'Shark' plans to video golfers on the course
In June of this year Greg Norman, Verizon, and PlaySight announced they raised $11 million for a mission to outfit golf courses with cameras to video your golf.
Using PlaySight's impressive technology for tennis, Norman is trying to transition it to golf by strategically placing cameras on specific holes of the course to give you analytics and instant replay. These "Connected Courses" will record your swing and give you replays of that great putt or holed bunker shot. You can then presumably save your highlights and share them on social media, analyze your swing, and get analytics on the state of your golf game.
Since PlaySight is great for tennis, why not golf? For starters, tennis is played on the same dimension court where power is readily available. This is harder for golf as it's much more spread out and also harder to track the ball on video. Plus, you generally only play a golf hole once, so you won't get much data for an analysis. Playing a golf hole is unlike tennis where you play from the same general location.
With this system most golfers would learn little more about their golf game than they already know. Golf already gives you great feedback, whether you slice the ball or chunk a chip. Extra analytics on a couple holes a round isn't going to give you that much insight into your game.
The useful golf technology already exists for the range with TrackMan and other monitors. Proper video angles in that setting can give you valuable insight in conjunction with attack angles, spin rates and distance.
As with Norman's Shark Experience idea, this one misses the mark as well.
About the Author
Sam Roseman is a die-hard golfer and founder of TeeTimeHelper.com, a free RSVP system for golf groups.
CIA, CRMA, CICA | Internal audit professional | Systems enthusiast | Freelance content writer
6 年Cool concept. I like it for the entertainment factor of saving “highlights” of a round. Maybe on a couple par 3s, or approaches on par 5s, but as for analysis to improve one’s game, I think it’s missing its mark. They’d have to look into driving ranges if that’s the route they want to go.