Shot Trackers

[furu]

Arccos. Game Golf. Shot Scope. The three big guys in shot tracking. I've used all of them, and I need some help figuring out if they're completely useless or just a little unnecessary.

 

Accuracy

 

What is the GPS accuracy? 3-4 meters? 

 

These systems are not accurate enough to know if your shot landed in the fairway or rough.

 

Different shots

 

Does the system know what type of shot you're hitting? Full swing? Low punch? No - it doesn't. The distance averages are useless unless you play full shots all the time from perfect lies.

 

Did you just chip with your 8i? What does that do with your stats?

 

Lie

 

If you've got a bad lie and hit a bad shot because of it - doesn't matter to these systems. They just know which club you're hitting, with a somewhat ok understand of where you're hitting it from because of the 3-4m accuracy.

 

Weather

 

Windy day? Getting your driver stats screwed up? Shot trackers have no idea if it's a hurricane or perfect weather.

 

Course conditions

 

80 meters roll on dry courses in Spain? Or zero roll on wet courses in England? 

 

Two things

 

There's only two things these systems can tell you - how many times you've used each club, and the general direction of your shot. Or am I wrong? Are they more accurate than regular GPS devices? Do the sensors pick up if it's a half swing? 

 

I used to love them. Please convince me to love them again. Let me know why they're reliable. 

[TSauer]

Right before I sold my Arccos set, they did implement the weather in there.. at least the wind. It used those numbers and gave you a "plays like" yardage if I recall correctly.

 

All of the other things you mentioned though, that's correct. They don't know punches, half swings, dry/wet course, etc.

 

Imo, the primary use for such trackers is to help you figure out what club you'll need at a given yardage. Yes, certain things may mess up your numbers like windy days, chipping with an 8i, short punch outs, so on and so forth. But, once you play enough times, your yardages will reflect your normal hitting distances and thats what people look for.

 

I don't think there will ever be such a piece of hardware that can track your game and tell you that you're 100 yards out, you can either 3/4 swing this club, full swing this club, or grip and rip this club.

 

At the end of the day, there isn't anyone/anything that knows your game better than you. Someone with a low handicap or scratch golfer won't get as much fulfilment out of it as say a high handicap who doesn't quite have their distances figured out. If the sensors were smaller or I could invest in a set of Cobra grips with them all built in, I'd definitely use it again.

[ddryan]

Agree with your concerns.  I am gaming Shotscope, and you can see what I have said so far here.

 

I am not sure, but will check, and I think, that Shotscope is now or soon will be featuring a "positional" feature that allows the choice of a 'positional' shot that wont count against "normal" statistics - for example the 8i punch shot from the rough or behind a tree back out into the fairway. 

 

I have been very engaged with the Shotscope team, asking questions, making recommendations, and generally providing un-varnished feedback to the Shotscope team, and in return they are working several of the issues (i.e. they are going to add a "distance to hazard" feature in a soon to be released update; an issue with the accuracy of a particular hole on my home course, which they have revised and should be in play next round, etc).  I have seen the "positional" selection on the dashboard during editing my round before saving (after I have downloaded it on to my computer) and I think that is what it is going to be used for- but another issue I have with Shotscope is that it is NOT intuitive- Apple product  it is NOT. 

 

That said,  I like the feedback and the information that it tells me (certainly better than the check marks (fairways and greens in regulation) number of putts, bunkers, saves, etc on my scorecard, along with all the other crap (other players scores, side bets, skins, etc, etc, etc.).  So Shotscope helps me track and remember my rounds.

 

I have not used it enough to actually look at practice work and see if  I can make improvements, but the groundwork is there.

[GolfSpy MPR]

Yep to pretty much all that you've said.

 

I think the best use of these gadgets isn't getting yardages on the course. If that's your main desire, a range finder is likely the quicker, more precise tool.

 

As for getting your club gaps, these tools are useful. So far as I know, all of them will use statistical/algorithmic features to discount shots that are outliers. That would include not only punches and the like, but also chunks and other bad shots. In other words, after you gain enough shots to have a useful sample size, the software isn't just averaging all the shots, but it is going to tell you where you shot with each club tends to cluster.

