The Connected Golfer – Syndication Server

The Connected Golfer: How custom club fitting can take your game to the next level

A custom club fitting can help a player make smarter purchasing decisions and prioritize equipment needs.

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Previous installments of the Connected Golfer have focused on technologies and devices that let players gather information as they practice and play. We have also covered the growing popularity of virtual lessons and how technology allows students and instructors to stay in touch between lessons. Now we explore how advancements in club-fitting technologies, along with data collected by players and coaches, can help golfers at every level hit the ball farther and straighter with more consistency…

On a snowy Sunday in January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses across the United States to lock their doors, Nathan DeBerry, 35, opened one at Club Champion’s store in Willowbrook, Illinois. Stomping the slush off his feet and standing about 6 feet 3 inches tall, he had the lanky frame of someone who could be good at almost any sport. Having played golf for about eight years, he hit balls at a local range twice a week, when the Chicago-area weather allowed, and scored in the high-90s when he played.

After warming up and hitting several shots with a driver he bought at a large chain store, his fitter, Brad Syslo, could hardly contain himself. The TrackMan launch monitor was confirming what Syslo’s eyes told him. DeBerry had loads of clubhead speed (109 miles per hour), but he only averaged 228 yards of carry distance. Getting this guy into the right gear could produce some massive improvements.

Using technologies and tools found at many reputable fitting facilities, DeBerry’s ball speed increased 17 miles per hour within 60 minutes. His shots started to fly straighter too, and he gained 47 yards of carry distance. Forty-seven!

To be fair, a seismic improvement like that is rare, but it’s safe to say that the fitting was game-changing for DeBerry. Literally.

The right tools make all the difference

Imagine that you went into a clothing store and wanted to buy a blue shirt. Finding a wall of blue shirts with no labels on them, you grab one off the rack that looks nice, walk to the cashier and drop it on the counter. You don’t know the size, how it will fit when you try it on and you don’t if you’re getting a bargain or if you are being ripped off.

For decades, buying golf clubs was similar to this type of experience. Golfers went to a store, looked at clubs on the pro shop wall, and then maybe set one on the carpet and looked at it in the address position. Happy, they grabbed the driver or the set of irons, plunked down their money and happily walked out the door, hoping the new gear would lower their scores. Were the new clubs ideally-suited to their swing? Did they get a good deal on the price? Who knows?

Savvy golfers know there is a better way: custom fitting. Long associated with elite golfers and tour pros, there are many custom–fitting levels, and all of them can even help beginners and high-handicap players.

In 1972, Ping developed a color-coded system based on static measurements to determine the player’s ideal lie angle. Today, Ping, Callaway, TaylorMade, Titleist and other brands run demo days at local facilities and custom-fit golfers for their latest offers. Retail stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods and PGA Tour Superstores often allow players to try clubs from different manufacturers, often with various shafts, to see which performs better for them.

However, at the top of the ladder are brand-agnostic fitting centers like Club Champion, Cool Clubs, Hot Stix and many local club fitting shops around the country. At facilities like this, the sales associates and fitters are often PGA of America professionals. They are continuously trained on new clubs, shafts, grips and club-building techniques. In almost every case, they are brand agnostic and invest in the latest technologies to help fit golfers more effectively.

The most powerful tool a fitter can use to help players find the ideal combination of heads, shafts and golf balls is a launch monitor like TrackMan. It uses a pair of Doppler radar arrays to not only capture data about a shot (even one hit indoors), but also acquire data about the clubhead as it goes through the impact zone. It can show things like ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, curvature, the angle of descent and more. It can also show the clubhead’s path, reveal whether the face was open, closed or square at the moment of impact and whether the club was swinging up or down as it approached the ball. A trained fitter can often see some of these things, but launch monitors like TrackMan quantify them and make direct, apples-to-apples comparisons possible.

Most drivers, fairway woods and hybrids sold today have adjustable hosels, but many club-fitting companies install universal adaptors on the heads and shafts they use for fittings. This means they can quickly attach any head to any shaft, regardless of the brands, which lets players test more combinations in less time.

Strangely, while golfers use their putter more than any other club, few recreational players get custom-fit for their putter. Fitters can use a machine developed by Science and Motion called a SAM PuttLab to reveal things like face angle at address and at impact, tempo, the impact spot and the face angle relative to the path.

