2020 Official Member Review: Exputt putting simulator

[yungkory]

Dang I was gonna go with @cksurfdude and add 1 putt to what CG2 did, but I missed the boat I guess, and definitely underestimated the amount haha

[Golfspy_CG2]

4 hours ago, cksurfdude said:

Have not looked at it yet, but maybe as a "workaround" you could go into Play mode and have Player 1 with one putter and Player 2 with the other..??

Not sure what stats they give you at the end for each player, but presumably there is at least #/% putts made by each?

Yeah, Play Mode does't keep the stats like Practice mode does.  You just putt on that hole and move on. 

4 hours ago, cnosil said:

Haven’t used play mode at all, but I recall reading that each players putts are different to avoid learning the line from a previous player.

Yes Also! What this guy said

 

[Golfspy_CG2]

1 hour ago, yungkory said:

Dang I was gonna go with @cksurfdude and add 1 putt to what CG2 did, but I missed the boat I guess, and definitely underestimated the amount haha

Maybe @gavinski91 is really sandbagging us all.  Maybe he's not really on vacation with his wife, but locked up in his man cave and going to hit us with a 1,800 output or something! 

[cksurfdude]

..slowing down .. but I've set a target...

[cnosil]

..slowing down .. but I've set a target...

The question is whether I or anyone else can reach that 400 yard target with a 100 mph swing.

[bvmagic]

Have any of you tested multiple putters yet on the exputt to see how your gamer stacks up to the backups?  From what I read so far, the camera is just analyzing path  / speed but no putter club head data (ie launch / face impact).  

[Golfspy_CG2]

24 minutes ago, bvmagic said:

Have any of you tested multiple putters yet on the exputt to see how your gamer stacks up to the backups?  From what I read so far, the camera is just analyzing path  / speed but no putter club head data (ie launch / face impact).  

I haven't tested them at the same time. Meaning yesterday I used my Scotty Cameron 5.5 for the entire session.  Previously I have used my Spider X.  One thing I may do during this weeks Practice Mode is do a 50 putt session with the SC, end that one save all the stats, then immediately do one with my Spider X and see how the data differs. 

In addition to the ball speed--immediately after impact, and the putter path, it also measures face angle at impact.  Both of those are illustrated in two places in the screen shot I provided.  Right below the practice time and number of putts, then again in the lower right hand corner they are presented as numbers.  

[cksurfdude]

On 7/21/2020 at 3:05 PM, Golfspy_CG2 said:

Maybe @gavinski91 is really sandbagging us all.  Maybe he's not really on vacation with his wife, but locked up in his man cave and going to hit us with a 1,800 output or something! 

Made it to 661 and man that was a whole lotta putting!!

But I think I may also put my wager on the younger dude 

 

* EDIT:
May have to go again -- just scavenged a portable A/C from an upstairs bedroom where it was not currently being used; was sweating my butt off the other day..!

[cnosil]

4 hours ago, bvmagic said:

Have any of you tested multiple putters yet on the exputt to see how your gamer stacks up to the backups?  From what I read so far, the camera is just analyzing path  / speed but no putter club head data (ie launch / face impact).  

I haven't yet,  but it is part of my plan to run through all of my putters.  Partially to compare how they work and partially because they are different colors and I want to see how well the system handles the colors and inserts.     

the system provided ball speed/distance, path, face angle at impact, and launch direction.  

