Hello everyone. This is Ray Dipriano from Forward, Texas, the home of
the lag Great Ben Hogan and I play a rockwood golf course and Forward.
This is a golf Marder number. The amateur golfer doesn't have two or three
hours a week to go in practice. We have fifteen minutes before a round.
We maybe get to the range and hit fifty or sixty balls. Therefore,
you need the data to provide you with the insights. Say hey,
you're fifteen minutes fread, go and practice or lag putty that's where you lose
shots. Or hey, go and do a little bit of bunker play,
because bunker play is killing you. And it's those small insights so that you
maximize the small amounts of time that you can for the maximum game, and
that's going to end up in slightly lower scores, a happier thread on the
golf course. You'll then play a little bit more, you'll practice a little
bit more, You'll just enjoy the game that little bit more. It's marginal
games, but they add up improve your performance. With helpful data and metrics
provided by shot Scope featuring Gavin Dear, this is Golf Smarter, sharing stories,
tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and
raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to
the Golf Smarter podcast. Gavin, Thanks Fred, thanks for having me on
again. Oh yeah, I really enjoy talking to you because I love tech
and when I say tech and golf, I mean stuff with batteries, not
necessarily golf equipment, you know, clubs and things like that. Some people
mix up my kind of tech. And you're with Shotscope. We've had you
on multiple times and shot Scope is the real deal player in this space of
rangefinders and now a new golf GPS watch, the V five and the pro
lx which is the rangefinder and GPS handheld, and I really am enjoying using
them and I want to talk about them all and get in some of the
details, especially the software it's on the phone to allow you to track your
your game and where your trouble is and what you need to improve on.
How's business things? I hope things are as good as the Yeah. Business
business is good. I mean we're growing really quickly, you know. And
for your listeners that haven't heard me before, we're based in Scotland, so
we're second biggest in the UK market. The UK market differs from the US
market and then it's a bit more watch based, so the Garment is the
market leader here we're number two, Bushnell are number three. But we're growing
quickly in Europe, quickly in Australia, New Zealand, and then very quickly
in the US. So we had some major rollouts with Dixporting Goods, Golf
Galaxy, PGA Superstore and Golf Town in Canada and they've really propelled us to
grow and make me pretty busy, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Now with Garment and bush Noll, I think that you guys have offerings
not completely familiar with their products. You have offerings that they don't provide,
Is that correct? Yeah, tags and yeah, because there's go ahead,
Yeah, no, you're right. So, I mean we do all of
the traditional lineup of distance measuring devices, so your range finders, your handhelds,
we do an app, and we do our watches. But within those
products, we've got multiple offerings that provide shot tracking and that kind of separates
us from competitors and their shot tracking products with different levels of requirements from the
golfer. So some are what we call manual and they require tagging and you're
going to hold at the end of your club which has got our tag on
it, to the device. And then we've got those that are automatic,
which are more wearable based, and they'll do a lot of the heavy lifting
for the golfer. So they're just playing the game. And it differs on
the wants and needs of the individual golfer of what type of product and tracking.
But you know, we're starting to see within golf tracking is becoming one
of the major talking points. It's providing the data, it's providing the insight
and how golfers can improve both in their individual level, but golfers as a
whole, and how should golf be taught in different elements. So it's really
gathering state. Yeah, and to me, the golf tracking is the big
separator. The other one that I guess everybody would be familiar with would be
arcos, but all they are are the shot trackers. Yeah right. They
just you put it on the end of your club or you buy a grip
that has it built in whatever, and it tracks for you, which is
great, But everything else you need to do while you're on the course,
as far as you know, you know, pin placement and things like that.
You've got to use separate units, separate software, where as what shot
scope is now offering with the tagging, you have it all. And what
I'm loving right now is that i just got myself some new irons and I'm
you know, had new grips put in them, and I'm using the tags
on them. And it's mainly because my club fitter is like, I want
to know your statistics. Play for a month or two and then bring in
and let me know how you're feeling about it. And I said, well,
I'm tracking every shot so I can show you the stats and see what
the clubs are, how they're performing. Yep. And he was like,
perfect, that's exactly what I want to look at because for me just going
well, I hit this one okay, and I hit that one okay.