Most golfers rarely, if ever, swap out all 14 clubs in their bag at once and buy a whole new set. Instead, they purchase new wedges when the grooves in their old wedges wear out, look for a new driver when they feel they are not getting the distance they should and shop for a new set of irons every four or five years. However, being a Connected Golfer can help a player make smarter purchasing decisions and prioritize equipment needs.

For instance, shot-tracking systems like Arccos and Shot Scope provide strokes-gained statistics that can reveal a golfer’s weakness. If driving is a player’s biggest shortcoming, and his or her shot-tracking system shows most misses are going left, sharing that information with a fitter can be hugely beneficial. It also prioritizes a golfer’s most significant shortcoming.

Similarly, if a shot-tracking system reveals that a player’s strokes gained approach the green stats are poor, the fitter can ensure distance gaps between each iron are consistent. He or she may also recommend a shaft that gets the ball to fly higher, so it lands more vertically and stops faster on the greens.

Showing a fitter your recorded swings on a system like V1, FlightScope or Rapsodo, along with the drills your instructor wants you to practice, can also help the fitter get a better picture of your game and where it is going. That can help the fitter ensure that your new gear not only fits you today, but also will help you in the future.

So, whether you are trying to contend at your club championship or are hoping that 2021 is the year that you break 100, working with a good club fitter and utilizing the information you can gather as you practice and take lessons is going to make things easier.

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The Connected Golfer: Virtual lesson technology lets you stay in touch with your instructor, even from far away

Virtual lesson technology means a Connected Golfer doesn’t have to be anywhere close to his or her teacher to receive feedback.

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The first three parts of the Connected Golfer focused on how golfers can get more information about shots they hit during practice sessions and on the course when they play. Now, the fourth installment concentrates on how a growing number of services and technologies let players and teaching professionals communicate, share videos and work together even if they are thousands of miles apart.

In the early 2000s, Ted Sheftic, one of the most highly-regarded teaching professionals in Pennsylvania, pushed an over-sized cart next to his lesson area at Hanover Country Club in Abbottstown, Pennsylvania. It held a VHS cassette player hooked up to a small television. The cart also held a tripod and a video camera that Sheftic used to videotape his students’ swings. On sunny days, he balanced an umbrella above the screen to reduce glare.

After their lessons, Sheftic gave his students a tape of their lesson to take home and review, which was among the reasons why his lesson calendar was always packed.

Fast forward about 15 years, and shift 300 miles Northeast, and you would often see Suzy Whaley on the back of the range at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut. On most summer afternoons, when she was not on the road fulfilling her duties as the president of the PGA of America, she was busy teaching. It’s where you would have found me too in 2017, taking a lesson from Whaley once or twice a month, as we tried to straighten my slice and build some consistency with my irons.

After about 30 minutes of hitting balls and doing drills, she would invariably hold up an iPad and stand about 10 feet behind me as I made a swing, then show me the video clip.

“Your takeaway is getting so much better, David,” she said one afternoon while her fingers danced on the touchscreen. She drew lines on the video to show my spine angle, the shaft angle at address and the club’s face angle as I made my backswing. “Look at that. A month ago, you were nowhere close to this halfway to the top.”

Writer David Dusek films his swing — Writer David Dusek captures his swing on camera.

A few days after each lesson, and with a few taps on my iPhone, I would watch those swings again on the range and review the drills Whaley wanted me to work on before our next session. We were about 30 miles apart, but class was still in session.

Once a novelty, now the norm

Sheftic was ahead of his time and using the technology of the day. Remember, the first iPhone was not released until the summer of 2007. Today, for golfers who are willing to invest in lessons and the instructors who teach them, capturing video of a golf swing, analyzing it and sharing it is simple.

On a recent episode of Barstool’s Fore Play podcast, Butch Harmon explained that several big-name PGA Tour players often send him videos of their swing and ask him for options.

“(Webb Simpson) sent me a film the other day and said, ‘I can feel the club is back inside again,'” Harmon said. “I said, ‘No, you’re too narrow. That’s why you’re in your own way.'”

Harmon does not go to Tour events every week anymore, but thanks to technology, he doesn’t have to travel to stay in touch with players who want his advice.