[cnosil]

Well,  I am sure one of the questions on everyone's mind is does the ExPutt practice translate to the course.   Here are some initial thoughts on my on course putting over my normal weekend round and 9 hole league round.  Right now my summary would be that I am in the middle of taking lessons and some things with my putting just aren't working right but I am trying to get through them.  My typical struggle is longer putts 30'+ and leaving the ball short and over those 27 holes I have had a few putts greater than 30'.   With the Exputt I have been practicing using a green speed of 9 which seems to translate pretty well on the practice green.  Today I was rolling all kinds of long breaking putts within 3 feet of the hole.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to get that to translate to the course.  Over those 27 holes I have had 9 putts of 27' or more and have 3 putted 6 of them.  While that sounds horrible, I am still encouraged because the putts are going past the hole by 5 or more feet and most have been downhill.   The reason that I feel like I am in the middle of lessons is because I am training new distance feels which has impacted tempo and stroke.  Right now I am optimistic that the distance putting will get better.    Another think that I want to do is go measure the practice greens on a few local courses to see what speed they are rolling.   

Obviously,  we are just at the beginning of this experiment so come back for more updates.  

 

[GolfSpy_SHARK]

12 minutes ago, cnosil said:

Well,  I am sure one of the questions on everyone's mind is does the ExPutt practice translate to the course.   Here are some initial thoughts on my on course putting over my normal weekend round and 9 hole league round.  Right now my summary would be that I am in the middle of taking lessons and some things with my putting just aren't working right but I am trying to get through them.  My typical struggle is longer putts 30'+ and leaving the ball short and over those 27 holes I have had a few putts greater than 30'.   With the Exputt I have been practicing using a green speed of 9 which seems to translate pretty well on the practice green.  Today I was rolling all kinds of long breaking putts within 3 feet of the hole.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to get that to translate to the course.  Over those 27 holes I have had 9 putts of 27' or more and have 3 putted 6 of them.  While that sounds horrible, I am still encouraged because the putts are going past the hole by 5 or more feet and most have been downhill.   The reason that I feel like I am in the middle of lessons is because I am training new distance feels which has impacted tempo and stroke.  Right now I am optimistic that the distance putting will get better.    Another think that I want to do is go measure the practice greens on a few local courses to see what speed they are rolling.   

Obviously,  we are just at the beginning of this experiment so come back for more updates.  

 

Great recap. Can’t wait to see if there are some results down the road

[PMookie]

I did an analysis as well on Sunday when I had the EXPUTT set-up in our front “living room”. Taking a look at my graphs, I have quite a bit of fluctuation in some. With this mode running in practice, it can be saved, and then stats change with each subsequent round. Really cool! By-the-way, I sent my stats to the guys at SeeMore to see if the think any tweaks to my putter could improve the numbers. We’ll see!

 

[PMookie]

5 hours ago, bvmagic said:

Have any of you tested multiple putters yet on the exputt to see how your gamer stacks up to the backups?  From what I read so far, the camera is just analyzing path  / speed but no putter club head data (ie launch / face impact).  

I haven’t because the ONLY other putter I have is my Dad’s old Anser from the 70s, which is significantly lighter than my SeeMore. I tried the Anser on-course earlier this year, and it’s just not playable on the greens I play. I’ll give it a go on the EXPUTT, but I only think it will do well on the shorter putts.

[yungkory]

42 minutes ago, cnosil said:

Well,  I am sure one of the questions on everyone's mind is does the ExPutt practice translate to the course.   Here are some initial thoughts on my on course putting over my normal weekend round and 9 hole league round.  Right now my summary would be that I am in the middle of taking lessons and some things with my putting just aren't working right but I am trying to get through them.  My typical struggle is longer putts 30'+ and leaving the ball short and over those 27 holes I have had a few putts greater than 30'.   With the Exputt I have been practicing using a green speed of 9 which seems to translate pretty well on the practice green.  Today I was rolling all kinds of long breaking putts within 3 feet of the hole.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to get that to translate to the course.  Over those 27 holes I have had 9 putts of 27' or more and have 3 putted 6 of them.  While that sounds horrible, I am still encouraged because the putts are going past the hole by 5 or more feet and most have been downhill.   The reason that I feel like I am in the middle of lessons is because I am training new distance feels which has impacted tempo and stroke.  Right now I am optimistic that the distance putting will get better.    Another think that I want to do is go measure the practice greens on a few local courses to see what speed they are rolling.   

