If you've watched a PGA Tour telecast recently, you've no doubt heard them talk about Strokes Gained as the new moneyball term in golf. Why do we care about strokes gained?
The quick summary is it becomes the baseline reference for judging the quality of play down to a single golf shot. With strokes gained we can finally quantify just how good that 5 iron from 180 yards that settled 6 inches from the hole was. Why does that matter? Because we can use it judge your individual strengths and weaknesses on the golf course and then target the areas of your game that will lead to the fastest improvement.
Interested? How do we do it? First we have to start tracking shots. Fairways and greens just don't cut it. We want to know what every single shot did.
Lucky for you, there's Tangent Golf. So why do we call it sensorless? Because its the best shot tracking system out there with no external sensors on your clubs. The only sensors you need are the ones already in your phone and Apple Watch if you have one.
So enough back story. How does it work?
Tangent Golf starts measuring your every move as soon as you start a round on the app. It uses sensors in your phone and watch, such as GPS and accelerometers, to track your movement. It then uses powerful analytics to look at all the data from your devices to make accurate predictions on where you hit golf shots.
As soon as you start moving you will see a dashed white line start following you. We call those 'Footprints'. Thats where we know your phone went. If you leave your phone in a cart or golf bag, it will follow the cart or bag. I keep mine in my back pocket. The pocket is the best solution because you get data from both devices (phone and watch). We can use the sensors on both devices for the most accurate data. And you can put the watch in Low Power mode in your Tangent Golf settings so that its easier on the battery, but the system works even if you leave your phone in a golf bag or cart.
If we see signals to suggest a shot might have been hit from a location, we flag it as a possible spot. If we get other sensor data indicating some swing motion, we get a little more confident. And if we detect a swing on the watch, then we get really confident and we'll mark the location.
When a swing is detected, we also predict what club you used based on Caddie's recommendation and your location on the golf course. Don't worry if we get it wrong, it's easy to change.
If you don't like keeping your phone on you and / or you share a cart with someone, you might want to manually tag shot locations to eliminate some of the noise from the data. Just tap the 'Add Shot' button on your phone in the screenshot above. You can also manually add a shot from your watch by swiping to the appropriate screen and hitting the "Add Swing" button.
Keep in mind that especially if you have a watch, this should rarely be necessary. Sometimes real close to the green its tough to detect shots, but we want you to focus on golf. Not pressing buttons.
If you find yourself having to do a lot of work, hit me up. We'll fix it.
As you traverse the hole, your phone and watch will be telling you your distance from the last swing you made. This is really useful if you're looking for a wayward drive to know you are 250 yards from the tee, when you normally hit it 220. Or when you just long balled your buddy and want to tell him about that 320 yard monster.
Now you're done with the hole and ready to enter score. Whether it's on the watch or the phone, you'll enter 3 key components.
Score
Number of putts and from what starting distance
Number of penalties if any
Why do we need this information? Because putts are hard to detect and not everyone putts out the short ones. So the difference between a 4 and a 5 might be that 6 inch tap in that you scooped up.
We ask for your putt distance because GPS is only accurate to 3-4 yards and the difference between a 3 foot putt and a 10 foot putt is pretty massive statistically. One of those you are going to make 90% of the time, and the other is more like 30%. With simple putt (enabled by default) you'll enter putts just as:
Short - A putt you feel you SHOULD make.
Medium - a putt that is makeable, but definitely should not three putt.
Long - a putt where the goal is clearly to lag.
And then we ask for penalties because well... if your ball goes in a lake you are not going to swim in after it, so you need to tell us you lost that ball.
Notice that the app is already predicting whether you hit the fairway and most of the work should be done. Should mostly just be confirm and move on.
Thats when the magic happens. The app turns those potential shots and swings into full on shot tracking.
Now the app knows how far you hit each shot and how accurate. And hopefully all you did was play golf.