I mean I can beat that as well. We have a free coaching system
for fitters and golf coaches, so if he ever wants to connect up,
he can see as you upload rounds, he can see all the data come
in on his own account. So but yeah, look, this is this
is what tracking's about, right, It's about golfers being able to take ownership
of how they can improve. You know, we the amateur golfer doesn't have
two or three hours a week to go and practice. We have fifteen minutes
before our round. We maybe get to the range and hit fifty or sixty
balls. It's therefore you need the data to provide you with the insights.
Say, hey, you're fifteen minutes fread, go and practice your lag putting.
That's where you lose shots. Or hey, go and do a little
bit of bunker play. We think you should get a lesson because it bunker
plays killing you. And it's those small insights so that you maximize the small
amounts of time that you can for the maximum gain. And that's going to
end up in slightly lower scores, a happier thread on the golf course.
And you know, you'll then play a little bit more, You'll practice a
little bit more, you'll you'll you'll just enjoy the game that little bit more,
and you know, it's marginal gains, but they add up. Yeah,
for people who just don't care about improvement, they just want to go
out and play occasionally, you may not need all that information. But for
anybody, and I'm guessing that's who's listening to podcasts about golf, who are
interested in becoming a better golfer, and as we always promote a better smarter
golfer, this is the kind of information that you can use in your off
time. You know, after your round, you go home, you have
dinner, you're sitting there watching TV. You pull out your scorecard, you
pull out the app, you compare them, you make sure everything is really
in sync with one another, which you still have to do. Yep,
you still have to make sure that everything is right because it doesn't always track.
But it's pretty accurate and it's really informative. I really appreciate having this
technology. Yeah, and it's there's elements as well, so you know for
listeners who are sitting there thinking I should investigate this, it's we make the
system simple, so you're going to get you upload your rounds. And what
I should say is the device is our g watches, so they're going to
give you all the information you need on a golf course whilst they track in
the background. So it's two products in one which comes into the floor when
you're off playing a scramble or you're going to go out and play six holes
and you might not want to track, You're still getting value from the products,
right, It's not oh well, I can't use this today. I
don't want it's not going to be how I'm going to play. But when
you upload the rounds, you're going to first of all, see an overhead
of all your your holes that you've played shot by shot. That's fascinating on
itself. And then you can dig deeper and it's not a case of you're
going to get lost. It's made very The app's really simple, and that
to get to incredibly granular data, you're going to have to keep clicking.
So you can go as deep as you want to go. You can stay
really high level if you want to. We do huge amounts of tutorials and
ebooks and information, but we also show you against your handicapped benchmarking, so
we can show you at a very high level. Hey, short game approach,
play putting. You're losing shots here. You need a concentrat on putting,
and so it's not you know, I talked to a lot of golfers.
I'm really scared. I'm scared to be that in depth into my game
or spend that amount. And you go, well, actually you can get
a huge amount from spending five minutes on the app, you know, and
maybe in six months time you'll spend twenty minutes because you get more into it
and will want to learn even more. But you can just do it in
five minutes. It's not going to suck up your whole life. I think
it's one of the things we hear quite a bit is I'm scared of this.
