TST Explores GAME Golf

[Missouri Swede]

1 hour ago, Club Rat said:

Each round shows daily temp, wind direction and wind speed.

Assuming it's showing conditions at the start of a round.

It would be helpful if the conditions were updated per hole with the time on each tee box.

Wind direction and speed would be useful in analyses of club performance.

I would take some of the weather info with a grain of salt (or add your own comment to your round).  Sometimes it seems pretty accurate. But I recall one round recently in quite windy conditions (adding two clubs into the wind) where it said something like 5 mph.  Another day with winds of 23-43 with gusts to 55, it uploaded as 19 mph (awesome Veterans Day--I was the only one on the course!).  I'm sure they just get it from a service that provides local weather data.

[iacas]

3 hours ago, Club Rat said:

Each round shows daily temp, wind direction and wind speed.

Assuming it's showing conditions at the start of a round.

It would be helpful if the conditions were updated per hole with the time on each tee box.

Wind direction and speed would be useful in analyses of club performance.

We'll help to discuss these types of things with the partnership we have with GG in 2016. First, though, are the far more important (in our opinion) issue of getting to the bottom of the Strokes Gained data and making sure it's as accurate and thus helpful as possible.

[RandallT]

22 hours ago, Club Rat said:

Each round shows daily temp, wind direction and wind speed.

Assuming it's showing conditions at the start of a round.

It would be helpful if the conditions were updated per hole with the time on each tee box.

Wind direction and speed would be useful in analyses of club performance.

Pace of play is something I haven't seen these products dive into too much yet, but I think it's a nice-to-have that could differentiate a product. You could visualize pace of play lots of interesting ways:

1. Heat map of your round, showing faster and slower areas.
2. Comparison of your pace of play to others who play the same course.
3. Analysis of pace of play on selected courses.  Comparison of morning, mid-day, late afternoon. Weekday v weekend. Hole by hole, Par 3 v Par 4 v Par 5. Etc.

It all depends if they get enough data for the course. My hunch is that this would be a very low priority as it doesn't directly relate to their core mission of improving your golf game. They've got bigger fish to fry, but your item in bold just got me brainstorming and wanted to throw out some thoughts while they're fresh.

Interesting idea re: weather throughout the round.

[Club Rat]

 

8 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Interesting idea re: weather throughout the round.

My thoughts are for any and each specific hole (the variance of clubs used due to wind conditions) mostly par 3s.

Ever play 36 holes or 27 holes or the same course everyday? On a par 3, you could hit an 8 iron in the am and in the afternoon, a 6 or 5 irons. While on a day with no wind you normally hit a 7 iron. Creating a log of the clubs used with wind direction and speed, removes doubt or second guessing when trying to recall from memory.
I could create a log with pen & paper, but the beauty of Game Golf, it has the potential for each hole, every single round played.

Now come game day or any big event (stroke play, etc.) you would have a game plan and be better prepared. Imagine having your log in your back pocket, Page 1, Hole #1, Wind East, 8 mph, Driver - 240, 8 iron - 155, middle of green. Page 2. Hole #1, Wind West, 8 mph, Driver - 260, Wedge - 135, middle of green. Basically a page for each direction, for each hole, with true data collected using the Game Golf platform analyzes.

 

[iacas]

I don't think weather is really a factor. It rarely changes so dramatically that it affects your round, and when you get into all kinds of things like microclimates (wind on one hole funnels through trees, and on another is blocked by trees, etc.), it'd likely not be anywhere near as "good" as you think.

If you play 36 holes, those are counted as two rounds with two starting holes and starting times. Same if you play 27. So each round would already have different weather conditions.

Detailed weather and pace of play is way, way down on the list of things GG should worry about.

[Club Rat]

Made a boo boo and forgot to charge the game golf.

Not knowing battery was low, I went to play. It turned on, paired, displayed location, but no tags...

I then turned it off, then wouldn't come back on. (displayed a very dim red light)

I then realized it was low on power.(Newbie mistake)

This all occurred because I grabbed the wrong cord the night before and plugged the Game Golf into the cord. Puzzled a bit because it was a micro USB, just not the short 12" cord that came supplied. (My bad)

Yes Erik, I'm a dummy some days. .

Just thought I'd share my clumsiness for other Newbie users.

[Club Rat]

To GG - Windows users. I recently discovered using a program to block annoying pop up's, conflicted with the Game Golf dashboard. The software blocked the feature to "edit and share" from appearing. The software is called "Adware" I've uninstalled it for now, the trial period ended, but there may have been settings/allowances that I could have changed to not affect the dashboard.

Just a heads up post to save others headaches and awareness of a possible situation. 

[Missouri Swede]

How closely are we finding the GG handicap correlates with the USGA handicap index?  A lot of us track a handicap index as a way of following our progress, rather than needing it for competitive purposes.  For us, the GG version can serve our needs just fine.

I know that the data handling and calculations are different, but I expect the GG and USGA numbers would move (more or less) in parallel.  Since we’ve got a good number of people here using both systems, I wondered whether people are finding that the two correlate reasonably well. 

My current handicap index (by USGA calculations) would be 23.7, and my GG handicap is 19.2--a difference of 4.5, but in the same ballpark..

Are those of you with lower handicaps finding they correlate more closely than this?  (Even if they don’t, it doesn’t change the utility of the GG handicap.  I just got curious.)

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Missouri Swede said:

How closely are we finding the GG handicap correlates with the USGA handicap index?  A lot of us track a handicap index as a way of following our progress, rather than needing it for competitive purposes.  For us, the GG version can serve our needs just fine.

