Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ron Galen from Longmanow, Massachusetts and I play
at long Winow Country Club.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter.
Speaker 3: Hi. This is Susannah McGhee from Sarasota, Florida. I play
golf at the Preserve Golf Club at Tara in Bradenton.
And this is Golf Smarter Number Oney twenty. Welcome.
Speaker 2: An average golfer isn't using a yardage book, probably doesn't
know how to read the contour lines and the elevations.
Our goal is to provide them a prescriptive answer that says,
before you hit this t shot. Here's the aim point,
not to say replace yardage books, maybe a different use case.
And then what we've heard through a lot of folks
is building intuition to play smart is really difficult in golf.
If you don't play with a lot of really good players.
If you're a fifteen handicap and you don't play with
a lot of great golfers, how do you know you
shouldn't shortside yourself? How do you know maybe you should
take this different line? You just don't. And so people
have used shot sense and have seen okay, it keeps
angling me over here. Why is that like Okay, there's
water over here. I need to shift over this way
the pins over here? Why is it keep saying aim
towards the fat part of the green? Now I'm better
understanding this. One thing we get really comfortable with is
the rangefinder of zapping the pin. It's one sixty two
and you're like, all right, Like maybe I'll take a
yard off and a yard to the left. We can
do better than that now that we have all of this.
Speaker 1: Data, understanding and optimizing strategy for every shot using the
shot Sense app. Featuring Brent Neville. This is Golf Smarter,
sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to
help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Speaker 2: Here's your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast. Brent, Thanks Fred, happy
to be here, Glad to have you on here. Let's
get the mouth and first thing. On a Monday morning,
we're recording this, so there's a lot of competition out there, right,
there's like in what you're doing and we haven't even
talked about what you're doing yet. But like when I
started this podcast, there were two or three golf podcasts,
it was easy to stand out and be on top.
Here we are twenty years later in the podcast world,
and there are a lot of podcasts. A couple of
years ago, apps started coming out for your phone so
that you have a GPS on your phone, and it
was just a GPS. But it's getting crowded in that
space too. There's a lot of apps there, and you've
come up with something unique. And I know that your
fingers are crossed that you are unique compared to everybody else,
but I think you have a lot of reasons why
it is. Let's talk about the shot sense app.
Speaker 2: Yeah, grab, yeah, thank you. Yeah. Definitely a crowded marketplace.
Maybe I'll I think a step back and think about
you know, how we view the golf landscape of like
getting better lowering your scores. We think about it very
simply as you can either hit the ball physically better
or you can play smarter. Lots of innovation in the
ability to physically hit it. New clubs, new swing AI,
swing analyzer, launch monitors, simulators, all the golf specific fitness programs,
Lots going on there, and then I think for a
while that the playing smarter hadn't had as much innovation.
There's a lot of golf GPS apps out there that
maybe show you the satellite view and you can move
a cursor around rangefinders really despite their price going up
quite a bit in the last you know, five years
or so, technology that's over twenty years old, and then
you have some you know, larger course management let's like
teach you how to think about it, or if you
were to go to some clinic they can teach it.
We kind of look at that and say, well, now
that we have modern computing, now that we have a
better understanding of how the analytics look, how can we
leverage the supercomputer in your pocket to provide you the
optimal strategy for every shot, for every course tailored to you.
And that's really what we think. So you'll hear me
say this quite a few times of de averaging these
large data sets that were historically used to provide things.
Good example is Strokes gained very very super helpful, very novel,
but based on a very large average data set. That
is what Brody had to do ten years ago when
we didn't have all of this modern computing. So that's
kind of where we're excited to go forward. Just that
the capabilities that we have today that just frankly didn't
exist two five, ten years ago.
Speaker 1: So you talk about Brody, you're talking about the Strokes Strokes,
Strokes gained elements of the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So so Brody came out with his book.
Yeah yeah, Mark Brody. Sorry, that's okay. In about I
think it was like twenty fourteen's about eleven years ago,
you know, super novel research and all that. But but
there are limitations to Strokes gained. Many of those he
wasn't able to solve back then, and now with you know, computing,
we can do that, and so a lot of what
we do is just kind of trying to figure out
instead of you know, a great example is seventeen at
Sawgrass from the t one hundred and thirty yards strokes
gained estimate I think is two point nine to eight.
