Random Golf Thoughts

I played the O'Meara last year as a guest for €35 iirc. Great course and in fantastic condition. There's a beautiful stretch of holes on the back 9 when you reach the river.

I use Arccos all the time, there are 2 types of rounds so when you are starting the round you set it to tournament or casual. No issues after that, its no different to any GPS once you do that. I use my Apple Watch with it and have the caddy link so don't really look at my phone too often but it would be the same as Hole19 or Golfshot once you set it to tournament mode.

EDIT: Just to add the 'extra' stuff you get with casual mode isn't all that useful IMO and not sure how trustworthy it is. It suggests clubs based on your averages and says it accounts for things like wind and elevation too but I don't know how it does that. I still just use the old grass in the air to help with winds.

I find the stats in the app great, particularly around your clubs and how far they are going, SG stats etc. but I don't read too much into the suggested clubs or distances the caddy suggests when using the casual round type in the app. I do use the average distances though as a general guide for how far I hit each club and find it very reliable for club selection.

Arccos is great at confirming what part of your game is letting you down, you probably know already but its nice to see it represented statistically. I use it to compare myself to an 8 handicapper, started at 9 then when I got down to 9 I moved it to 8 and hope to continue doing that as/if I progress so it tells me where I'm losing strokes to an average 8 handicapper and where I'm gaining.

Just as long as your phone doesn't have any apps that display wind direction/speed and that sort of thing, you should be fine.

Distance measuring is fine as it's static information, but wind measuring is not as its dynamic information

Well then don't use your phone on the golf course.

Getting the forecast before you go out is fine but being able to get an actual measurement of wind in the spot you are standing right now is bad.

If in doubt, leave the phone in the bag

Yep, Rule 4.3a (2)

https://www.randa.org/rog/the-rules-of-golf/rule-4#4_3

• " (2) Information on Wind and Other Weather Conditions.Allowed.
  • Getting any type of weather information (including wind speed) that is available from weather forecasts, or
  • Measuring temperature and humidity at the course.
• Not Allowed.
  • Measuring wind speed at the course, or
  • Using an artificial object to get other wind-related information (such as using powder to assess wind direction).

So a phone would be an artificial object you cant use during the round to get wind speed/direction. Towels and hankies are other examples. The tried and tested blades of grass are pretty much you're only option, therefore making it still a judgement.

So if your phone has no way of measuring wind or if you like having arguments on the golf course in a he said/she said kind of thing, then phone is fine. But be warned that an opponent is well within their rights to question your use of the phone, prohibit it and/or attempt to penalise you for using it if they feel they have good cause for doing so. [ and there are some people like that out there! ]

No worries :)

Hopefully you dont have browsers on there either that can search for wind gauges :D

Seriously though, if you click the link there's other things that are disallowed from an analytics point of view, but I dont know if they impact the app you're trialing, so its worth checking out before you bring it into a match :)

Fair enough :)

iPhone weather app shows the wind etc, so I could just use that on my phone if I wanted, as an example

That would be a forecast rather than live data. Forecast is ok

My watch has a mode which suggests which club you will hit. It might be called a caddy mode and I think the might advertise it as a caddy function, but it's beyond useless for that. For one, the average distances recorded for each club are not how far you typically hit that club. And two it will base it on distance to the middle of the green, so ignores a change in elevation, wind and whether or not you actually want to hit the middle of the green. But I wouldn't be surprised if that function is illegal in competition.

I've the Garmin app and I'd continue to ignore them indefinitely. I used to hit a 3 wood if I was hitting into the wind, or if it was a left to right cross wind. Which meant that I was only hitting driver if there was no wind or a favorable one. Which meant that my driving distance average went over 270m at one point. I'd say 230m is more realistic. Whereas my 3 wood was shorter than my 5 wood.

But even if you're hitting it normally the majority of the time, I still found the average distances out by enough to be useless. I think the app includes your shots that are way further than normal, but excludes the shorter ones. So my 4i average was about 200m - it should have been about 180m.

Looking through my bag now, it doesn't look to be a million miles away. I think it's about right for my 3 and 5 wood, 7i and pitching wedge. If I trusted it for the Driver, 5 and 6 irons I'd expect to be coming up short. And if I trusted it for my 4 hybrid, 9 iron and gap wedge I'd expect to be going long. And looking at my 8i distance, I'd be on a different hole. I bump and run with it, and it must include those!

But that's not to say that the distance measurement on your watch isn't useful for gauging your distances. It's fantastic for it. But I'd suggest constantly looking at how far you hit each club and using your watch to measure it. You won't hit many shots that weren't affected by wind / slope / course contours. You'll have some sense of how far you hit each club already. So if you think your 7i is 150 yards, you'll now know when you're that distance from the middle of the green so keep an eye on whether you're going long or short from there. Then you'll have to think about whether there were other factors like wind or catching a flyer, etc. Also, keep a close eye on your pitch mark. If you hit it 150, but 15 yards of that is run make sure you know that! It's no use hitting a 7i into a 150 yard par 3 when you don't have enough carry distance to comfortably carry the water.

One of the most useful benefits of the distance measurement feature is finding your ball by the way. You'll have a line on your ball and with the watch you'll have a rough distance too. So you'll often have a decent idea of where it should roughly be.

I wouldn't say useless, but carry is definitely more important. From this point of view I'm lucky that I hit the ball high and spinny. So my ball runs very little on the greens. From the point of view of where it lands though it's not great - it could be blown 40 yards offline while hanging up in the air.

Is there any massive difference between Arccos and Shotscope, in real world terms ? I find Shotscope gives me more than enough for what I want, and wrt yardages, identifies outlier shots so you get an "Average" distance per club (presumably including every shot), and a "Playing Average" per club. No idea how it decides what's an outlier. There is a neat feature where you can mark a shot as a positional shot, like a punch out from trees, so (again, presumably) that shot isn't included in your yardages and strokes gained metrics.

The only query I'd have of the gps tracking systems/apps, is how do they account for elevation changes ? or do they ? I play a very hilly course and, for example, was hitting a few practice shots last night just before dark on our 18th hole - in one direction I hit half a dozen 3 wood shots and when I gathered them and hit them back down to the bag, a 6 iron was enough in the opposite direction. I've often wondered if that's factored into the averages.

Measuring the temperature at the course before you go out is fine. Measuring the temperature when you're on the 4th hole getting ready to play your second shot from 195 yards is not as

every

degree

counts!