Obviously,  we are just at the beginning of this experiment so come back for more updates.  

 

This is promising. I had wondered how that would work since, obviously, there's only a few feet of mat to use. This thing is looking like it might be something I have to try. Maybe I'll Homer Simpson someone and "gift" it to them in the hopes that they'll let me use it hehe.

[PMookie]

In my first few times using EXPUTT I was able to see my “pull” on putts inside 6 feet, just like on-course. After just three practice sessions, in Sunday’s round of real golf, I had only one pull! I was able to keep my putter on a better path overall. With the face angle and putting path reads by the Exputt showing on-screen on each putt, it’s easy to start correcting those issues right away. One thing I have noticed is that I’m in-to-out with my path, but I have a slightly closed face. Results in Exputt are just like on-course: most putts miss to the right! 
It’s SO early in testing, but what I’m seeing so far is really cool!!!!

Take a look at the pics below. In the bottom right is “putter path” and “impact angle”. In the bottom right of each of those boxes you can see the overall running average for that practice session! 

[cnosil]

Just now, yungkory said:

This is promising. I had wondered how that would work since, obviously, there's only a few feet of mat to use. This thing is looking like it might be something I have to try. Maybe I'll Homer Simpson someone and "gift" it to them in the hopes that they'll let me use it hehe.

The mat never really concerned me since most of my at home practice is withing that distance anyway (yardstick, and gates for startline).   The whole concept just makes sense;  the camera measures that roll on the mat and calculates speed, direction, watches the putter and captures path.  It really is just a big math problem;  I'll post some more about that later.  

[cksurfdude]

Practice Mode / Mega Putt Contest

First - big thanks to @Golfspy_CG2 for suggesting this .. normally I would not spend hours in a row rolling hundreds of putts, but it turned out to be a great way to become more familiar with using the ExPutt.

For this practice session I chose a Green Speed of 10 - which feels reeeally fast to me, but I struggle with distance control on fast greens; and Distance of Random from 5 to 10 feet - as these are the putts I'd like to increase my make percentage on (and I'm thinking I'll work my up to longer distances a step at a time).

After the initial setup of the system the other day, I rolled a few putts to start to get the feel of how the ExPutt works ... and those first few putts were somewhat awk-weird and were a bit all over the place.

This practice session for the mega putt contest went much better! It was really helpful to just keep rolling putts, working on hitting them straight and at the right distance each time .. which of course varied from putt to putt in Random mode - so changing speed each time was also really great putting practice!

In the following is an overview of my results and some impressions of actually using the ExPutt.....

 

[DriverBreaker]

It looks really cool! So don’t my have to calibrate the camera to a line on the mat or something? I mean if the camera is angled incorrectly, wouldn’t it throw the readings off?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

 

[cksurfdude]

13 minutes ago, ChasingScratch said:

It looks really cool! So don’t my have to calibrate the camera to a line on the mat or something? I mean if the camera is angled incorrectly, wouldn’t it throw the readings off?

During setup of the mat and camera the user manual give you dimensions for min/max height of camera plus horizontal distance of mat based on the cam's height; note these ranges have some latitude.

Then when you turn on the camera you can pan and tilt until the mat looks "square" to you .. then when everything looks good the system will search for the mat and give you on-screen directions if you need to adjust anything. 

Each time you turn on the system/camera it will perform the search to make sure it can properly see the whole mat.

I have it all in a fixed location in the basement, so the physical setup is constant and each time I turn on the cam it finds the mat.

In another step of testing I plan to compare the ExPutt numbers to ones generated by Blast Motion Golf.

[cnosil]

It looks really cool! So don’t my have to calibrate the camera to a line on the mat or something? I mean if the camera is angled incorrectly, wouldn’t it throw the readings off?
 
 
Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy
 

Adding to the above comment above. Even if you don’t leave it setup all the time; I don’t, you can be up and running in minutes.