If you put that at one hundred and thirty yard
part three at your local course, I'd argue that you
know strokes Skain is going to say those are the
exact same statistical you know score. I venture to say
seventeen at Sawgrass is a little bit more difficult, and
that's because of the unique playout of the green. Obviously,
the hazards everywhere, and so that's a limitation of strokes
stained is that it can't de average for your specific
shot that's upcoming.
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it. So what was it
that you decided this is where we need to create
something that you know and you got it. You've got
to believe I love the playing smart smarter part you've
been talking about for for twenty years now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So started playing a lot of golf, played
about I think close to two hundred rounds over two
and a half years, and all at almost the same place.
Went from an eight to a one and a half.
Didn't change my swing, didn't change my clubs. You're obviously
playing a lot, you're you're putting a lot, and you're
you're very familiar. But but what it really was is
I knew every play on every shot very rarely, you
know golf. The magic thing with golf and going new
courses that every you know lie is different or every
pin position. If you play a course two hundred times,
you've you haven't seen everything, but you've seen a lot
of it. And so from you know, my background kind
of engineering, there's a couple holes where I didn't know
the right play. Even after all of that first hold
is a great example. Ob right and a bunch of
trees left? Is it? Driver? But aimed towards the trees?
You obviously what you know, don't want to hit? Ob
But how far into the trees do I want to aim?
Or do I hit a three wood? Obviously with three
wood you're gonna lose some distance and have a longer approach,
like you know, how does that all work? And you
can start trying to do strokes gain but it's a
little tricky. And so that kind of started the quest
to say, is there a way to mathematically model this
out and go for you know, our goal of saying,
can we provide the optimal strategy for every player on
every course, for every shot? And so that's where shots
since golf was born.
Speaker 1: How did you figure that out?
Speaker 2: Uh? Lots of lots lots of math and problem solving.
So my background is engineering and a lot of what
I'll call it frontier technology, satellites, autonomous vehicles, UH, GEO,
spatial analysis, augmented reality UH. And so at the end
of the day, those are all so new that you
may think you're going to solve something, but you end
up having to solve quite a few different problems along
the way before you can actually get to it. And
that's really what what we faced here is, Okay, you
want to do this one thing and you're like, oh man,
these these trees like trees end up impacting strategy quite
a bit. Or you know, how do I get the
data source for every hole to be accurate? Okay, that's
pretty tough, but you know, if we give the users
the ability to draw out of bounce or to adjust
the trees, that can can help. And so it was
all those we'll say like micro problem solvings that laddered
up to to help us do that, and so ultimately
our patent pending kind of core you know differentiator is
what we call our shot Sense decision engine, and that's
what helps, you know, tell the users the optimal strategy.
And so there's four main inputs to that. One. The
first is your club characteristics. That's how far you carry it,
the total if there's a rollout, your dispersion length with rotation,
and then ultimately shot shape you know, big fade or
small draw something like that or you know maybe if
you hit a straight ball you're one of the lucky few.
And you know, so that's everything about your your shot.
Speaker 1: Then let me let me stop you there before you
get to number two. There's four of them, right, yeah,
So how does it know your club characteristics?
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah. So when you start or when you join
the app or download it, the first thing you'll be
taken through is our interactive onboarding and the first portion
of that is where we figure out what's in your bag.
So ask you. I think it's about seven to ten questions,
and we trained a machine learning model to predict your
club distances, your dispersion, and then shot shape. We've trained
that on tens of thousands of shots. And dispersion is
this wildly fascinating topic that I think a lot of
people may not understand all of the nuances there. And
so what we found in early research is one of
the quickest ways people get their dispersion is they do
the track Man combine. Super fun, super helpful, but it's
six shots at one location with one club. Statistically speaking,
if you want to get closer to like a ninetieth
percentile confidence, give it one hundred and forty shots. No
one's going to the simulator and hitting one hundred and
forty seven irons. And so what you find is there's
somewhere in between of we hit six shots from TrackMan
combine and we get this estimate on our dispersion that's
clearly not good enough, and then one hundred and forty
No one's going to do that. And so this is
a perfect use case of machine learning is to say, okay,
how far do you estimate you hit your driver and
seven iron? What's your handicap? Where do you typically miss?
And using all the trained data of people that have
a similar characteristic of you, here's what we project it.