“With these things, it’s easy,” he said, holding up his mobile phone. “(Pros) can film their swing at any place in the world, and they can send me a film of it and I can pick up the phone or just text them right back.”

Beyond the simple camera that comes built into phones and tablets, several services and apps now allow players and coaches to take virtual lessons to the next level.

There’s an app for that

For instance, V1 Sports has been among the leaders in the software that allows golf instructors to capture video, review it and mark it up with lines, circles and other drawings while adding voiceovers to the clips. Instructors can then send the clips to their students using a V1 smartphone app. Students can review the lessons and drills, save them and refer to them any time. They can also capture video clips and send them to their coach using V1.

V1 has also recently developed an online golf academy that allows players to select an instructor then send up to eight swings for personalized evaluation and coaching advice.

The Rapsodo Mobile Launch Monitor links to a golfer’s smartphone using Bluetooth, then records a video of a golfer’s swing and adds a shot-tracer graphic. It also adds information like carry distance, apex, and ball speed to the top of the clip, which golfers can then share (along with the overlaid launch monitor data) with their instructors. Using Rapsodo’s Coach Connect feature to critique the swing, instructors can make comments, recommend drills based on what they see and more. Golfers can even buy virtual lessons with pros they have never met in person using Rapsodo.

Savvy instructors made great use of technologies like this during the summer and fall of 2020 when people flocked to golf courses and the sport boomed, but many people wanted to avoid close contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. Powered by smartphone cameras and other devices, virtual golf lessons proved to be a viable, effective way for golfers to improve.

One of the less obvious benefits of virtual golf lessons is when it is time to work with a custom fitter and get new equipment, golfers can show the fitter their most-recent lessons, and the drills they are working on should give fitters a better understanding of the player.

With today’s technology, a Connected Golfer isn’t limited to instructors who are close by, geographically. For instructors, technology is providing better ways to stay in touch with students and monitor their progress. And for fitters, it has never been easier to understand exactly what a player and coach are working on and build equipment that will help them produce better results.

The Connected Golfer: Virtual lesson technology lets you stay in touch with your instructor, even from far away

Virtual lesson technology means a Connected Golfer doesn’t have to be anywhere close to his or her teacher to receive feedback.

After their lessons, Sheftic gave his students a tape of their lesson to take home and review, which was among the reasons why his lesson calendar was always packed.

After about 30 minutes of hitting balls and doing drills, she would invariably hold up an iPad and stand about 10 feet behind me as I made a swing, then show me the video clip.

Once a novelty, now the norm

On a recent episode of Barstool’s Fore Play podcast, Butch Harmon explained that several big-name PGA Tour players often send him videos of their swing and ask him for options.

Harmon does not go to Tour events every week anymore, but thanks to technology, he doesn’t have to travel to stay in touch with players who want his advice.

Beyond the simple camera that comes built into phones and tablets, several services and apps now allow players and coaches to take virtual lessons to the next level.

There’s an app for that

V1 has also recently developed an online golf academy that allows players to select an instructor then send up to eight swings for personalized evaluation and coaching advice.

The Connected Golfer: Arccos data gives players an accurate sense of where they need to improve

Accurate, intricate statistics are a game-changer for any player looking for ways to get better.

After showing you how technology and new products are revolutionizing how recreational golfers can practice, the third installment of the Connected Golfer dives into ways to learn more about your game on the course, play smarter and more.

Wykagyl Country Club in New Rochelle, New York, is home to a century-old golf course shaped by both Donald Ross and A.W. Tillinghast. It’s fantastic, a classic layout from golf’s Golden Age and a former LPGA tour venue.

“Thirteen yards,” I said to Chris McGinley, who at the time was the vice president of marketing for Titleist after we played Wykagyl in August 2014. “I hit that 3-wood you wanted me to try four times today, and it went 13 yards farther than the 3-wood that’s in my bag.”

Sitting in the grillroom, it was music to his ears.

“That’s awesome,” he said, putting down his beer. “But how do you know?”

I looked around because, even as a guest, I knew Wykagyl frowns on using a cell phone inside the clubhouse. Discreetly, I slid my iPhone across the table and showed him the stats my Arccos system collected as we played. Before the round, my average 3-wood distance was 226 yards. That day, after being fit for one of his company’s new fairway woods, the on-course average of my four shots was 239.

