Three Ways Arccos Helps Members Realize Rapid Game Improvement
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve likely read about the numerous new products and features Arccos has introduced over the past year. But it all comes back to this: any golfer can improve his or her performance by harnessing the power of data to make smarter decisions on the course and while they practice.
In fact, data is a faster road to rapid game improvement than frequency of playing, practicing or technological advancements in equipment. A study of the USGA GHIN handicap system showed average golfers improved their handicaps by just 1.9 strokes over the past 25 years. That’s despite major advances in club and ball technology, instruction, training methods and other areas.
By comparison, Arccos members who have played 10 rounds or more with Arccos Caddie lowered their handicap by 2.77, and five strokes within the first year. That’s an improvement rate of more than 36-times faster based on our robust data set of more than 458 million shots tracked over 7 million nine- and 18-hole rounds.
How does it happen? Well, here are three ways Arccos helps its members realize rapid game improvement through both data and artificial intelligence.
Strokes Gained Analytics
If you’ve watched Golf Channel or a PGA TOUR event for any amount of time, you know strokes gained analytics is all the rage among professional golfers, high-level players and numerous golf instructors. Why? Because stroked gained goes much deeper than traditional golf stats to reveal exactly where you’re losing strokes around the golf course.
And Arccos Strokes Gained Analytics (SGA) Feature goes even further, allowing Arccos members to compare their games across a broad range of handicaps ranging from TOUR player up to 20. In other words, if you’re a 15 handicap with a goal of becoming a 10, you can set the SGA Feature accordingly to see where you’re losing strokes.
While traditional statistics like Fairways and GIR are still captured, SGA is a better way to pinpoint even more accurately, where players are winning and losing across the facets of their game.
Just as importantly, you can use the SGA Feature to create practice plans to make better use of your time on the range. Need a push in the right direction? Check out the “Top 3 Insights” recommendations for “What to Work on,” including tips from our Arccos Ambassadors Ryan Crysler, Erika Larkin, Andrew Rice and Trillium Rose.
A.I.-Powered Rangefinder
The A.I.-Powered Rangefinder – powered by real-time, cloud-based data – has revolutionized the category by providing Arccos members with an unprecedented level of actionable data. It accounts for not only distance, but also wind, humidity, slope and elevation. The altitude calculation is personalized based on elevation differential between your home course and the one you’re playing.
So imagine the scene: you’re standing on a tee box of a golf course you’ve never played at 3,000 feet above sea level. There’s a 15 mile-per-hour headwind and tee is elevated 50 feet above the fairway landing area. The A.I.-Powered Rangefinder will generate a “plays like” yardage based on cloud-based data and make a club recommendation based on your Smart Distance.
Oh, and if you’re thinking of carrying the bunker or the left side of the fairway to cut the corner for a shorter approach shot, the A.I.-Powered Rangefinder has you covered. Just zoom in and tap on a point just over the bunker edge to get an accurate distance. This level of precision can save removes the guesswork and can save Arccos members several strokes per round.
Smart Distances
Smart Distance and Smart Range are Arccos “OG” features. The Arccos Caddie App paired with Smart Sensors or Smart Grips on every club in your bag tracks every shot you take. What’s Smart Distance? Simply put, it’s the estimation of an Arccos player's expected distance on a well-struck shot.
The biggest "win" for this feature is that it removes the cognitive biased about what players *think* they hit their clubs, and forces them to understand their "reliable" distances. As any decent golfer knows... just because you thinned a shot a couple times, doesn't mean it's in the bag consistently--so smart distances can have humbling moments.
Based on historical data, it automatically excludes mishits and abnormally long shots to provide an exponentially more accurate account of true club distances. Club-level data on the Arccos Caddie App also includes greens in regulation with your percentage misses by location (left, right, short and long), and average distance to the pin (for greens in regulation and missed).
And while change doesn’t happen overnight, it occurs in dramatic fashion after just 10 rounds. Arccos players average 14.91 feet closer to the hole on approach shots after logging 180 holes with the Arccos Caddie App and leveraging the Smart Distance feature.
