TST Talks with GAME Golf

[GAME GOLF]

Excitement and then crickets!

I would like to know how game golf calculates handicap and how it differs from the usga?

Growing up in North Carolina, Crickets were my preferred fishing bait of choice so thanks!

Wish I could give out the specific calculation we use for the GAME GOLF handicap but unfortunately it's kept close to chest at the moment.  Here's the best I can give though - hope it clears things up!  We look at any feature in the system as a living feature that can/will evolve over time especially as user feedback comes in.

Handicap: Everything to know

-How many rounds / holes before I get a Handicap?
You'll need a minimum of 30 holes played, signed (public or private) and included in your stats before you receive a Handicap. It will become more accurate over time. Rounds that are "Exclued from Stats" are not included into your handicap.

-Is Handicap visible in the app?

Handicap is currently only visible on the website - it will be shortly incorporated into the mobile apps.

- What happens if I publish a round and then edit my score?

If you publish a new score your handicap will be adjusted based on your latest score. Editing or unsigning rounds takes it out of your handicap calculation.

- 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.

- Is the GAME GOLF handicap an official handicap index of any golf association such as the USGA?

No.  The game golf handicap system is not an official handicap for any golf association.  The GAME GOLF handicap provides a uniform handicap that can be applied globally regardless of region and local association rules.

- Are there any fees associated with a GAME GOLF handicap?

No, it’s free.

- What's the difference between the USGA's handicap and GAME GOLF's?

Besides being similar in terms of a stroke-count representation of how well a golfer performs with respect to typical scratch golfers, the main difference is that GG Handicap doesn’t use the course/slope ratings against a players score.  GG Handicap uses the actual yardage played for each hole from their tagged tee positions to the middle of the green, with dog-legs factored into the equation according to the design of the hole.

- What does GAME GOLF use the handicap for?

It’s a pivotal fulcrum to many upcoming social features to level the playing field for Net Score Challenges.

- How does it work for par 3 courses?  I play a local par three where all the holes are under 100 yards, will this have an impact on my handicap?

It depends on how well you play those holes under a 100-yards/meters against the average score of scratch players that also play holes of those yardages.  This is no different with any other hole lengths you play.  The handicap measures how you fare versus a scratch player.

- Jacob

[Missouri Swede]

If you could visit the support center at gamegolfsupport.com and submit a ticket(s) for our team to answer that would be quite helpful.  I'd especially like to figure out the subdued screen as I haven't seen this in any testing thus far on the various Android devices in the office (possibly it may be related to your display settings, but without seeing it in person or with a screen shot I can't say with any certainty - and you're going to hate me here but besides testing on Android, I'm an iPhone user so my Droid chops aren't what they used to be).  Make sure to send in screen shots to the support team with your ticket if you think they are applicable.

Done.

I'm just happy you've got an android version out already.  A lot of apps make it to iOS and then the android version shows up when ... well, for some apps, I'm still waiting.

As with any new app there will be issues along the way, and just about every 1-2 weeks you'll see an update (on iPhone and Android) with bug fixes and new feature releases (lots of new features coming soon btw).

From what I've seen, your crew is quite responsive.  Just glad to know folks work on things to improve them. And thanks for being willing to answer questions on the forum here.

[fr0sty]

A few Round-Editing related issues I ran into last week:

1. Is there a way for me to move shots between holes? The initial upload of my round last Saturday had all shots from holes 6/7 show up just on hole 6. I emailed support and they cleared it up pretty quickly but having a self-serve option would be nice.

2. When editing the round you don't show the length putts and even if you did the zoom level available on some courses make accurate placement of shots/holes very difficult. This is an issue because accurate putt lengths are necessary for accurate approach stats. Could you allow for higher zoom levels (even if it pixellates the issue too much) or some other method of placing putts? Even just having an entry field for 'length of first putt' that would adjust the hole locations relative to your approach shot would go a long way.

[Dave2512]

It would be nice to know how close to the hole our approaches are but I feel for all but the best rec golfers it's probably not a useful stat. Personally I don't hit enough greens for it to matter and those I do hit could be lucky bounces. I'd like to see better HBH stats just not sure what and how it should look.

A few Round-Editing related issues I ran into last week:

1. Is there a way for me to move shots between holes? The initial upload of my round last Saturday had all shots from holes 6/7 show up just on hole 6. I emailed support and they cleared it up pretty quickly but having a self-serve option would be nice.