This could be my night's forever more. But you know, those are
the people who will also say I don't want to get fitted yet because I'm
not consistent. I don't want to get fitted for clubs. And it's like
no, no, no, it's backwards. Or it's the guy that's like,
well, yeah, but I spent six hundred bucks in a driver and
you say, yeah, but you did that last year. Have you thought
about using data to analyze gapping in is it? Do you should you add
a wedge? Have you got you know? Is it time to move from
a long arn to hybrid? All of these things that can really make a
difference into buying decisions and all sorts of elements of the game. You mentioned
just a moment ago about handicap benchmarking. Explain that, yeah, so we
what we do is we break down golfer. So we'll offer tour player scratch
five, ten, fifteen, twenty twenty five. So if you come along
handicap, and if you come along, say I'm a twenty two handicap,
you can toggle and compare yourself to twenty or fifteen so you can understand what
it's going to take to get to that next benchmark. And we do that
across both strokes gained stats and traditional stats like ferries and regulation greens and regulation
number of putts, so you you can get a grasp of what that next
level of golfer is doing compared to yourself, where your strengths are and where
your weaknesses are. It's huge, and this is there's a lot of talk
on tour and when you're reading things, talks about the strokes gained. Yeah,
and this is information that this provides, right, you get this information.
Yeah, and when you know, there's a few of us in the
company that will do analysis at times for different elements, and we always rely
on strokes gained as the first area that we'll go and look at, and
that's because it it will isolate those elements of the game so you can really
see. Okay, well, you know, we break the game down primarily
into four areas, driving, approach play, short game, and putting,
and with strokes gain, you can immediately say, okay, it's short game,
right, great, Fred, your short game is not as good as
the next benchmark. And then you can go and look into more traditional stats
within short game to understand is it bunker play, is it long pitching,
is it short chipping? What is going on in that element? Right?
Stortzgain is fantastic for that. It's made a huge impact on how professional golfers
play. It's made a huge impact on how professional golfers practice, and it's
starting to filter down more and more into the amateur golfer, the handicapped golfer.
Hey, you should be pulling this data and understanding right, because it's
just it's really simple. Data doesn't lie. Yep. I'm looking at the
app right now and I went under the performance tab, pulled up clubs,
and you have three different comparisons here, and I'm not sure there's the longest
whether you drive or whatever club you're hitting your longest, your average length over
the amount of time you've been using this, and then the p average,
which I don't understand what that means. So p averages performance average, and
what we do there is we remove bad outliers and good outliers to give you
a distance that we feel is a good swing and a good strike is a
distance the golf balls going to go. The more rounds you play, the
more accurate it will become. Sure, but you play six eight rounds generally
all clubs, you'll have enough data that it's pretty accurate. And we brought
that in because average is so misleading exactly. You know, like I was
playing over the weekend and there was a shot that I had that I never
normally would have pulled out maybe my nine iron or even a pitching wedge,
but because I had to get under a tree to get to the green,
I pulled out a seven iron and punched it out. Luckily, I you
know, it was like one hundred under an eighteen yard shot or something,
and it was perfect and it rolled up and it left me a twelve foot
putt, which was awesome. But it's like, you know, that's what
I was like, how do I deal with shots like that that really doesn't
really compare my normal seven iron shot or or I had a couple of web
shots that I just chunked them and they only went like eight or nine yards,
so that this will be eliminated, those shots will be eliminated the performance
everage. Yes, I mean it removes a lot. I can't quite remember
the whole algorithm, but it removes maybe fifty five percent of bad shots and
twenty five percent of good shots, So it leaves you with quite a small
number of shots to average at that stage. Huh. But I mean to
give you an idea. Yeah, you know, if you upload around to
our app, it'll process in about six seconds. And those six seconds,
it's going through something like one point seven million lines of code. Wow.
And it's processing things, and it's looking and it's it's understanding exactly what you've
done and taken into all these little algorithms to spit out all the right information
to you to make it really simple to consume. Wow. So when I
go into the performance tab here on the app on my phone and I'm using
an iPhone, it gives me options of clubs, t shots, approaches,
short game putting, and scoring, and if I click on scoring here,
it has an overview on a per whole score breakdown, and then It also
has the stroked gain strokes gained and you can do that compared to a tour
player versus or I'm going to go versus a ten handicap and show what I'm
how I'm doing. And there's just so much data here that is so much
fun to just to get used to and to look at and see again where
do I need to improve? Yeah, and you know that's the performance data
side of the app M. You know, you can go on to individual
courses that you play a lot, and we will give you strengths and weaknesses
of those individual courses and we'll identify the holes where you lose the most shots
to the field. You may go and think, hey, this is I
should change my strategy in this course. We have tools like my Strategy where
you can plug your data in if you're going to go and play a new
course, so you can understand, hey, what should I be hitting off
the first hole or that driver will bring those two bunkers into play. Actually
it says I have a better scoring average by hitting three with off the first
team. There are so many tools within the ecosystem to be able to learn
about your game but also performed by through on the next course you play.