“That is so cool,” he said with wheels turning in his mind. Sure, he was happy that the data showed his company’s new club delivered more distance, but he also saw a bigger picture. The potential use for on-course analytics collected by recreational golfers was filling his head.

How does your data stack up?

During PGA Tour events, a sophisticated system of lasers and measuring devices tracks every shot hit by every player in the field. Called ShotLink, it has collected data at nearly all PGA Tour events since 2003 and created a robust database that helps broadcast partners like CBS, NBC and Golf Channel provide viewers with exciting stats during tournaments.

ShotLink also allows the Tour to provide a weekly stats package to every player. It reveals where he stands in every statistical category imaginable, going well beyond basic stats like fairways hit and greens in regulation. ShotLink gets so granular that it shows things like proximity-to-the-hole average from specific distance ranges, greens in regulation from the rough, as well as the frequency of missed fairways to the left and the right. Players see their average score when going for the green in two on a par 5 and even things like average second-putt distance. Using ShotLink, players can compare themselves to other golfers. Coaches can discover what their students need to improve and how they are progressing, and equipment makers can fine-tune gear if a golfer needs adjustments.

Pros don’t like to talk about specifics of ShotLink very often because utilizing its data wisely can be a competitive advantage. These days, many players hire statistical experts to examine reports and translate things into easy-to-understand chunks to avoid getting lost in the numbers.

While your local club does not have ShotLink, a host of new products and technologies now let recreational golfers gather on-course data that can transform how they approach the game.

Systems developed by companies like Arccos, Shot Scope, Sky Golf, Garmin, Game Golf and even Tag Hauer have their differences, but they work using the same basic principles.

Using the GPS in your smartphone, or a GPS-enabled wearable device like a watch, shot-tracking systems can determine which course you are playing and your exact location during your round.
Using Bluetooth, they link to small tags that easily screw into each of your clubs’ grips. The tags weigh only a few grams, so they do not affect how your clubs perform.
Every time you pull out a club and hit a shot, the system uses GPS to determine your location and detects which club was used. With some systems that do not use tags, you manually enter the club into the system.
After you hit another shot, the GPS and club-detection process repeats. The system can then determine the distance between the two shots, whether the first one landed in the fairway, rough or sand, and how far the first shot traveled.

Most systems allow you to make edits to include things like penalty strokes and add the precise location of the holes, but the real magic starts after you have used shot-tracking systems for about five to 10 rounds. At that point, it will probably know more about your game than you do.

A virtual caddie?

Shot-tracking systems reveal things like the average distance you hit each club in your bag, where you tend to miss with each club, how often you hit greens in regulation, where you tend to mis-hit on approach shots and how often you get up and down from greenside bunkers. In some cases, they can even break down your game into strokes–gained categories like the pros on the PGA Tour.

With databases that include millions of recorded shots, some companies are now using shot-tracking systems and artificial intelligence to create virtual caddies. They can make club recommendations for you based not only on your skills but also on the performance of players like you on holes like the one you are about to play. They can even consider weather conditions.

For example, if you are a 12-handicap golfer playing a 430-yard dogleg right par 4, before you tee off, Arccos Caddie Advice considers how far you hit each club, where you typically miss, the wind direction and other factors. It then recommends a strategy and a combination of shots that, statistically, will most likely produce the lowest score on that hole. For players who instinctively reach for a driver on every hole that isn’t a par 3, the advice can seem odd, but Arccos Caddie works to keep fairway bunkers and trouble areas out of play while setting you up to hit your best shots more often. (See, it is smarter than you!)

Steve Bosdosh is the founder of the Steve Bosdosh Golf Academy at PB Dye Golf Club in Ijamsville, Maryland, 45 miles west of Baltimore, and a two-time winner of the PGA of America’s Mid-Atlantic Section Teacher of the Year award.

“The trick with everybody is getting accurate feedback,” Bosdosh said. “I’ll ask someone how far he hits his 7-iron, and the guy will say 180, but then when I put him on a FlightScope the balls goes 152 yards. Right there, that’s a synopsis for the problem with why people don’t improve.”

Bosdosh adds that programs that reveal stats and trends, using a player’s real, on-course shots, cut through perceptions and guesswork and allow players and their coaches to make honest, unbiased assessments.