So that's where we start. However, if you actually know
your data, if you have a launch monitor or if
you're a you know, a college golfer or pro, you
obvious are going to know that data so you can
manually edit all of that and that really gets kind
of what is the truth about your clubs if you
do know that.
Speaker 1: So when I started using the app myself, I went
through some of the onboarding. I didn't complete it. Obviously,
I need to do more. I kind of got stuck
because I'd carry a five hybrid and it didn't allow
me to put that in there. You have five iron
and four hybrid, Now what do I do? I'm stuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have different labels. I think we have woods, hybrids, irons,
and wedges. Yeah, so you can go you can put
a four hybrid and then you can change the name
of it to a five hybrid and then they carry both.
So then you can select like two hybrid and three
hybrid and four hybrid. And then if you or you're saying,
do you carry like a two, three, four and five hybrid?
Speaker 1: No, I carry a four and five hybrid, A three
and five.
Speaker 2: Wood, gotcha. Yeah, so I think you can do driver,
three wood, five wood, and then I'd recommend you do
like a three hybrid and a four hybrid, and then
you can change the names of those to you know,
reflect what you actually have. So it's it's a good
point of feedback, you know, easy to add additional names there.
But yeah, so raypious feedback.
Speaker 1: Oh you're welcome.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: All right, So we got club character you said there
were four four elements. Yeah, and the first one was
club characteristic, which was fascinating in itself. Where are we
going next?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, so now we know, you know, to simplify
the clubs, we know how you hit the ball uniquely
to you. The next one, obviously with golf and the
piece that's really I think when you think about the averaging,
stuff is missed is every hole is unique, and so
you have to have some understanding. We'll call it the
geospatial analysis. Where's the tee, where's the fairway, where are
the same traps, But then more so like what's the
shape of the grain, what's the shape of the fairway,
where are the trees, where are the trees in you know,
comparison to the t shot, And so that's really you know,
the second bucket is you need to know everything about
the layout of the hole. And then we also give
the users. We kind of give everyone a head start
with some data to say, here's where we think the
trees are, here's you know, the fairway, but if the
trees have changed or there's things like out of bounds,
we give the user the ability to draw their own,
you know, course representations, and so you can provide that
very accurate representation of the whole you're about to go play.
Speaker 1: So all this stuff really is it's not generic information.
It's very specific information for the person who's looking for details.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's the starting point of what we have.
So there's two different flows. One is you are, you know,
a high handicapper, not super tech advance, and so you'll
type in the things during the onboarding, it'll give you
the clubs. You probably don't know your club distances or
your dispersion, and then you'll start the round and everything
that we have already labeled. Where the trees are, where
the fairwies are are a really good start, and so
you just have to hit the shot sense button, which
which we'll get into, and there you go and you
have the answer. However, we can ramp that up to
say you can, you know, as we talked about Taylor,
your clubs as much as you want, and then or
a specific course, you could detail it to it, you know,
to whatever nth degree if you really want to spend
the time or if you're a very competitive golfer. There
so that there is you know, maybe an easy mode
and then you know, as advanced as you'd like.
Speaker 1: Are you trying to replace like the yardage books that
people carry and take all those notes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean replace. I think the when you're implement
is the word complement. Then when you're in a tournament setting,
I think the yardage books are are really great. Phones
and electronic devices during a tournament are a tough sell
just because there's a lot going on there. So I
think yardage books serve that purpose of saying, you know,
here's this competitive round. I think when we think about
the average golfer, an average golfer isn't using a yardage book,
probably doesn't know how to read the contour lines or
the elevations. Our goal is to provide them a prescriptive
answer that says, before you hit this t shot, here's
the aim point. As you hit this approach into the green,
aim at the pin, aim over here and all that
is your statistically optimal answer. And so that's really what
we're trying to do. So I think, you know, not
to say replace charage books, maybe a different use case.
And then what we've heard from a lot of folks
is building intuition to play smart is really difficult in golf.
If you don't play with a lot of really good players.
If you're a fifteen handicap and you don't play with
a lot of great golfers, how do you know you
shouldn't short side yourself. How do you know maybe you
should take this different line? You just don't, And so
people have used shot sense and have seen Okay, it
keeps angling me over here? Why is that like okay,
there's water over here, Okay, I need to shift it
over this way. Okay, the pins over here? Why is
it keep saying aim towards the fat part of the green?