Mm hmm. And one of the things about the brand new watch, the
V five, which is we'll talk about it in depth because I'm just loving
this product, is I have a couple of courses where I play that there's
no cellular signal for the carrier that I have. There's just no service at
all. Yep. I was so happy and shocked that when I turned on
the watch and told it to do GPS and shot tracking within seconds like,
okay, I got the course, you do? Oh I am. It's
so nice to be able to put my phone back in my bag now instead
of carrying out my pocket all the time. Yeah, just to make sure
that I have a signal, So congratulations on that that it can pick up
the signal whether you have a you know you're using your phone or not.
Yeah, So none of our products require it. Well, I say that
we have one product that requires using your cell phone connects, but any of
our wearables are our handhelds. It's all independent GPS, so you don't need
the phone. You don't need it at all. I mean, I hate
it. I like the amount of emails I get. So the phone stays
in the car. I can just play my game of golf. I don't
have to worry about it. I don't have to look at you know,
text messages from the wife or anything. So you just get to go play
golf, right And that's one of the advantages of GPS products. You know,
they'll work anywhere. It's all pretty straightforward in that element. It doesn't
require Cellier signal at all. Some of the other features the watch offers is
when you finish the round, it tells you how long the round was,
how many steps that you took, which I think is great, and what
time it is. I you know, oh, so what's the temperature now?
Or you know, what's my elevation change during this round? Those are
things I don't know if that's you know, to be built in the future,
or if it's not just relevant, or maybe it's only relevant for me
because I'm in northern California. There's lots of elevation change and I played a
ninety five degree heat this weekend with a lot of elevation change. But the
fact that it works, it's comfortable, and it gives me so much information
for every shot that I want to take, I think is phenomenal. It
really is my favorite product. That you've shared with me so far as the
five watch. Yeah, I mean, I mean, look, we we've
got so many guys using this watch. Now. It's simple to use.
It doesn't have touch screen, it's just buttons. Straightforward. You can have
the on course maps on it so you can see exactly everything you want to
ahead. If you don't know the golf course, you can just use simple
hazards front to carry and to get to them. It can keep your scoring.
You can change the colors so you know, if you want it to
green and white, blue and white, pink, red and white. You
can do a number of things with the watch, and it again it's it's
just straightforward and simple to use. And it's something that we've worked incredibly hard,
both in the hardware and also the software, is make it usable,
you know, make it straightforward. We don't all have you know, we
don't want to sit and read through massive user guides and try and you know,
have a big learning curve to use products. You just want it to
be pretty straightforward for the golfer just to open up and put it on the
wrist. Another thing about the watch that I'm madly in love with is that
the battery life on it is really strong. I've tested how far can I
go? I've gone two rounds. Yeah, but on the second round the
little battery icon came up. I was I think on the fourteenth hole of
the second round, and the battery icon came up. So I'm like,
okay, I'm not going to be tracking the shots. I'll just enter the
score and see what happens. And it made it all the way through,
and when I got home to charge it, it's like zero percent. You're
ready to go. You need to be charged. So that was amazing to
me that I don't have to charge every round. But I'm definitely getting in
the habit of that the charging cable. Not a huge fan of the charging
cable. Tell me that that it's tight. It's a little bit tight.