[Golfspy_CG2]

5 minutes ago, cnosil said:

Adding to the above comment above. Even if you don’t leave it setup all the time; I don’t, you can be up and running in minutes.

I think you mean you can be up and running in minutes.  I know mine is and I take it down each time as it's in a high traffic area. 

[xOldBenKenobiX]

This is another review I am very excited to see the results.

I am also regretting that I did not apply for this one.

[cksurfdude]

1 hour ago, xOldBenKenobiX said:

This is another review I am very excited to see the results.

I am also regretting that I did not apply for this one.

Haven't had the chance to play since getting this, but I can definitely tell that as my mega putt session went on I was getting more putts in and more of the misses left much closer .. so looking forward to more practice time!!

[Golfspy_CG2]

I got out and played 11 holes today before the rain came.  I will say the time I spent on the Practice mode earlier this week definitely paid off.  If no where else than in my setup and club path.  

I hit a few 12 to 15 footers dead on line that died maybe 4 to 7 inches short.  I asked our Super who I was playing with what the greens were rolling.  He said a little less than 9.  Do to the extreme heat we've had he can't cut them to short. 

This made sense, as I have been using 10 on practice mode.  

But keeping cognizant of my face angle and path is a direct result of the feedback from my session on EXPUTT. 

[cnosil]

 I am sure @Golfspy_CG2 will be mad at me because I didn't include any photos in this intro,  but its purpose is to get to know me and my initial impressions.   Trust me there will be lots of photos and videos in the near future.  

 About Me:

To get started, my name is Chris and I am a recovering putter ho.  I’ve been playing golf off and on since my early teens and weekly since the 90s. When I got serious about golf the putter became my favorite club.  I never had a large collection of putters (10 is probably the most I have owned at one time) but have gone through a variety of putters through the years.   In 2011 I found a putting specific instructor on another golf forum and have been working with him since that point in time.  He taught me all about the putting stroke and how it works and I use the guidance he provided to target specific putter specifications when I am purchasing new putters.   For those that don’t know I have been one of the testers for MyGolfSpy’s Most Wanted testing.  I typically participate in almost all of the club tests but I really like the blade and mallet putter tests.  Outside of my interest in golf, one of the things that I think qualifies me for this testing is my occupation; I am involved in software testing. 

 My Golf Game:

At my best I was playing to a 4 handicap but over the past few years my handicap has been going the wrong way.  I do consider putting one of my strengths but can have some bad streaks.  I practice putting a lot.  Most evenings when watching television, I setup some gates or putt down a yardstick to work on matching up path and face angle. Since I can’t roll long putts in the house and Most Wanted Testing only goes to 20’ my weakness is lag putting; specifically, 30’+ is my problem area.   I haven’t tracked my putting in a while, but when I did, I averaged about 31 putts per round.  I will be evaluating my improvement based on 3 putt avoidance and how I perform in the 5-15 foot range.  My current putter is an Odyssey Ten S but as part of this test I will include an EvnRoll 2.2, Bobby Grace 6330, and a couple of old ping putters. 

First Impressions:

This is typically where you start to see photos of the product but since a new review template was developed we have already started dropping some info about the product and photos….so no photos or videos here (:, but there will be lots more as we go through test. 

I had heard of the product prior to its being offered for testing and since I love putting, I knew I wanted to apply.  After being selected, we received the product within days of providing our mailing information.

            Packaging:  The product came in an ExPutt branded cardboard box containing 2 boxes for the product.  The first being the putting mat and carry bag.   The second contained the camera, cables, mounting accessories, remote, face stickers, and user manual.  Overall a professionally packaged product that would survive some bouncing around

            Setup:  Setup is very straight forward, hook up some cables, roll out the mat, turn it on and start practicing.  Time from box to working is less than 5 minutes. The quick setup is advantageous since I put the product away after use.  I have tried various size TVs and all generally work; the only issue is that you may have to change the HDMI mode to get the extreme left and right screen edges to be visible. Some of my TVs don’t have this feature and while a minor inconvenience my OCD makes it bothersome.  The camera can be attached to the TV or can use the included stand.  I personally needed to move a second TV into my Den since I like to watch TV while I practice putting.