 

For me, the greatest use of these tools isn't yardage, though. It's their ability to isolate where I'm leaking strokes, and the ability to track, over time, if I'm making progress in those areas. To be sure, there are weaknesses here: there are times that Game Golf will think I've made a poor short game shot because I missed the green on a pitch. But it didn't know that my ball was nestled against a tree from a bad approach shot. The bad shot had already happened, but its badness is invisible to GG, which can only see the position on the course.

 

Overall, though, these things tend to average out, so that the stats generated about different facets of the game correspond pretty well to reality. Overall, my short game does need massive improvement, even if the stats get muddled by a fluke shot now and then. My putting really does save my bacon on a lot of rounds. And over the course of a dozen rounds or so, the noise in the data is mitigated.

[JTexGolfer]

Agree with your concerns. I am gaming Shotscope, and you can see what I have said so far here.

 

I am not sure, but will check, and I think, that Shotscope is now or soon will be featuring a "positional" feature that allows the choice of a 'positional' shot that wont count against "normal" statistics - for example the 8i punch shot from the rough or behind a tree back out into the fairway.

 

I have been very engaged with the Shotscope team, asking questions, making recommendations, and generally providing un-varnished feedback to the Shotscope team, and in return they are working several of the issues (i.e. they are going to add a "distance to hazard" feature in a soon to be released update; an issue with the accuracy of a particular hole on my home course, which they have revised and should be in play next round, etc). I have seen the "positional" selection on the dashboard during editing my round before saving (after I have downloaded it on to my computer) and I think that is what it is going to be used for- but another issue I have with Shotscope is that it is NOT intuitive- Apple product it is NOT.

 

That said, I like the feedback and the information that it tells me (certainly better than the check marks (fairways and greens in regulation) number of putts, bunkers, saves, etc on my scorecard, along with all the other crap (other players scores, side bets, skins, etc, etc, etc.). So Shotscope helps me track and remember my rounds.

 

I have not used it enough to actually look at practice work and see if I can make improvements, but the groundwork is there.

You are correct on positional. I use it for punch outs and layups on par 5's.

 

I mostly use Shotscope to analyze my putting and short game. Knowing how often I get up and down with certain clubs and how close I hit them helps me target practice time for pitching and chipping.

 

Full club distances can be somewhat aggravating. I play in windy South Texas so it can play hell with yardage's. I also use my PW for 75-80 yard shots a lot so it's number is way off.

 

Shotscope has lots of room to improve but they are working on it. I have been in touch with them multiple times and they have been quick to answer any of my questions or concerns.

[HardcoreLooper]

Any decent shot tracker should let you opt shots out of your stats. I use GolfPad, and it lets me do that. For other reasons, it's a pain in the neck and I don't love it, so I only use it when I play by myself.

 

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk

[JTexGolfer]

As an admitted golf stat junkie I have my eye on the new Game Golf Pro. If it does the things that they say it will I may have to ditch ShotScope for it. The shots gained metric is something I calculate myself for putting now but would prefer to have my shot tracker do it for me. I also liked how they appear to track misses in visual form like a shot dispersion chart. I really want to see this info for my irons.

 

Hoping that MGS does some testing on the Game Golf Pro when it comes out. If it opens for forum testers I will be jumping up and down in the back of class to get picked lol.

[TR1PTIK]

A lot of what you say is correct, but my experience tells me that Game Golf is pretty accurate on location and can tell when I've found the rough or the fairway - if not I can edit the shot to reflect where I was. It's not perfect and they're never going to be for any reasonable cost.

 

I do keep a spreadsheet separate from Game Golf and only record distances for shots I hit full or INTENDED to hit full - If I mis-hit a shot that still needs to count towards my averages so I have a truly reliable number. 

 

As for the different lies and weather conditions, I'm not sure I really care that Game Golf and other shot tracking systems don't accurately account for that. We don't always play in pristine conditions and should develop the skills required to score during those times. I'm not going to fault the wind for not knowing how to flight it low and take more club nor will I fault the lie in deep rough for a flubbed chip or shank. Does it effect strokes gained stats? Probably, but not enough for the information provided to be incorrect. If I suck at short game, it tells me. If can't putt worth a crap, it tells me. That' s all I need to know to improve.