It listens, and I find it to be loose. I mean it falls
out real easy. Right, Okay, that's unusual. So normally it's a
little bit tight and it listens out. So one of the challenges, and
we get this quite a bit, why don't you just have a USBC poor
on your rights? Right, Well, it's not proof. So everything done
with the charging is to make sure that it's waterproof because it's got a direct
line into the electronics in the battery and even though it's on the underside of
the watch, you've got sweat yep. So the watch is fully waterproof,
it's fully tight because of that charging and that's one of the challenges you have,
right, So what I would say is it may fall out occasionally,
it may be tight. We don't get guys that can't charge their watch.
It always works. We've replaced a couple of cables, but again that's where
we're supporting will step in and not our problem, will get you a new
cable, etc. But that's that's the main reason. And when we get
that a lot, why don't you use USBC. It'd be much easier.
It's generic. Yeah, but it's not waterproof and when you build products in
Scotland, that is the first thing you look at. And the straps are
interchangeable. You can well I mean yeah, you have to supply the straps,
yes, so not like you can go out and buy a new strap.
So the reason that it's automatic is that if you man it. If
you imagine going to a hotel room key or your hotel room and you've got
the room key and you tap it against it. It uses NFC technology.
Well, our strap has got an intenna inside it and it actually expands NFC
to about ten centimeters so that when you're standing over the ball, the strap
can interact with the tag without you touching it, without you doing anything.
To do tracking, you have to use a shot scolled strap because it has
this intenta inside it. The straps are inter changeable, they can be screwed
out. We've got a variety of different colors available. But so that is
kind of one of our usps, right, this technology enabled strap. That
makes sense. So let's talk about the tracking system what you've developed, and
this is your brand new tracking system from the LX Plus to the V five
Watch. Arcos is very good about you just know which club. It just
knows which club you're gonna do. When I was using the LX Plus,
I would frequently forget to tap the GPS unit to the club and was like,
oh, now, I darn it. You know now I go back
to where I was standing. I took forty five steps. I got to
go back or run back or just like forget it. I'll fill it in
later. The tags for the V five for the watch, it works a
lot of the time, but not all of the time, and sometimes I'm
really surprised that, like, oh, okay, it got that one,
and why didn't it get this one? But then I have to like take
out the club and hold it right up to the watch, tap tap tap,
It's like, why is it not you know, accepting it every time?
Is that because of the tags that I'm using, or is there something
I'm doing wrong? It should accept. So generally, I would say at
this point, I am. I would normally be able to pull up some
of your rounds so I can access into your back end rounds and look at
some of the data collection. So we look for examples, and our support
team are brilliant at doing that and analyzing and working out okay, look it
could be this, right, we normally miss. It depends on the golfer.
Maybe a shot around, so if it's any more than that. Now,
one of the interesting sides is that if you're playing on hilly golf courses,
and this is quite technical and difficult to do on a podcast, but
if you're standing normally on a flat lie, the watches in range of the
tag. If you're on a side hill lie where the balls really above your
feet. Have a look at what happens to the end of the shaft and
the tag compared to your wrist, so you end up with a bigger area
between this, and it might pop out of the range of the watch.
That could be one reason we used to encounter that a little bit. We've
combated it a little bit. It's interesting. I mean, the the tag
reader, so we for those listening, we show the tag that's been read
last on the watch. Yes, right, I love that. It's like,
oh, okay, I missed it. I have to go back.
That is ninety nine percent right. It doesn't mean that other shots weren't calculated.
If you're missing pictures around the green again, that could be because you're
gripping down a lot, so again the watch falls out of the tag.
We asked the golfer to input the number of putts with pin collect but that
includes shots with the putter from off the green. So sometimes golfers go I
didn't realize that. We'll worry about if it's called a potter. It's a
short game shot afterwards, But just tell us the number of times you've hit
the putter. So that's a way that somebody can miss a few shots.