The information on-course shot-tracking systems collect is so valuable that many college teams are now outfitting their players with them. Companies like Arccos and Shot Scope have developed dashboards that allow coaches to see their players’ rounds and stats. Using the on-course data, coaches can develop better practice plans for individual players, emphasizing specific areas for each golfer based on his or her stats.

In addition to helping you make better decisions on the course and allowing your coach to tailor your lessons and practice sessions more effectively, shot-tracking systems can help fitters get you into better gear.

“Having access to our clients’ Arccos on-course shot data allows us to fully understand each player’s unique golf DNA,” said Nick Sherburne, the founder of Club Champion and one of the company’s master fitters. All of Club Champion’s fitters get training in Arccos‘ platform and dashboard. “The data is golden. It helps golfers and our fitters better track performance while gaining an unbiased understanding of where they excel and what they need to improve.”

Equipment makers also value the data that shot-tracking systems provide. The Arccos-powered Cobra Connect system is now standard on all Cobra clubs, and Ping clubs come standard with Arccos-embedded grips. Last October, TaylorMade announced it had partnered with Arccos as well. By studying the data collected in shot-tracking systems, manufacturers can hone future offerings to match the needs of specific players.

So no, you don’t have ShotLink at your local course. But today’s shot-tracking systems make evaluating your game, understanding your strengths and weaknesses and creating a logical roadmap for improving easier than ever. Their software is continuously refining, they are legal for use during tournament play (with some features disabled), and they have become so minimally invasive that you will probably forget you are using one as you play.

Until you look at your scorecard.

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The Connected Golfer: How to utilize new range technology that tracks shots, gathers data

In our new equipment series, the Connected Golfer, we help you make the most of available data about your game to become a better player.

The Connected Golfer is a new, multi-part series that examines how advancements in technology and new products are allowing golfers to connect and share information gathered on the range, on the course, during lessons and in equipment-fitting sessions like never before. By applying real, personalized data to lessons, rounds and club fittings (no more guessing and buying off the rack!), golfers can make better decisions and more easily monitor their progress. Learn how to gather information and how to use it in conversations with coaches and club fitters, and you’ll get better, quicker, and have more fun doing it.

In the first installment, we introduce you to the practice area of the future – one that’s here today.

The views at Spanish Hills Club in Camarillo, California, are stunning. The tricky course is perched on a hill above lemon orchards, strawberry fields and farmland. However, the best thing I can say about the Spanish Hills driving range is it’s ego-boosting. As you hit down a steep slope, your shots seem to hang in the air forever.

Across the country, the opposite is true at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, New Jersey. A bastion of blue-blooded tradition, the club has hosted seven U.S. Opens, two U.S. Women’s Opens and two PGA Championships, but the members’ range slopes uphill, making shots fly shorter.

Golfers who want to improve their game spend a lot of time on driving ranges, but most facilities, whether they slope downhill, uphill or are flat, are not designed to provide a lot of feedback. Most just have flags fluttering at distances like 100, 150 and 200 yards. They are, essentially, empty fields where golfers typically hit a shot off a matt (or turf, if you’re lucky), roll another ball into place and then hit the same shot again, hoping to see a straighter flight and more distance.

But thankfully, with advancements in technology and a growing demand among golfers for more information about the shots they hit, systems like Toptracer Range and TrackMan Range can transform tired, little-used practice spaces into areas where you can learn almost as much about your shots as pros on the PGA Tour who regularly use launch monitors that cost as much as a car.

A new era of information

Chris Cote operated the pro shop at GolfQuest, a double-decker practice facility in Southington, Connecticut, for years before he bought the entire facility in 2019. GolfQuest benefits from a good location, directly off Interstate 84, and initially opened in 1997. There was nothing special about it until Cote installed Toptracer Range.

By utilizing a pair of high-definition cameras that were first developed to create shot-tracer patterns on golf broadcasts, the system can track shots hit from 66 different hitting bays.

Cameras on the range — Cameras on the practice range help collect data for players as they practice.

“Think about the technology that you get watching a football game on TV with the first down line and the technology that you get that makes the line calls in tennis,” said Ben Sharpe, Toptracer’s CEO. “That’s the technology that we’re using for Toptracer, which is our secret sauce.”