2. When editing the round you don't show the length putts and even if you did the zoom level available on some courses make accurate placement of shots/holes very difficult. This is an issue because accurate putt lengths are necessary for accurate approach stats. Could you allow for higher zoom levels (even if it pixellates the issue too much) or some other method of placing putts? Even just having an entry field for 'length of first putt' that would adjust the hole locations relative to your approach shot would go a long way.

[fr0sty]

It would be nice to know how close to the hole our approaches are but I feel for all but the best rec golfers it's probably not a useful stat.

That may be true, but if you are going to even offer an 'analysis' screen showing distance to the pin in feet then at least give people a chance to get it right. If people don't care to do the extra work, no one is forcing them.

Incidental to this, I just realized that "Approaching the Green" only includes attempts to reach the green in regulation. What is missing is a 'scrambling' analysis showing how close your chips/pitches are, and/or an 'all approaches' which includes trying to reach par 5s in two, hitting approach shots after penalties, chipping after coming up short, etc.

[tlester3672]

David / Jacob,

Has anyone suggested having a tag in something you wear on your wrist?  I would have it set for an advance to the next hole function / or hole out function.  While it is nice that most of the time the device can tell when you have moved on to the next hole, sometimes it doesn't.  My home course layout has several holes that as you drive along comes very close to another or the next tee box.  Several times I have had to edit my round because the chips and putts for one hole end up on the tee box of another hole.  Just an idea.

[tlester3672]

David / Jacob,

Has anyone suggested having a tag in something you wear on your wrist?  I would have it set for an advance to the next hole function / or hole out function.  While it is nice that most of the time the device can tell when you have moved on to the next hole, sometimes it doesn't.  My home course layout has several holes that as you drive along comes very close to another or the next tee box.  Several times I have had to edit my round because the chips and putts for one hole end up on the tee box of another hole.  Just an idea.

Maybe another idea would to be to upgrade the firmware on the device to give a double beep by holding your putter to the device for maybe 15-20 seconds to represent hole out.

[fr0sty]

Originally Posted by tlester3672

Maybe another idea would to be to upgrade the firmware on the device to give a double beep by holding your putter to the device for maybe 15-20 seconds to represent hole out.

I already feel like enough of a dweeb walking up to the cup and tagging my tap in after an opponent concedes the putt and knocks my ball away. Now you want me to stand there for another 20 seconds??

3-5 seconds and I might be on board. Or maybe a config option where you could do an extra putter tap to mark the hole. Then in the round review you could toggle that last putt into the hole location...

[dkolo]

@GAME Golf ing by to discuss your product! I really appreciate the chance to ask you guys some questions I've had.

1) I know that the social aspect of the device is central to the platform, but is there any way to put some better restrictions on privacy? As it is now, it would come up in Google and everything is on blast to the whole world. Making individual rounds private is a really limited way to address this. I haven't added any info to my profile and I don't want to put my full name in there if it's open to everyone. Is there anything you guys can do in this regard? Such as giving us the option to identify ourselves by our usernames to the public and restrict our personal information and pictures to those people we actively form connections with via following or a facebook-like friending option?

2) Is there anything coming or being considered with respect to being able to label and include / exclude individual shots on a more granular level? So, in terms of tagging an individual chip out as such and not have it show up in my club stats? With my 8 iron last week, for instance, I hit it out from under a tree where my hands were on the steel of the shaft. Yeah, I got it out about 110 yards, but that's not a shot that has any value to me stats-wise long term. I know your algorithm adjusts for things like this, but a 110 yard chip out doesn't help my stats while if I mishit my 8 iron on a full swing and it goes 110, I'd like to know that for my planning purposes. Same with drives that look short but may have been up hill or into stiff winds. Or manipulating a 9 iron by hitting it 3/4 strength. Or my 7 iron hit the cart path and went nuts distance-wise. Basically, I'd like to know whether there is any help coming for those of us who would like to add more detailed categorization of shots to our clubs for more valid feedback on performance. Also, the ability to add notes to individual shots would help for figuring out what caused it later.

3) Can we do something about numbering holes manually? You guys did a great job of fixing score card issues at one local course that had 3 9-hole tracts that you played in various combinations for 18 holes, but the numbers are static. So my front 9 was numbered 19-27 and my back 9 was numbered 1-9. It's a small nitpick, but it would be helpful to renumber or reorder the holes ourselves

4) Related to point 2, can we have the option to enter for ourselves whether the shot was in sand / out, rough / fairway, etc? A toggle like for greens or a drop-down menu seems natural.

