K-Vest vs Launch Monitor

[wulsy]

To all those with experience of both:

Which is more useful for golf lessons with:

1: good golfers (single figure HCP)

2: beginners, no skill golfers

Additionally, I have heard that K-vest is not the best product on the market, just the best marketed, supported by TPI. What would be the alternatives around the same price point?

Regarding launch monitors: Tackman is regarded as the best/most accurate, followed by Fightscope. Are there any others worth considering?

Thanks.

 

[rmartingolf]

To all those with experience of both:

Which is more useful for golf lessons with:

1: good golfers (single figure HCP)

2: beginners, no skill golfers

Additionally, I have heard that K-vest is not the best product on the market, just the best marketed, supported by TPI. What would be the alternatives around the same price point?

Regarding launch monitors: Tackman is regarded as the best/most accurate, followed by Fightscope. Are there any others worth considering?

Thanks.

I used to work for Golftec and they had the original K-Vest if you will. It's all just motion capture and KV has a really spiffy integrated unit that is all wireless. GT still has basically their first generation unit still in play. Wires all over the place, Velcro out the a$$. Switching to lefty was a pain.

Motion capture is pretty cool for evaluations to show the new client how much hip bend they have at address or what their shoulder tilt or secondary tilt is at the top. The big metric they looked at was hip rotation at impact. It's pretty overwhelming to the new student that comes in who has never even seen their swing on video much less motion capture. Sorry to get off on a GT rant.

The problem with motion capture is after the initial eval you are focusing on positions and not skill. You can literally work on positions until the cows come home. I had a GT client tell me that the instructor that I took over for never got past p2 in a whole year with him. They set you up with tones that either turn on or off if you get out of a certain range. I guess I'm old fashioned in that until they can master certain fundamentals dynamically I don't worry about positions unless they are just all jacked up to an extreme.

Launch monitor technology is the future. I don't think you will find a serious teacher that doesn't have one in the next few years. In fact, if I didn't have one I would feel woefully behind the times right now. Now that Flight Scope has produced a unit that can compete with Trackman for 1/3 of the cost you are going to see more guys using them this season than in the last 3 or 4 combined. It has also helped that sites like this have admins that are big on TM.

 

[mjstrong]

Apples v. Oranges

They are obviously two different technologies. I think that both (how's this for sitting on the fence) can be very useful.

Personally, I believe that what the club does in the golf swing is a little more important than what the body does, so you could make an argument for the LM.

However, if you already have a very good understanding of ball flight, you might be able to figure out those numbers on your own, and then make extra use of the 3D machines.

I am not that familiar with the pricing of K-Vest, but have used it a bit, and find the info to be very valuable. I would think that the 3D systems that are substantially better would also cost substantially more. Similar to Flightscope/Trackman.