Golf has evolved over time

If you were playing golf back in the mid-19th century, you would have been using clubs with long wooden heads and wooden shafts while hitting extremely expensive balls called "featheries" made from leather stitched together and stuffed with goose feathers. That's basically how golf was played from its earliest origins in the 15th century until the 1850s.

Things have changed dramatically over the past 150 years or so — and particularly in the past 20. These days, golfers hit cavity-back irons, huge metal-headed woods with graphite shafts, hybrid clubs that look like a wood but play like an iron, use two-piece surlyn balls that don't cut, and they wear lightweight shoes with plastic spikes. When they're not riding electric carts, golfers might walk behind three-wheeled "electric caddies" or carry lightweight bags with dual straps that stand by themselves and use fancy GPS devices or binocular-like rangefinders to find the exact distance for each shot.

Technology has definitely taken over the game of golf.

If you're younger than about 25, you won't remember woods actually made out of wood or balls that could be ruined with a cut because of one bad swing. Nor will you recall the large leather golf bags you had to lug around or the heavy shoes with metal spikes in the bottom.

Every year there's something new to buy at the golf shop, but things have somewhat stabilized with fewer major advances over the past decade or so.

The heads on drivers almost doubled in size over a 10-year period but were capped at 460 cc by the USGA and the R & A in 2004. Also the length of drivers, and all clubs except putters, has been capped at 48 inches. Golf balls have restrictions on the spin rate to keep them from traveling even farther than they already do.

Driver heads are enormous compared to the woods your father played with. Top drivers made by TaylorMade, Nike or Ping cost around $400. Putters come in all shapes and sizes, and the traditional blade putters have been replaced with ones with a lot of hardware behind the heads, such as the two-ball or spider putters. You won't find them for 20 bucks anymore and can easily spend over $100.

Golf shoes, which used to be more like the ones you wore to church only with spikes in the bottom, are now more like athletic cross-trainer shoes with plastic spikes. While they usually run between $50 and $100, you can spend as much as $230 on a pair.

East Bay head pro Kean Ridd has been playing golf for more than 50 years and has seen plenty of changes. He grew up playing persimmon woods and forged irons and now, at the age of 62, he still can shoot par, due in part to technological advances.