I'm sure I'll have some more, but I don't want to bog you guys down with too many at once. Thanks again for talking with us!

[Dave2512]

That may be true, but if you are going to even offer an 'analysis' screen showing distance to the pin in feet then at least give people a chance to get it right. If people don't care to do the extra work, no one is forcing them.

Incidental to this, I just realized that "Approaching the Green" only includes attempts to reach the green in regulation. What is missing is a 'scrambling' analysis showing how close your chips/pitches are, and/or an 'all approaches' which includes trying to reach par 5s in two, hitting approach shots after penalties, chipping after coming up short, etc.

Where I think it could be helpful is it ties into GIR and would present a better analysis of how we miss greens. The current graphic <15 yards is somewhat vague and what falls where can be misleading. For example I have a shot recorded <15 yards that actually landed near OB. It's a funky poorly designed course I don't play often but that shot is in there as one of the better ones. The <15 yards thing they use is 90 feet with both sides, that is a sizable area.

In current form it doesn't really give me an idea of what I am doing on the course, certainly not relative to GIR. As I post more rounds the % are increasing. As of today I am within the <15 stat at 45% from 150-175. My approaches often closer than that and my GIR significantly less at 31%. I look at it and think what I am supposed to learn from this. The only useful thing for me is knowing how often I miss short. But I already knew how often I duff it.

[tlester3672]

I already feel like enough of a dweeb walking up to the cup and tagging my tap in after an opponent concedes the putt and knocks my ball away. Now you want me to stand there for another 20 seconds?? 3-5 seconds and I might be on board. Or maybe a config option where you could do an extra putter tap to mark the hole. Then in the round review you could toggle that last putt into the hole location...

True. I just was throwing the idea out there. Maybe 15 seconds is to long but I figured the device will need some time to discern between a regular shot and holing out. That's why a wrist tag might work better. Maybe other people do not run into this problem but I have found myself telling people to stop driving because you are going to get me to close to the next hole and my Game device will get confused!!!

[Slowcelica]

A few Round-Editing related issues I ran into last week:

1. Is there a way for me to move shots between holes? The initial upload of my round last Saturday had all shots from holes 6/7 show up just on hole 6. I emailed support and they cleared it up pretty quickly but having a self-serve option would be nice.

I had this problem once on a course where the tee for a par 3 and a par 4 were real close together and gg got confused. I ended up deleting one of the holes and putting it manually.

[iacas]

1. Is there a way for me to move shots between holes? The initial upload of my round last Saturday had all shots from holes 6/7 show up just on hole 6. I emailed support and they cleared it up pretty quickly but having a self-serve option would be nice.

Just delete them, then add the next hole and add the shots. It's not ideal but it's not difficult to do, either.

[GAME GOLF]

I've really been enjoying using my Game Golf device this year.  The best feature for me are the club stats that show dispersions and averages.   Knowing what my normal dispersion is with a mid-iron for example really teaches me about where I need to be aiming to maximize my scoring (which is really minimizing big numbers for me).   The current problem w/ these stats is that you have to play a lot of rounds to get good numbers and a few wild/bad/crazy shots can throw off the stats.  So what I'd like to see are:

- A way to manually remove a shot from the stats.  double click, right click, or click "remove shots" and the click all the ones to remove.  It needs to be fast (1 click, not 3) and easy.

- A way to automatically remove shots from the stats by distance.  Set a minimum distance as a function of club and if the shot is below that, remove it from the stats.

- Show all the shots on the screen and color code the ones that are not included in the stats (current white color for used, maybe black for unused?)

It would also be really nice if there was a club summary table.  I'd like to see a table with all of the clubs down the left side and columns showing data for each club:

- total number of shots taken

- average number of shots per round

- average length (yards)

- length dispersion (std deviation in yards)

- direction dispersion (std deviation in yards)

- % of shots left and right of target (fairway or green center line)

Having that kind of information in a nice summary would help me see general miss statistics (left vs right) as well as how much accuracy I can expect from each club so I can plan my aim points appropriately.

Other misc ideas:

- Modify the scoring web pages - they have very little information density.  I have to click through menus to see par 3, 4, and 5 performance.  All of that information that's in the scoring menus should be on one page.  I never look at this page because it's too much of a pain to click through each item.

- Course statistics on a hole by hole basic.  Show me which holes I'm playing well on and which I'm not.

- Course summary table.  Table w/ course names down the left and for each show average score, hi/lo score, avg par 3, 4, 5 score, putts, etc.