Like okay, now in better understanding this? And you know,
one thing we get really comfortab with is the rangefinder
of zapping the pin. It's one sixty two and you're
all right, like, maybe I'll take a yard off and
a yard to the left, Like we can do better
than that now that we have all of this data.
Speaker 1: So are you saying that the shot Sense app is
to replace the fact that you may not be playing
with much better players, but you're playing with guys who
you've been playing with for a while and you're all
around the same handicap and this is like having a
pro with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, we call it the world's most advanced
or intelligent digital caddy, and we think, because there's golf
is incredibly complex, almost infinitely complex, we'll call it. I
think what we're going for is we have all this
data flowing in and given all of these inputs, here's
the recommendation and the output, and that gives you your
optimal strategy. That's something that without a true caddy next
to you, really difficult for you to build that intuition
or you know, I'm just aiming for the fairway. Well, no,
based on everything you've given us, based on the course,
we can say you're actually gonna aim one yard left
into the rough because that gives you the statistically optimal
shot and you know, way to finish the whole. And
so that's really what we're saying. So yeah, in a sense,
you know, anyone who you know, average golfer, even the
more advanced players, it's giving you that caddy, whether you
you know, implicitly trust it because you don't know a
right answer, or what we've heard from a lot of
elite players is it makes me think through it more.
You know. I think all of those are good conversations
to have and things that we've heard from from users.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. All right, So the the second part was the
geospatial analysis.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, uh third on the list, yep third one.
A little bit related to that is elevation. Obviously, elevation
is very important on a golf course, but when you're
running a true optimization. We like to have people think
about Google Maps, and essentially what we've done is created
Google Maps for golf. Google Maps is routing you from
point A to point by these complex algorithms. Dankstras is
one of them, and they need to know every bit
of information, how many lanes, what's the speed limit for
every single road, to quantify it's seventeen minutes from you
to go to this point to that one. It's eighteen
if you were to take a left here. And so
what we've done is we quantify all of these different routes.
We say is it driver seven iron or is it
driver eight iron sand wedge? And doing so, elevation we
need at every single point on the golf course. We
can't just do the tee and the pin. We have
to know what the topography looks like. And so that's
that last one. So that's kind of why it's carved
into its own third bucket is to say, it's really
important to know all the different elevation on ole and is.
Speaker 1: That information provided by users or is that the one
you're getting from like Google Maps.
Speaker 2: And it's a proprietary data set that we have.
Speaker 1: So we have for forty thousand courses. How do you
get all that?
Speaker 2: So we only have it for US courses right now,
but uh, well we're working on the other the other countries.
How I mean, how do you do it? Yeah? Well, yeah,
I know it's.
Speaker 1: A proprietary and I'm and I'm digging in because I'm
going to steal it. No, I'm like, I don't get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think with my background, you know, with geospatial analysis,
like there's there's a lot of tools and ways to
do that. Extracting it can be pretty tricky. But this
is where as I was talking about earlier, all these
micro challenges, we had a version that didn't have elevation,
and every shot I had gave us the wrong answer.
And I was like, well, this is totally worthless, right, Like,
like who's going to use it? If you really are
going to tell somebody here is the optimal answer and
then you caveat it with but then manually factor in
all the elevation, Well that that's not really helpful. Like,
you know, here's the Google Maps thing. We just don't
know exactly when you'll get there, but like plus or
mind is fifteen minutes. And so that's what was like Okay,
like we have to solve this at at scale.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And so that was you know, a fun endeavor.
Speaker 1: All right, Before we get to the fourth element that
helps you create shot sense app let me ask you
this is this for every golfer?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a good question. So I think of
this again like Google Maps, where you know, Google Maps
helps me and you route from A to B. But
Google Maps also powers door dash. It also powers Comcast
technicians going from point A to point B. Because we've
focused on the map layer, it can serve the higher
hand caps. That's really where we think we'll see a
lot of traction of folks that just they don't really
know how to play smarter out there and they're not
going to hire okay or whatnot. So this will be
something with the press of one button, you get the answer.
