fr0sty

Hey, Fr0sty checking in. Been here about 5 years if my profile is to be believed. I spend most of my time lurking around the rules forum. I'm just coming out of hibernation here in Chicagoland and will play my first round of the season on Saturday. I'll have my GameGolf device on my hip so y'all can see what kind of show I manage to put on after nearly 6 months off. I won't know if I can actually swing this schedule wise and budget wise until early summer but having a goal in mind is a great way to focus my practice this spring.

I don't understand this move. The belt device is legal for tournament use, arguably less intrusive to use during the round, but I don't know how that can demand a $200 premium over their free app. It seems like they are significantly eating into their own target market. When they launched the indiegogo campaign website access was going to cost something like $20/yr on top of the cost of the device with one year free after purchase. Perhaps they will start charging app users an annual fee for access to the site and the analytics but leave it free for device owners.

Will do. I have a baker's dozen already and once I actually play this weekend I'll probably have a few more...

Since Fairway/Green (bunker?) determinations are made automagically based on location, having the option to display where GG thinks the Fairways, Greens and Bunkers are could be really helpful. Paired with a 'report this' button it could be a really easy way to crowd-source corrections, and additions to their mappings.

I've been holding out hope (and for the most part I still do) that the analysis portion of the site will continue to improve but new/better features have been thin on the ground since last summer. If you could bend the ear of someone with some clout over at Game Golf that would be stellar. Off the top of my head: 1. Add better statistical measures: PPGIR, # of strokes to hole out by distance, nGIR (or distance to hole in regulation w/ or w/out GIRs included). 2. Add "Power User" options: Allow people to designate tags for penalties, or for tagging the hole, or just a 'reminder' tag so you can make an adjustments to shots, add comments, etc. 3. Further refine the round editing experience: Make on/off fairways a check-box (like they do for putts), add a way to move shots between holes or merge holes (for when they get misapplied, flag 'suspect' holes (or just mention any 'records' you are about to set to help catch errors). 4. Release a round uploader for Linux computers.

Do they have PPGIR in there now? I only see putts/hole which is not the most helpful stat.

That better be a teaser for the longer write-up you are working on...

Be careful drawing that conclusion without a baseline. If you don't know for certain what % of your shots came up short last season, blaming your shortness this year on your swing may be misplaced. It is possible that you were always coming up short on average but just didn't notice without having good analysis tools.

Just curious. A search for "Lowest Score Wins" on Amazon.com currently tries to sell me Broadie's book. I was under the impression that listing the book yourself for sale on amazon (as opposed to contracting with amazon to sell (and discount) the book for you) was not overly expensive. At least that was my impression when investigating this for a book my dad wrote.

Are there any plans to make the book available on Amazon.com, @iacas?

I think that is just there so you can go back and fix mistakes. Unsigning your old rounds would make them disappear from all your stats (which makes it harder to see long term trends). Also, oes Game Golf (still don't like the name, even 1 year later) even have a 'Handicap' feature? I just see "Average Score" (which is gross, and made up of who-knows-how-many rounds). Get in touch with their Tech Support. They are very willing to help (or at least have always been in my experience).

If the course doesn't have a website (My home course doesn't), they would probably accept photos of the scorecard posted to Dropbox (or similar). Finding Latitude/Longitude, if you open https://maps.google.com and click on the map (at least with Chrome on Windows) it will place a pin and give you the lat/long which you can copy. Example (Not my home course): First Tee

Reading this book finally convinced me to schedule a series of winter lessons to work on my full swing mechanics. In previous years I had dedicated a large percentage of my (admittedly meager) practice time on partial wedge shots and putting but the combination of that book, the data from GameGolf and some radical honesty on my part convinced me of what I should have done years ago. I'm about half-way into rebuilding my full swing with the help of a good instructor and a Flightscope. I bought a 10 pack of the books and have been handing them out to my golfing buddies. We'll see what sort of effect it has on them this next season.

The software engineer in me feels compelled to point out that GolfShot appears to have received a patent on their (neither novel or non-obvious) Smart Lock Screen feature which leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. They basically reimplemented the non-patented (but arguably patentable) GameGolf system using an android phone and then grabbed some software patents to try to block others from doing the same.

If you really want to experiment on the cheap go with these: 10x 30mm outdoor NFC tags with hole

Looks like Golf Pad GPS has recently launched a GameGolf alternative. I started a thread about it here: http://thesandtrap.com/t/80385/golfpad-gps-releases-its-own-tagging-system-gamegolf-arccos-alternative

Details here: https://www.golfpadgps.com/tags/start They took GameGolf's NFC tag approach so there are not batteries involved. You have to tag every shot (No automatic shot detection) but there is no separate data uploading step since the data is already on your phone. Price is $99 which is by far the most affordable system out there (currently). It is currently Android only but that will likely change. I figured it was only a matter of time before some other company took this approach (GameGolf clone). Almost everyone has a GPS device with an NFC reader in their pocket already so you don't need a bespoke device, just a set of tags and the analysis software. What remains to be seen is exactly what sort of analysis you can do with their app/website since that is where the real value is derived. If their offering falls flat in that department then the price savings don't matter.

On the website go to Explore -> courses and type in one close to you. It will show you all the activity at that course.

I endorse that 100% My first rounds with GG were pseudo-competitive and the fumbling, forgetting, backtracking, misremembering ("did I already tag this club?") and such probably cost me a few strokes (and my data was so jumbled I don't think I ended up signing the rounds anyway...

Agree 100% here. The "distance buckets are far too granular as well. Why not just provide a slider with min/max handles for distance and a multi-select menu for clubs? That gives you every possible combination.

If you contact customer support they can 'unsign' your rounds so you can edit/delete them. (at least that was the case during the summer).

I've also toyed with keeping it in my left front pocket.

http://www.gamegolf.com/player/frosty/round/111543 Not my best effort. I want to blame my poor putting (completely lost my stroke, can't convince myself to hit the ball hard enough). but the bigger problem was my approach shots being far more erratic than they usually are.

Maybe I'm missing something, but is there really no 'scorecard view' that shows Score, FairwayHit, GIR, putts, for a round? The round summary gives averages (and the round-review before posting shows at least some of that data) but I can't find a way to glance back at a previous round? One other thing I'd love to see is a way to look at per-hole performance across rounds (what is my GIR% on this hole this year? driving average? scoring average?). They have basic Par 3, par 4, par 5 scoring average stuff, but for people who play >50% of their rounds on the same home course being able to drill down and analyze particular holes would be of significant value.

Doesn't necessarily look that way from the card. Unless you are sticking approach shots inside 15' you shouldn't expect too many 1 putts. If anything you are losing strokes by not getting up and down when you miss the green and that likely by not getting close enough to give yourself a chance. Of course, if you are stuffing everything to 5' and can't make the putts, that's a different story altogether.