I know that the data handling and calculations are different, but I expect the GG and USGA numbers would move (more or less) in parallel.  Since we’ve got a good number of people here using both systems, I wondered whether people are finding that the two correlate reasonably well.

Pretty sure mine is exactly the same as it would be. I always choose to specify the tees which has the course rating and slope.

[No Mulligans]

1 hour ago, Missouri Swede said:

How closely are we finding the GG handicap correlates with the USGA handicap index?  A lot of us track a handicap index as a way of following our progress, rather than needing it for competitive purposes.  For us, the GG version can serve our needs just fine.

 

I know that the data handling and calculations are different, but I expect the GG and USGA numbers would move (more or less) in parallel.  Since we’ve got a good number of people here using both systems, I wondered whether people are finding that the two correlate reasonably well. 

 

My current handicap index (by USGA calculations) would be 23.7, and my GG handicap is 19.2--a difference of 4.5, but in the same ballpark..

 

Are those of you with lower handicaps finding they correlate more closely than this?  (Even if they don’t, it doesn’t change the utility of the GG handicap.  I just got curious.)

 

FWIW:  I clicked through a bunch of GG handicaps in this thread and compared them to the Index listed on this site.  Sometimes GG handicap is really close to the index listed here, sometimes GG handicap is higher, and sometimes GG handicap is lower. This holds true for both those with low handicaps and those with high handicaps.

GG says they do a hole by hole comparison to a scratch player and don't use ratings or slopes.  I wonder, how do they know who the scratch players are without considering ratings or slope.

From GameGolf site:

Quote

- How is the GAME GOLF handicap calculated?

We have a vast data set for users who have played a large number of rounds and can be identified as scratch players (average normalized score of 70-75).  So we are using this as a benchmark baseline to estimate a player's handicap.
From Game Golf scratch players (which act as the benchmark group), we first discover how these players score (average number of strokes) on holes of a certain yardage* (yardage is from first tee shot to the pin location).  Then we aggregate all the scores from the holes played from all of these players and bucket them into 5-meter intervals using holes 60 meters and up to 600 meters.  Meters are converted into yards when needed.  
To calculate a handicap, we then apply the same principles to a player of interest and getting their average number of strokes played for each of those hole distance buckets.  We then collect the difference between that player and GAME GOLF's Scratch players, and then find the collective average.

This is a bit flawed as it seems to only consider distance.  For example a 200 yard hole with a 180 yard forced carry over a hazard is very different for a bogey golfer than a 200 yard hole with no forced carry over a hazard.  For a scratch player that forced carry is pretty much not a factor.

[Lihu]

11 minutes ago, No Mulligans said:

This is a bit flawed as it seems to only consider distance.  For example a 200 yard hole with a 180 yard forced carry over a hazard is very different for a bogey golfer than a 200 yard hole with no forced carry over a hazard.  For a scratch player that forced carry is pretty much not a factor.

Not sure how a forced carry translates in slope value, but it seems like the score would directly reflect that a bogey could not make the carry by the 2 strokes added each time he doesn't quite make it?

The only issue I have with a length based calculation is that I tend to hit back and forth on the fairways a lot, mainly right. This is mainly because of my terrible swing, but I would like to think it's just to get my monies worth. . .The issue I have is that my effective hole length is longer for me than a better player, and it seems to be reflected in the HC. I don't have enough rounds to accurately reflect a HC yet, but once I do it will probably still be lower than my actual handicap.

[billchao]

GG definitely doesn't use rating or slope. I emailed support once about some scorecard corrections and mentioned that they had the rating/slope wrong for a particular set of tees and they told me that it didn't matter since they don't use it anyway.

They did make the par adjustments on the holes though.

[dkolo]

Mine is off by a bit over 1 I believe, with the Game Golf being lower. It's always in the ballpark but off the same amount whenever my actual one moves. 

[iacas]

58 minutes ago, No Mulligans said:

This is a bit flawed as it seems to only consider distance.  For example a 200 yard hole with a 180 yard forced carry over a hazard is very different for a bogey golfer than a 200 yard hole with no forced carry over a hazard.  For a scratch player that forced carry is pretty much not a factor.

Not really. The vast majority of a course's rating is due to the yardage.

[Missouri Swede]

I was looking through Insights and checking out some of the info in the Scoring section, filtering things down to just the last few rounds.  Lo and behold, GG tells me that I'm scoring eagles!

Well, not really.  Unfortunately I was shocked, absolutely shocked to find out that they were only pars and that I was not scoring an ace on 25% of the par 3 holes:

Just a glitch in the pie chart labeling, I'm sure (same thing shows up in total scoring, par 4 holes and par 5 holes--all pars show up as eagles).  I submitted the problem to GG customer service.

[Dave2512]

Recently installed a second set of tags on my alternate bag of clubs. I use NDMC grips with the flat butt end cap and my tags seat dead flat. The new tags rattle like crazy, slightest vibration results in a baby rattle type of noise. I've only been out twice and last time I was alone so I heard the tags rattling at contact most of the round.

Not a huge problem but enough I will send an email to see if they will send me an entire new set. I thought it may be a club issue but I removed a couple and noise was gone. Removed a tag from my main set and replaced with the rattler and there it was.

[Big Lex]

I'm thinking of ordering a GAME Golf system. I've read some reviews. I'm interested in finding out what Sand Trap Members think of the system. Feel free to elaborate in any way - what you like most about it, any technical problems you had or tips on usage, elaborations on the poll question answers, etc. I searched the forum here and didn't find a specific informational thread on GAME Golf, so that's why I started this one. I'm aware of the ones where you are posting rounds, and I've looked at some of those. I've also read just about every review on the web so no need to link to those. Thanks in advance!

[Lihu]

You can review it yourself with the free app. It's really great!