Aim over here. That's that's great. So we're really excited
to you know, for that market. But because we've spent
so much time and energy having these precise, complex mathematical models,
it can serve the advanced golfers as well. Good example
is determining Q school regional had somebody to eighty carry
hit a cut and so with the round planner feature
because we are able to quantify all these routes for
a whole one given these dimensions and your club characteristics,
your expected score is four point one eight And so
they can go through and say, okay, if I hit
it too eighty and a cut, is this course best
or is it this other regional And maybe the sand
traps are a little shorter or a little longer. And
so maybe a long way to say, we think we
can serve everyone in the market, but do think that
the average golfers will see, you know, the most scorer
or the most strokes shaved off from their handicap.
Speaker 1: Well as we've been advocating for years about you know,
becoming a better, smarter golfer and getting that information to
do that strategic information. And I think that's where the
problem is for so many golfers. I know, for myself,
if I look over a scorecard from my last round
and I see holes that have numbers that I'm not
comfortable seeing on my scorecard, it's mainly because I make
bad decisions.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, And I think there's there's some fascinating things
with once you get real comfortable with the math model
and understanding expected scores. You look on a scorecard and
the handicap of all the par threes are, you know,
maybe say that the four highest. Well, well, if you
look at it, that's more of a I'm not an
expert on you know, course rating and handicapping and things
like that, but but I think there's something there about,
you know, why they're ranked so high. But if you
have a par three that's one hundred and eighty yards,
your expected score on that is going to be pretty
high compared to a par four that is, let's say
three hundred and seventy yards. You know, obviously depending what
you what you you know, how far you driving, things
like that.
Speaker 1: But are par three that's one hundred and twenty yards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Like one hundred and eighty yard par three
is a difficult hole. But if it's seventeen handicap, you
look at yourself and you're like, ah, like you know
this is tough or you know, I you know, no
one gets strokes on that one. That's a tricky shot,
and so the you you have to kind of look
at it from all this math perspective to say that's
taking the unique layout of the green, that's taking your
dispersion at whatever club you hit one eighty or you know,
maybe it's one seventy or one, and figuring out kind
of how all that works running the math to say, yeah,
we think you're probably closer to, you know, a five handicap.
Now for me, it's probably closer to a three point
six or something like that on that hole, And it
gives you some expectation that you're like, you're right, that
is a little bit of a tricky hole, you know,
whereas maybe I'll make up the shots when it's three
seventy and maybe I'll have you know, one hundred yards
into the flag or something like that, and so that's
where you're able to see some of the difference in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like when you see somebody get
upset with themselves because they miss a ten foot putt,
which we all do, but then you remind them that,
you know, on the PGA Tour they're at fifty percent
from ten feet, so there's no reason to get upset
with yourself. So if you're saying, you know, this is
a part three, I'm expecting to part this hole, Yet
the average score in this hole is higher than secially
if it's one hundred and eighty yards for most of us.
If it's higher like that, it's like, Okay, I don't
have to beat myself up if I get a bogie
on this hole when the average score is really on
a par three four point four or something like that.
So it kind of helps you get comfortable and relax
a bit more about that playing that hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And it's all goes back to kind
of the expectations piece of you know, if the expected
value is going to be three point six and you
do get a par, you've essentially gained point six strokes
for yourself. And therefore, if you have you know it's
a par four and your expected values four point two
and you have a bogie, like, oh okay, you lost
some there. But like, all in all, it's just you know,
better understanding your expectation. And really the only thing you
can do is what we really emphasize to folks is
like we'll handle all the complex math. We'll tell you
where to aim, and then you get to go up
there and execute. There's obviously the huge piece of this
one of your physically hitting the ball is typically pretty important,
and so if we can help solve all the strategy piece.
Then you get to go focus on go hit that shot,
have a lot of confidence and conviction. You're an aim
to the left side of the green and hit this
shot and then hopefully you know, over time you're able
to build you know, the ability to strike the ball
out of the dire.
Speaker 1: There there's so many things that other apps you're that
you're competing with the offer that you may not and
you're clearly offering a lot more than a lot of
other apps. That's becoming really obvious.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Is there a social element to it as well that
you can play against or keep track of what your
friends are doing. You're playing partners.
Speaker 2: No, we haven't focused on that one. That seems to
be maybe in the last year, there's there's quite a
few I see a lot of people you know deeving
themselves as like the Strava of golf or trying to
go down that route. So we we been given the
complexities of the decision engine. That's where all the you know,
time and energy has gone. And so I would say
our real focus is from a you know, optimal strategy.