That may be true, but if you are going to even offer an 'analysis' screen showing distance to the pin in feet then at least give people a chance to get it right. If people don't care to do the extra work, no one is forcing them.

Incidental to this, I just realized that "Approaching the Green" only includes attempts to reach the green in regulation. What is missing is a 'scrambling' analysis showing how close your chips/pitches are, and/or an 'all approaches' which includes trying to reach par 5s in two, hitting approach shots after penalties, chipping after coming up short, etc.

by default we place the pin in the centroid of the green for any 1 putts (but allow you to move the pin during round review editing to make approach the green stats more accurate).  For 2, 3 and 4 putts (ouch) we auto snap the pin to 2 feet within your last putt.  We're working on better ways to assess putting distances from a programming level so you won't have to move the pin, etc.  The goal is to get accurate data but not at the expense of adding unnecessary steps to your round of golf or post-round.  We realize there are several of these instances in the current product and know we need to improve these to get total traction.  Approach the green stats start at 50 yards.  Fun features coming around chipping/putting stats but we aren't discussing these outside the company until they are officially released.

At the end of the day, basically anything that is added to our user forum feature request section enough times at http://myexperience.gamegolf.com/ will be added into the platform (within limitations of course).  While there are hundreds of great ideas out there, we try to focus on the items that are a priority for our current users (i.e. affecting the most users) but also as a priority for enticing new fans to our community.  If there is a feature that in particular is very relevant to you in the user forums, add a vote for it, and comment exactly how you would like to see this.  The more info and data we have around what features are useful and why/how they would be useful helps us prioritize to figure out the most effective product roadmap possible and will get you all the features you desire most as a group.  Also don't hesitate to add in an idea even if you think other folks won't vote for it as much, I've seen some diamonds in the rough on those forums that have caught our eye in a big way.

-Jacob

[GAME GOLF]

David / Jacob,

Has anyone suggested having a tag in something you wear on your wrist?  I would have it set for an advance to the next hole function / or hole out function.  While it is nice that most of the time the device can tell when you have moved on to the next hole, sometimes it doesn't.  My home course layout has several holes that as you drive along comes very close to another or the next tee box.  Several times I have had to edit my round because the chips and putts for one hole end up on the tee box of another hole.  Just an idea.

We should be able to fix this from a course geofencing standpoint.  Could you submit a ticket to our support center at gamegolfsupport.com with specific holes that this happens on your course, they may be able to adjust the tees or potentially alter the move-to-next hole algorithm to provide a smarter assessment of which hole you're on.

[GAME GOLF]

1. Is there a way for me to move shots between holes? The initial upload of my round last Saturday had all shots from holes 6/7 show up just on hole 6. I emailed support and they cleared it up pretty quickly but having a self-serve option would be nice

Originally Posted by Slowcelica

I had this problem once on a course where the tee for a par 3 and a par 4 were real close together and gg got confused. I ended up deleting one of the holes and putting it manually.

There isn't a feature we've provided at the moment.  When you submit these issues to the support team they look at the affected holes, delete the appropriate shots and place the shots on the correct holes.  It's a manual process but can take only a minute or so if you'd like to do this yourself.  This obviously is by no means a preferred interaction with the system but we are still trying to get smarter on our logic for deciding which hole you're playing.  The problem we've encountered is that golf is quite the specific, and customized sport from an course layout architecture standpoint.  There's no cookie cutter method to fix all, so we have to get really creative around what works and what doesn't.  We'll continue to get smarter on this logic so this doesn't happen.

[tlester3672]

We should be able to fix this from a course geofencing standpoint.  Could you submit a ticket to our support center at [URL=http://gamegolfsupport.com]gamegolfsupport.com [/URL]with specific holes that this happens on your course, they may be able to adjust the tees or potentially alter the move-to-next hole algorithm to provide a smarter assessment of which hole you're on.

Sure. I am already in the process of working with them on fixing a problem with our course. It is nine holes with similar but different tee boxes for the front and back nine.

[fr0sty]

We should be able to fix this from a course geofencing standpoint.  Could you submit a ticket to our support center at gamegolfsupport.com with specific holes that this happens on your course, they may be able to adjust the tees or potentially alter the move-to-next hole algorithm to provide a smarter assessment of which hole you're on.

Would it be possible to see this 'geofencing' information overlaid on the course map? You could get a lot of solid feedback from interested parties (often with intimate knowledge of how the course is set up and typically played) if the information was available for them to see.

Related to the above question, do you have a outside 'beta testing' group who test out new features? Any interest in starting one?