Golfers on the PGA Tour have nearly all their shots tracked by ShotLink, which uses a sophisticated system of laser measuring devices, radar and an army of volunteers. You don’t have access to that technology, but Arccos has been enabling recreational golfers to track their shots and collect data on their game since 2012, and on Monday, the company announced that as a part of a $20 million Series C fundraising, it had become the “Official Game Tracker” of the PGA Tour.
Along with the investment by the Tour, other investors include Ping, TaylorMade, Cobra Puma Golf and Topgolf Callaway Brands.
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Arccos, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut, is a shot-tracking system that uses a series of small screw-in tags to tether a golfer’s clubs to a smartphone app, which then uses GPS to track the location of every shot a player hits, along with information on the club used and the location of the bullet hit (fairway, sand, rough, the green). Using that data, Arccos develops ShotLink-style stat packages that can reveal information about player tendencies, strengths and weaknesses, along with suggestions on what to practice. The Arccos Caddie app can also use that data to provide caddy-style club recommendations too.
“This investment shows that data is here to stay and that it is going to help everybody,” said Sal Syed, Arccos Golf’s CEO and co-founder in an exclusive interview with Golfweek. “Whether you are a player looking to improve or an instructor looking to teach better, a fitter looking to be smarter or even a manufacturer looking to make better tools for golfers, this data is going to help every aspect of the industry. That’s why you are seeing the industry kind of coalescing behind Arccos. It’s going to help everybody.”
To date, Arccos members have used the system to track more than 750 million shots during over 16 million rounds in 162 countries. That database provides the foundation for the power of the system.
Asked what Arccos plans to do with the capital it has raised, Syed said the infusion of money will allow the company to accelerate its product roadmap.
“We can invest more in data science, make the system more accurate, easier to use and more available to a wider array of golfers.”
Players on the Tour now create strategies for how they will play specific holes using data collected by ShotLink, and many modify their schedules to include courses that data shows match their game especially well. In some cases, they skip tournaments where data shows they might struggle. Syed hopes that as Arccos grows, recreational golfers will be able to make data-based decisions like the pros.
“Every decision that is made in golf should be based on your on-course, real performance,” he said. “Eventually, we want to be able to show, using data, which putter is better for you, what shoes you should play with. Today, no one is basing those kinds of decisions on actual performance data. What we have touched is not even the tip of the iceberg.”
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