So there's a number of different elements that we can always look at, and
it's amazing how much our guys can pull out of the data that's collected and
sort of analyze it and say, Okay, fred, I think here here
and here you Yeah, I'd love for you to check on you know,
you guys to look at what's going on with mine and because I'll do a
follow up on that after afterwards on different show. But I found that the
really the driver is the one that's most consistent of doing the automatic tagging irons
and the my three wood doesn't always. It's it's pretty inconsistent, surprise,
but it's still to me worth using because of all the other elements that the
watch provides for me. And I've also noticed, am I right about this?
From the previous tags that you had that you had to do manual on
the LX plus to the automatic tags on the the V five The tags are
a little dens or a little thicker, aren't they? Yep? Yeah,
and so so we the reason they're a little bit thicker, and we're talking
like three mil Yeah, I was holding them up against each other, not
that I notice it. There's a little bit of a curve on the underneath,
and that's the cater for sort of domed grips, which are becoming slightly
more common. It just provides a better fit effectively. Yeah, and the
other thing that I'm concerned about, I've already lost one tag. They seem
to come loose, and so now I've gotten into another habit of after every
shot is screw them in a little tighter, screw them in again, screwed
it. Because and I have brand new grips, and I lost a five
iron tag, so I you know, yeah, so I use my four
iron tags. So and every time I tap my my my five iron to
my watch, it comes up as four iron. It's like, okay,
that's right, I made I put the four iron tag. That's why.
So these are just my graps I just have. Luckily, I'm lucky to
have the platform to be able to have this conversation with you. I'm not
complaining about it. I'm just giving my observations and what's happened with me so
far with this thing. But it is definitely a game changer for me on
these tags. The way that you can automatically do it, it really helps
a lot. Yeah, No, absolutely, And Look, it's it's one
of the challenges with data collection. There isn't a totally perfect solution that is
absolutely fel well, there is one yet, there is one, but it's
on the PGA tour. It takes four hundred volunteers, three trucks. It's
amazing how they don't ever lose balls. Yeah, it's unlikely to be at
your local golf course at any time soon. So look, there there are
definitely challenges, you know, And when you're talking about battery life of the
product, you know, we're running this any see technology through the antenna.
We've got the GPS. We have the largest GPS chip in any golf watch,
which the larger GPS provides more accurate information, and so you know,
it is the battery power is probably the biggest challenge for us, right sure,
you know, because because you're dealing with all these heavy consumption components,
so you're trying to manage that. So to get out to turn a bit
rounds, it varies massively dependent on golfer battery life. You would see two
rounds is would be about ninety ninety five percent for golfers. It depends on
the golfer. It depends on how many practice wings they take, how many
shots they take, how they just lay. It can be more intensive.
I know some golfers that can do three rounds, so again, they're probably
playing a bit quicker, you know, three hours forty five. Maybe there
maybe take round in seventy five shots, but they don't have many practice ones.
It's just that's the variation that we're kind of playing with at times,
right, It's not it's not exact science. Yeah, So what is your
suggestion as far as the tag's coming loose on my grips? Do you is
it something that I'm doing wrong, because it doesn't you know, it doesn't
screw until it stops. It just keeps. It gets to a point and
it just keeps going around and round and round and around. Yeah, okay,
I need what type of grips do you have? There's a question when
grips I was gonna say, don't don't say black ones, when black grips.
Okay, when black grips, I mean, I'll go and speak to
the support team. I don't hear that very often. Coming back. Oh
interesting, but I now I've saved a couple by you know, like,
oh, I'm glad I paid attention to them because I'm about to lose this
one, do ye? Like I said, I lost one from the five
iron already, and that's I think I've done six rounds with them. Okay
since since I got them. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll double check
that and come back to you, because I haven't heard a lot certainly.
Yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean, I don't play enough golf
that it would ever encounter into my game. But well, you have little
kids at home, yeah exactly, But then you get a job. I'll
speak to the guys and find out if that's common and what they do to
combat it. Let's talk about your product line. What what are the options
that you guys are offering these days. I mean, I've all I know
I've talked about today was the pro LX Plus and the V five Watch.