            Product Quality:  All the components appear to be high quality.  The mat is thick and is a rubber type material   One minor complaint is that it seems to attract pet hair as mine stays covered.  Fortunately, lint rollers work well to remove. 

            Portability:  While I would say the product is portable (the shipping box is 11.5x16x6) is isn’t something you just put in your carry-on to take with you on an airplane. 

            Measured Data: when putting on the mat, there is an outlined area to place the ball. Once the ball has been struck the system will provide putter path, face angle, ball speed, and launch direction.  Pretty basic information but should be adequate enough to personally analyze your putting stroke. 

            Modes of Operation: there are three modes of operation that will be covered as we progress through the testing process

• Practice – straight putts to holes of between 5 and 50 feet.  I foresee this will be where I would spend most of my time.
• Challenge – scored performance on greens with various slopes.
• Play – Play against your friends.  Unfortunately, no online play mode. 

 General Comments:  We have had the product for about a week and while I haven’t gotten too deep into testing my initial impressions are favorable.  Some things of note:

• Lighting – this aspect of the product appears to be crucial and in low lighting conditions, the system will struggle to capture ball data and club data even with the provided face stickers.   I need to do more investigation to determine if providing direct lighting to the mat will improve this.
• Balls – Ball selection does have an impact especially color.  The user manual states that you should use a clean white ball; but some of us don’t read the manual so I tried a variety of colors and finishes.   Dark matte balls and truvis balls seem to be susceptible to not being read after being hit. 
• Measurements – While the measurements seem to be accurate, I believe there is too much weight for face angle.   From what I have read in documentation from putting gurus is that the face angle at impact has and 80-85% include on direction and the putters path the remainder.  When I did the calculations of launch angle, it looks like the face angle has a 95% influence on direction.   For a player that struggles to have consistent path, this may impact on course performance. 

 

[cksurfdude]

@cnosil - based on earlier comments you'd made about lighting problems, I put a reading lamp behind and to the side of my mat and it seems to help as my system startup has not given me any messages about poor lighting...

[GolfSpy_BNG]

Just got caught up on this whole thread and you guys are killing it!  
Like others have said I am really intrigued to see how this helps with distance control.  That seems to be my biggest issue causing 90% of my 3 putts.

This may just be what I need to pass the time during the long cold a$$ Iowa winters

[cnosil]

Just now, cksurfdude said:

@cnosil - based on earlier comments you'd made about lighting problems, I put a reading lamp behind and to the side of my mat and it seems to help as my system startup has not given me any messages about poor lighting...

That is what I was going to mess around with next time I set it up.  I am guessing that it isn't about how  much light is in the room but how much is on the mat.   Having enough light on the mat enables the camera can see the various marks.  

[PMookie]

Well... At a loss tonight. I set-up the Exputt in the bedroom again, and again tonight it had trouble giving me path numbers to start. I brought in another lamp, moved it around some, and it finally started to pick-up. BUT.... For some reason my path went from 2.9* average in-to-out, to now 5.9* in-to-out. Really odd.

I then moved the Exputt across the room and tried again. Same thing..... No matter what I did on the through swing, it was showing in-to-out. I moved the lamp, changed the ball, even changed to my Dad’s putter, and STILL 5* plus in-to-out. I finally got frustrated enough that I packed it up for the night. I wish there were a way to calibrate it........

Anyway. I’m going to move it back to the front room tomorrow and see what happens. 

[cksurfdude]

17 minutes ago, PMookie said:

I finally got frustrated enough that I packed it up for the night.

It's always possible it may be a faulty camera or processing unit... Maybe try their tech support - and mention you're an MGS tester!