Let's get you the right answer. There's a lot more
we can do there, and so kind of social kind
of hasn't bubbled up to the top for us.
Speaker 1: That's fine, that's I was just curious about that. Let's
go ahead to the fourth element.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the fourth element is what we'll call golf intelligence.
And so we'll start with trees. You can't hit through trees.
Fun fact and wait wait what Yeah, I don't love
you hear this? And so you know a great example
is was it fourteen at tpc? Like that that tree
has impact? Like how do you factor that in or whatnot?
Or you know, lots of different different holes and so
you know, the first one there is trees have impact.
How do we figure that out from a strategy perspective?
The next one is that, you know, short signing yourself
not a good thing to do up to a half
stroke penalty based on your angle and severity. And then lastly,
you know, golf isn't just a what's my next optimal shot?
It really gets to that route like we were talking
with Google, if you know you're going to take a highway,
but then it's you know, one mile per hour for
the last ten minutes, Well there's probably some side street
that you can just go thirty five the whole time.
And so for golf that means, you know, let's say
there's a tree that's blocking the right side of the green,
you should be coming in from the left. And so
when we think about your t shot, we have to
be thinking about the second shot to figure out where
to hit your first shot. And so that's what we'll
call multi shot optimization. And that's, you know, the last
piece of golf intelligence. So those are you know, it's
kind of all bucketed together, but it's very golf specific
stuff that we factor in. And so all of that
then is combined in the shot Sense Decision Engine, and
then the output of that is your optimal strategy for
every shot, every hole on any course.
Speaker 1: The way you're describing this, mister Engineer, and the way
I'm absorbing it, it sounds like this app is making
golf and I think this is awesome, but it's turning
it into a chess match.
Speaker 2: I think there's a few things. So at the end
of the day, any of these we'll call the place
smarter tools from the rangefinders. So the GPS apps are
all just that tools we're never you know, some folks
are getting better at like when for a specific hole
or you know the undulation if your ball hits on
the downslope where it's going to go. So golf is
always going to have these very uh, kind of unique characteristics.
And also where there's kind of the human element and
decision making. For example, we don't factor in wind because
there's no good source of wind for every hole. I
think there's a couple of companies starting to do that,
you know, not in every course, but you know that's
we don't want to bake that into an optimization if
we don't know if it's it's correct. And so I
think you're right in that it's it's a chess match
in that you should you know, there is a mathematical
right answer. It is very unique for every player and
every situation. Chess maybe not so much because it's a
set board. Now there's obviously, you know, probably trillions of
combinations on that board of what it could be, but
there are a finite number where golf is is you know,
not finite uh. And so so you know chess match
and that there's a mathematical best approach to every shot
you take. But do we think everyone's going to know
that all the time? No? And so what we're out
thinking is that let's help you build your intuition slowly.
If you're a high handap cap golfer, any of this
is good knowledge to start. If you start to be
a single digit or an elite player, okay, like when
you're in a tournament, you're not using these tools. So
then it's really how do you use all of those
tools to the best of your ability out there? And
so I think yes to the chess piece. And then
where you really get to prove it is when it's
internment play. What have you learned from the playing smarter perspective?
And then go execute it. Our goal is really if
you had say, like a stroke stained strategy metric, we
think every golfer should be able to have a perfect
stroke skain strategy because it's really just what should I do,
not your physical ability and things like that. And so
that's where you know, we're excited that as people build
that intuition, I think people will have more fun and
you'll I think by having more fun, you either shoot
lower and that's why you have more you know, more fun,
or you have more fun in the shoe loower. Not
sure which one goes first, but yeah, that's the help here.
Speaker 1: That's really good. I am not a person. I'm a
total technique. I love this stuff. And when I talk
about you know, apps, electronics and rangefinders and all the
different ways of checking your distances whatnot. But I'm not
I don't like pulling out. I don't think of pulling
out my phone.
Speaker 2: All the time.
Speaker 1: You know. I wear a watch and found that any
of the apps that connect to my watch kill the
battery on my watch. So by the time I get
to the twelfth hole, it's like your battery is at
two percent on my watch. It's an Apple watch. And
then I have a shot Scope watch that I use
just for front, middle back type thing. Scoring there's this
does not connect to uh watch app at all. It's
it's just standalone on a phone.