What else is going on? What are the differences? Yeah? So goodness
me. I mean in short tracking products alone, A way of connects which
is sort of ninety nine bucks tags, mobile app, really simple way into
shot tracking. You get a GPS app out of it. You have the
H four which is the hand held version. Again it's manual for tracking.
That'll come in about one hundred and fifty bucks. Then we have the V
five Watch, which is two hundred and forty nine dollars automatic tracking GPS.
And then we have an X five, which is a touchscreen version of the
watch ceramic bezel, and that comes in at two nine to nine. So
we've got a couple of watches. The V five is probably our most common,
really easy to use with the buttons. And then look, we've got
a juggernaut of a rangefinder in the PROL two. So the PROL two is
a simple one button range finder that's one hundred and fifty dollars. It's probably
going to be the top selling rangefinder in the US and quantity numbers this year.
It's just you know, it has ever, it's sloped as a cart
magnet, it's easy as good optics. For one hundred and fifty dollars,
it's you know, an absolute steel. And then we do a few different
rangefinders all the way up to our pros ed R, which is we launched
at the PG Show this year. It's a premium rangefinder with a metal body
hardshell. So you know, I was doing tests in Florida, like running
over it with a golf cart all sorts of you know, it doesn't impact
this thing at all. We've dropped it from two stories up onto concrete,
still usable, all sorts of elements, so really robust rangefinder, incredibly fast
and that's three hundred dollars. So we have a real breadth of product line
and that helps us from a global standpoint, because there's certain products which will
really really resonate in different markets and that helps. So for instance, in
Australia we sell tons of the X five watch. We don't sell many V
fives. In the UK we sell lots of V fives because the touch screen
is terrible in the rain. All touch screens are terrible in the rain,
so they go for the button option. We introduced our handheld tracking and our
mobile tracking for the US because golfers were unsure about wearing watches on the golf
course. Now that's changing really quickly. The golf GPS watch market is flying
in the US, growing quickly, mainly because it's so simple and golf and
a lot of golfer saying if they wear a day to day watch, it's
probably going to weigh double. Howbre I swing in this it's totally different to
the actual golf specific watch. So yeah, it's it's fascinating and that's you
know, propelled us to grow as much as anything having that breadth of product
line. Sure, sure, I think that the the pro l X plus
the one that I've been testing out as well. Uh, I love I
use it. I mean even though I've got the watch on, you know,
I'm using it a to compare the distances. That says the middle here
to a wide flag, you know, how much room is it? So
that's really helpful sometimes if it's a if it's a blind shot to a flag,
I can you know, use both of them in conjunction then walk off
and go Okay, that's I now I know exactly where I'm trying to go.
So we we had an early rangefinder. Our first rangefinder was called the
proel one and I was myself, we've got very good golfer, Jen Saxton,
she's currently playing the British Ladies in Ireland, very good golfer. And
we were down near London seeing our PR company and they are based on a
golf course and they said, look, it's four o'clock, why don't we
go play nine holes? And I didn't have my watch with me so we're
playing and we get round to the night. That's a par five the pins
at the back, but it's firm and I'm sitting there going right and our
PR guys watched me, says, you're not happy, Gavin. I was
like, well, it's two forty to the flag, but I want to
land at the front edge of the green. I have no idea how far
that is. I can't gun it with the rangefinder. I have no idea.
We finished, we had some dinner. Jen and I drove like six
hours back to Scotland at night and we were talking about this and at the
end of the trip we'd come up with the prolex plus of here's how you're
going to have the range finder, here's how we could have the distances on
it. But if we make it so that it's a hybrid rangefinder, but
you can separate the products and you can integate integrate tracking into that as well,
so now it's three products in one, but it's going to give you
everything you need. And yeah, that was a fun next day when we
had to explain, right, guys, here's what we think we should build
and here's why. But it was all based off that one experience of trying
to play with a rangefinder going but I can't get the number I need.