As the cameras follow the ball, Toptracer Range collects information like carry distance, total distance, shot height, launch angle, curvature and landing angle. But instead of creating a graphic for Golf Channel, CBS or NBC, Toptracer Range displays it on television screens positioned in every hitting bay. Downloading a free app on a smartphone or tablet allows a golfer to access that information directly from his or her device.

Toptracer broadcast — Toptracer has become a key element of golf broadcasts.

TrackMan Range, developed by the same Danish company that makes the popular TrackMan launch monitors used by pros, works in much the same way. A radar-emitting transmitter positioned at the back of the range follows a shot’s path, then sends information to an app on your smartphone or tablet where you can see all kinds of information.

Systems like Toptracer Range and TrackMan Range encourage effective and efficient practice. In a single session, you can easily discover the average carry distance with every club in your bag. These systems can also help you work on things like accuracy, consistency and feel.

For example, if you want to work on approach shots, instead of hitting at a flag that happens to be 125 yards away, you can pre-select any yardage you like and Toptracer Range or TrackMan Range will reveal how close you come to that distance. The systems will not only show you your shot patterns, they will reveal your most-common misses and tendencies, too.

If you are learning to shape shots, your eyes can tell you that a ball is moving from right to left, but Toptracer Range and TrackMan Range can reveal exactly how much your shots curved, and how much they rolled out after landing.

There’s no guesswork here, just hard numbers.

An extra benefit is that Toptracer Range and TrackMan Range save all the data collected during your sessions in the system, so you can review your shots on your smartphone, tablet or desktop computer later. You can also share the information and findings, and that’s when things can get really interesting.

Knowledge is power

Golfers can take the information they learn on shot-tracking-enabled ranges and put it directly to use on the golf course. For example, if you know that your 6-iron has flown an average of 150 yards over the course of five practice sessions, when you’re faced with a par 3 that requires a 155-yard carry, picking a 5-iron will be an easier decision to make. Similarly, if you know from shot-tracking range sessions that hitting a half-swing sand wedge sends the ball 45 yards and makes it stop quickly, you can reach for that club more confidently the next time you are forced to play from that awkward distance.

If you are taking lessons, it is one thing to tell your PGA of America instructor or pro that you practiced three times since your last meeting, but it is another to show him or her data from each of those sessions. When an instructor can see tracer patterns of your shots and view your dispersion patterns with each club, he or she can get a better feel for how you are progressing.

Toptracer range, Connecticut — A player browses shot data at Chris Cote’s range in Southington, Connecticut.

Likewise, sharing information you gather on shot-tracking-enabled ranges can help club fitters get a better understanding of your tendencies and the distance gaps between your clubs the next time you need new gear. Instead of relying solely on the shots you hit that day during your fitting, the fitter can consider a much larger number of shots and make better recommendations for you.

For the facility, shot-tracking systems offer benefits too. According to Toptracer, 90 percent of the facilities that add Toptracer Range see an increase in new golfer visits, with 74 percent of golfers going to those facilities specifically because they have Toptracer Range. To help facilities afford the equipment and costs associated with installing Toptracer Range, the company offers a five-year leasing program, but according to Sharpe, many ranges become cash-positive within the first month of operation because of the increased traffic.

“The Southington location has been absolutely insane,” Cote said. Even in the midst of a cold New England winter, with the range itself covered with snow, heaters and covers above the hitting bays have kept things, in Cote’s words, overwhelming.

After Toptracer was installed, Cote utilized Facebook and Instagram to get the word out about the upgrades to his facility, but after six months he stopped. The word was out and his business was thriving.

Cote opened a second Toptracer location in Portland, Connecticut, in June 2020 and said that with no advertising, within a month the range was packed.

“The younger kids absolutely love it,” he said. “I think they almost prefer it over playing golf. I really do. They hang out with their buddies, have a couple of drinks and don’t have to worry about the group behind them. They can play music. It’s fun!”

The bottom line is this: Empty-field, traditional driving ranges are still the norm, but as you can see by clicking on these maps, (here and here), there are lots of facilities where you can track your shots and gather data easily. More are coming soon, and in time, golfers at every level are going to practice more effectively and use what they learn in those practice sessions to become better golfers.

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