Speaker 2: Yep, just the phone. We get asked about to watch
a lot. So it's a product roadmap.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And so you know something, Uh we're hoping maybe it
early summer, we'll have that out. But yeah, it's a
very fair point about you know, golf cell phone usage
on a golf course. Yeah, some people that just they're
they're there to take a break. They don't want to
be tempted by the emails. And the text messages. Uh,
and then courses.
Speaker 1: That don't allow it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and so yeah, we so there's you know
that that's a group that that's going to be tough
to crack, and so the the group that uses encores.
What we've specifically made product decisions around is how to
make this intuitive and easy to use on every whole
with the least amount of interaction. And so what that
is is instead of, you know, some apps, you have
to move the cursor around and you're having to engage
with your phone for a substantial amount of time, our
approach is you're you know what, we assume you're going
to be on the tee. If you're not, you can
move it. But with the tap of one button, here's
the aim point. Put your phone away, go execute. Phones
in your pocket, walk up to your next one, take
your phone out. It's going to know where you are.
Press the button, the shot suns button gives you the
optimal aim point left center of the green. It'll give
you your plays like distance you know, club execute and
then go to the end of the hole. If you
want to type in your score at the end, great,
If you want to use a shot tracking at the
end also great, but that was only two button presses
to get the aim point. And therefore you go. And
so we think that the value of what we've done
is it's all about prescriptive action. And so right now,
all all the other apps that they don't really get
that you're here it is. It's the whole move the
cursor around, what do I want to do? Okay, sure
that could be helpful for some folks sandtraps over here,
but with one button press, here's some value. This is
the statistically best aim point. Go do it, phone and pocket,
go do that. And so that's that's the flow on course.
The other piece, and we see this a lot with
some of the elite players, is the round planner. Do
all this beforehand. But you know, so we have something
that's not you know, on the course. But before you
go to a course, figure out for every hole, kind
of do a dry run. What's your aim line on
every t shot? You're you may know where the pins are,
especially if it's a tough, you know, tournament, let's call
it like Sunday pins. You're gonna know where those are.
Map it out or do some scenarios. And therefore, before
you go there, you've done this dry round with all
of the unique characteristics of your shots and the unique
hole layout and figure out what that looks like. And
so we also have a bunch of average golfers going
to resort courses or nice country clubs that they love
doing this because they don't want to go to a
country club they've never seen before, and so this one
gives them a little bit of ease walking up to
that first t. And so that's you know, our hope
is that you know, there's going to be encourse users,
there's gonna be off course users, and so you know,
but there are folks that you don't want to use
phones or whatnot. So you totally get that, and that's
a market that we're thinking about in the future.
Speaker 1: Wow, all right, let's do this here. Let's wrap this
with this. Uh walk me through. We're about to play
number six at mythical golf course. Yeah, okay, and number
six is a dog leg par four. Yeap, walk me
through t to putting in the hole. How you're going
to use the app for every shot on this par four.
So let's say you're going to par the hole, you know,
but walk me through using shots since app how to
play that hole with yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we'll say dog leg left and you hit
a fade, and so you know you already have all
we already have all that information in there. So when
you go to the next so you're coming off whole
number five, you'll click next hole. And so we'll place
the starting point at the tees you selected. So we'll
say you're playing the blue teas and so you know,
let's say you're in the cart, so you can first
look to see is the layout of the hole and
we call them polygons. You'll see there's these colored polygons.
Are the trees represented accurately? Is the fairway in the
right spot and in the green do we have to
drop out of bounce? And so we'll assume that you've
done this before in round planner and everything is mapped
out correctly. And so you'll be in your cart and
you'll press the shot sense button. Takes between one to
three seconds, and then it will give you where your
dispersion oval is and then a blinking red dot that
says your optimal aim point. And we talked about it's
a dog leg left and you hit a fade. Well,
this isn't a great hole. For us, And so it's
going to try and figure out what's the best spot
given you know, and let's assume there's trees, you know,
for the dog leg, and it's not just that you
cut through. If there's trees on the left, we obviously
can't go through those trees. So we're gonna try and
find that optimal spot that given your fade, where there's
some comfortable margin. Then we're gonna put the dispersion oval
there trying to figure it out. And it may say
three wood one or two thirty five and give you
the blinking dot which is going to say, you know,
right center of the fairway, which is your aim point.