And it's so cool, so really interesting way of product development. And that's
how a lot of our products, our features are developed within shots got It's
based on conversation and personal experience. Ton of golfers are within the team,
all different standards, all coming back on a Monday. I played two rounds
here with the challenges I had. Here's how I think I could improve,
here's the information I want. Lots of different ways of to develop features.
I've used a couple of you know in the past rangefinders that had built in
tracking GPS tracking on them and always love the combination. It's such a great
compliment. But the way you guys did it was so much better than anything
else i'd seen. First of all, I think that the rangefinder itself the
way you've designed it, so it's a grip and for somebody who may have
shaky hands, older, it's it's really a great It really helps you stabilize
it to get a good shot of the flag, and then to whether you
want to keep the GPS tracking unit attached to the rangefinder via the magnet or
put it on your belt loop or on your hat or just in your pocket.
They're a great compliment and a phenomenal design. I mean, it was
the hard compliments to your It was the hardest user guide we've ever had to
write because there's so many ways you can use the product, you know,
and you're going, well, what if they want to do this? You
go, right, But it's i think is for what can be incredibly complicated.
It's lots of technology in one product. We've done a great job of
separating out making it simple to use, you know, and and functional for
all situations. So it's also a showstop, you know, showstopper when you
go out to different shows or different events and you've got a picture of this
and everybody stops and has a look and goes, wow, that looks a
little bit different, you know, in both the contouring of the rangefinder,
as you say, for the grip, but also the way that the handhelds
on the back so it's right underneath the eyepiece and you can see the distances.
Yep, yep. All winner, great products, great stuff. Pricing
is phenomenal. Really enjoy it, and then being able to use the software
afterwards to figure out how in fact you are doing makes a huge difference.
But you still need to keep your scorecard, keep score if we want to
really pay attention to what's going on so that you can compare and go in
a minute, I didn't bogey that at all. Yeah, right, so
but again it's shotscope dot com, Shotscope dot Com. Yeah, we've got
all the information. And I would say, look, there's two sides of
this. You can go on and have a look at the products, etc.
But we've got tons of information. So if you're interested in just learning
a bit more about how data can impact your game, you can go on
and pull some of our ebooks. It's all free. You can go start
learning and use some of the things that we've learned in your game without even
having some of our products, right, and no subscription service needed, no
subscriptions for any of our products. And we we launch new features all the
time, whether it be to the products or in the software system. You
know, we've got a pipeline, so there's lots of value add but yeah,
we're not going to ding you subscriptions at all. No. Well,
Gavin, I really appreciate you being a friend of Golf Smarter and allowing me
to be critical of your products, but still appreciative of how much they can
help every golfer. I really really do enjoy it. Thanks so much for
coming back on No, I always enjoy it. And yeah, look,
we will love feedback, right, because that's what inspires the next level of
innovation, the next level of infermitt Right. So it doesn't matter whether you're
on a podcast, whether you're plague six rounds or you played three hundred rounds.
For our products, we want feedback, so we go out actively looking
for that. Thanks to this week's Golf Smarter Ambassadors, Ray Cipriano of Fort
Worth, Texas, who recorded his show opening on his phone. Now,
I say ambassadors because I made a mistake on this one by sending the same
instructions to two different listeners who were writing in to get Tony Manzoni's video of
the Lost Fundamentals. So, since I don't want to shortchange Richard Alberti of
Coral Gables, Florida, let's hear from him too. Hi, this is
Richard Alberti from Crol Gables, Florida. The course that I played frequently is
the Buildmore Golf Course. This is Golf Smarter number nine fifty four. Now,
if you'd like to become a Golf Smarter Ambassador and introduce a future episode,
I'll make sure that you are the only one to intro a specific show
number, and when you do, you'll have a choice of three great gifts.
All you need to do to get your free gift is right to golf
Smarter Podcast at gmail dot com, and I'll get back to you with some
very simple instructions on what to say, where you're from, where you play,
and what episode it is. If you have any questions, comments,
or suggestions for upcoming episodes, please write to golf Smarter Podcast at gmail dot
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