The Future of Ball-Flight Monitoring

[Ryan Smither]

Are ball-flight-monitoring technologies such as Trackman & FlightScope susceptible to major improvements? (i.e., becoming a lot smaller & lighter) For example, might they one day be incorporated into handheld devices or golf bags for easy range access and/or in-game use?

(Perhaps this is the million-dollar question)

If so, the USGA & R&A should be out-in-front on this one. I can hear it now: "What was my VSP on that one, Billy?"

 

[SteveT]

Doubtful... check out how phased array doppler radar works. It needs height to do it's job.

 

[Brian Manzella]

They'll always be upgrades.

And other ways to do it.

But....

It will always measure the same thing.

 

[crkranz]

They'll always be upgrades.

And other ways to do it.

Bmanz- do you think anything like the Swingbyte or SwingSmart holds any promise?

 

[cwdlaw223]

SwingSmart looks cool, but when you watch the promotional video from the PGA show on the website and the founder says 3-5* closed was good and I cringed! 3-5* closed is in the left trees with decent driver speed. Of course, no path readings. I suspect the best in th next five years will be a price point under $2,500. These guys won't give away their technology for free unless pushed. Would you? I wouldn't. Patents will create a barrier to entry.

 

[ParHunter]

Bmanz- do you think anything like the Swingbyte or SwingSmart holds any promise?

I just had a look at the SwingSmart website and just by judging what screen shots they have, I would say it looks more like a random number generator or at least nothing really useful.

They show club face angle (relative to what? I assume they can only measure relative to address as the iPing app does). They've got values of 11 and 16 degrees open. In most cases that would slice it off the planet.

Then they have attack angle. One shows 26 degrees (flipped) and the other one 11 degrees (lagged). Again what is that angle relative to? Do they mean maybe shaft lean? They are certainly not values that map in any way to the values you get from TM or FS.