You're then going to go grab your three wood. You'll
put your phone in your pocket or in the cart,
wherever you want to do that. You'll go hit the shot.
Hopefully you hit it close to where you're going. You'll
get up to the next one. You'll then if you
have a pin sheet you can move it because of that,
or if you know where the pin is you can
move it. You take your phone out, move the pin
to that location. Then you press the shot sense button
again and it's going to say bam, you're one forty three.
It's going to be a nine iron, and your specific
aim point with the pin on the right and given
its shape is going to be maybe center of the
green or left center of the green. And then you're
going to put your phone in your pocket. You're going
to execute that shot Putting, we don't do anything, and
so after the hole is when you do scorecards. We
track your your GPS breadcrumbs is what we call them,
to show you where you went or walked. And then
if you want to do shot tracking afterwards, you know
you can place the pins and we age you because
we know where you pressed the shot sense button. We
can tell you like, here's where you were. Just confirm this,
and so that's kind of the flow of a hole
at the t press the shot sense button, get the
optimal strategy, Execute, go to your next shot, press the
shot Sense button, execute, and then you know, finish the
hole and walk away with our car.
Speaker 1: And if when you review the round afterwards, there's all
this data, can you walk through every hole and say, no, no, no,
I didn't hit that club there, I hit it from
over here with this can you edit and make changes
to it.
Speaker 2: So after each hole you can place the pins to
say this is where I was.
Speaker 1: Can you do a post round, post a post.
Speaker 2: Shot post round. You you could do a workerund and
do a post round, but maybe, as you're thinking about it,
not like a full feature, to say, the round is done,
here's my scorecard, let's do it afterwards. What you could
do is fill out all of your scores for each
hole and then at the very end place it. But
not exactly kind of how you're thinking about it, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because sometimes I just forget to pull out my phone. Right,
I'm just not accustomed to it to the point where,
you know, I walk the golf course and I now
use an electric caddy to carry my bag. Right the
last couple of rounds, I get into a conversation with
one of them. We're playing partners, and all of a sudden,
it's like, where's my car?
Speaker 2: I found it?
Speaker 1: I found it three inches deep in the mud. The
other day it's like all the way on the other
side of the green. It's like, oh my god, it
took us a while. Of fine, it was terrible, But
I don't always My point is, I don't always remember
to enter and I would like to be able to,
you know, like when I'm sitting at home after the round. Go, yeah,
you know, I want to make these adjustments here and
then look at all my statistics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not available at this point, not available, but good,
good feedback point. Not not super difficult to do.
Speaker 1: Oh great, great, available for iOS and Android, just for iOS,
just for iOS at this point.
Speaker 2: Free, Yep, it's free.
Speaker 1: Any in app charges, Nope.
Speaker 2: No in app charges. We have some some big things
in the works now, and that's kind of where the
monetization strategy comes from. That's right. Gee, how'd you know? That?
Speaker 1: Was my next question. If you're giving it away for
free and there's no in app charges, what's your revenue
stream on this?
Speaker 2: How are you going to sustain this one? Because it's
a great idea. Yeah, yeah, so so right now totally free.
What we're building next, we're pretty excited about.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And that's where kind of the monestation piece comes from.
And we you know, for for an in app GPS
like what we have right now, we think you know
that the average golfers playing what three times a month,
you know, to charge seven eight dollars for a plays
like distance and here's the wind direction. We just don't
we just don't think that's super helpful. We think there's
different ways and more sustainable ways to deliver value to them,
and therefore, you know we'll be able to you know,
get some return from that perspective. So yeah, free version
one free and then as we you know, build everything
out coming up, that's where we focus on the monetization.
Speaker 1: And people can learn more online at.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, at shotsnscolf dot com or Instagram. I think
our handle is shot suns Golf as well.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Well, I'm fascinated. I appreciate you reaching out and
sharing this with me. Strokes gained strategy. I love that concept.
I mean, you know, it's like, get this in your
head that you know there's ways to play golf smarter.
Oh my god, I really just say that. You know
it's supposed to get you to say that. So anyway, Brent,
thank you so much for sharing this with us, and
good luck with this one.
Speaker 2: Yep, thanks much, Fred