone.
The level of product expertise and knowledge I gained from BigHornGofer was amazing. From the golfer’s perspective, you are the winner because of their focus on a product category that really makes golf more enjoyable.