Trackman range

[Springveldt]

Morpeth? I normally go to Parklands as it's nearer, but I do prefer this one. The InRange system seems pretty good. The 9 hole golf course attached to it is absolutely horrendous though!

Our club has an indoor SIM. Can't recall the make, but it is absolutely terrible. You need to hit off a small tee, the room is very dark, and you spend more time trying to find the tees than hitting balls.

ProTee and as you say it's complete and utter gash. Either that or it's never been set up properly as the only times I've used it the ball speeds seemed ok but the spin and direction are absolutely ridiculous. Even with the ball speeds looking ok, the distances are completely wrong due to the spin being so mental.

I remember using it with my mate and it was telling us that his 3 wood was 155mph ball speed which is where I would have guessed it was based on the distances he carries it on the course. It was also telling us that every shot was slicing 70 yards right and only carrying 210 yards. Now, he's a + golfer and I think I've seen him slice that 3 wood once, usually it's arrow straight or a little draw. We haven't used it since.

 

[BubbaP]

I'd say the two top tracer ranges near-ish to me are not too bad, maybe they made the effort. Was at one over the weekend and they had a sign up saying switching to trackman this month - so I'll be interested to compare.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

I'd say the two top tracer ranges near-ish to me are not too bad, maybe they made the effort. Was at one over the weekend and they had a sign up saying switching to trackman this month - so I'll be interested to compare.

Having tried trackman range system and Topgolf in recent weeks I think Trackman is better. The only negative to that is Topgolf have more practice games (approach shots, short shot practice etc)

 

[Crow]

Interesting.

 

[sjw]

Some numbers from Toptracer tonight
(Carry, total, ball speed, launch angle, height, landing angle, hang time, curve, offline)

 

[Deleted member 35504]

View attachment 51993

Some numbers from Toptracer tonight

Same club?

 

[sjw]

Same club?

Yeah all driver, I'm not very consistent

 

[Deleted member 35504]

Interesting.

Yes, interesting.

Completely empty range, slight breeze, warm weather and an actual Trackman as opposed to one of the cheaper systems.

At the lower end of the bag the distances were fairly accurate, when they went to the longer shots they both went a bit quiet when their distances showed as nothing like they should be/thought they should be.

Overall their final comment said it all to me really, ie good for a bit of family fun but not much else.

And what a weirdo the big guy is... What's all this "CH allenge" and "Practeeeeesss" ?

 

[nickjdavis]

I've been going through the historical data I've got over the last four or five weeks that I've been practising down the range....partly to work out a bag selection for the coming year...I was always aware that I had a bit of "congestion" at the top end of the bag with a few clubs in the hybrid - 3 wood range having a bit of overlap...and having just bought a new set of irons i also wanted to see what sort of gap I'd opened up at the bottom end of the bag. More of the results of that later though...maybe in this thread, maybe in a separate post.

Having gathered close to 600 shots of data across 20 different clubs I wanted to see if I could get a handle on the process, that the InRange system at my local range uses, to convert between the actual "measured range ball distance" and the "calculated premium ball distance"

So....below is a graph....range ball distance across the X-axis, calculated premium ball distance up the y-axis. Data points are the blue dots. The first thing that struck me was how consistent the data was...I was half expecting a degree of "fluffiness" where, if you had maybe half a dozen shots of X yards (measured) you might see half a dozen different premium ball distances....this would have indicated that the system factored in multiple aspects of the shot (such as launch angle, peak apex, how far away peak apex is achieved, spin rate etc) to determine the premium distance calculation...and would have been a pretty damned complex algorithm....as it happens, in the underlying raw data I can see several examples where measured shots with the same yardage to 3 decimal places all result in premium ball calculations of the same yardage, again to 3 decimal places.

So, plainly, conversion is being calculated using a fixed formula, rather than factoring in specific shot data for each shot other than measured distance. I'm convinced though that in the real world things are not that simple and you really need to consider "how" a ball reached its end destination (in terms of how it launched, how high it flew, where the peak apex was, how it was spinning) and then base the premium distance calculation on these factors.

I really need to expand my one off 8-iron experiment (post #49) to compare calculated premium ball distances with actual premium ball distances hit during the same session to determine how accurate the conversion calculation is (for me...things maybe totally different for another person who launches the ball totally differently).

 

[sjw]

I've been going through the historical data I've got over the last four or five weeks that I've been practising down the range....partly to work out a bag selection for the coming year...I was always aware that I had a bit of "congestion" at the top end of the bag with a few clubs in the hybrid - 3 wood range having a bit of overlap...and having just bought a new set of irons i also wanted to see what sort of gap I'd opened up at the bottom end of the bag. More of the results of that later though...maybe in this thread, maybe in a separate post.

Having gathered close to 600 shots of data across 20 different clubs I wanted to see if I could get a handle on the process, that the InRange system at my local range uses, to convert between the actual "measured range ball distance" and the "calculated premium ball distance"

So....below is a graph....range ball distance across the X-axis, calculated premium ball distance up the y-axis. Data points are the blue dots. The first thing that struck me was how consistent the data was...I was half expecting a degree of "fluffiness" where, if you had maybe half a dozen shots of X yards (measured) you might see half a dozen different premium ball distances....this would have indicated that the system factored in multiple aspects of the shot (such as launch angle, peak apex, how far away peak apex is achieved, spin rate etc) to determine the premium distance calculation...and would have been a pretty damned complex algorithm....as it happens, in the underlying raw data I can see several examples where measured shots with the same yardage to 3 decimal places all result in premium ball calculations of the same yardage, again to 3 decimal places.

So, plainly, conversion is being calculated using a fixed formula, rather than factoring in specific shot data for each shot other than measured distance. I'm convinced though that in the real world things are not that simple and you really need to consider "how" a ball reached its end destination (in terms of how it launched, how high it flew, where the peak apex was, how it was spinning) and then base the premium distance calculation on these factors.

I really need to expand my one off 8-iron experiment (post #49) to compare calculated premium ball distances with actual premium ball distances hit during the same session to determine how accurate the conversion calculation is (for me...things maybe totally different for another person who launches the ball totally differently).

View attachment 52059

Great experimenting!

This is the conclusion I've come to with Toptracer - it seems that it measures distance completely independently to launch angle and speed, which is fair, because it's not measuring spin. But that means that when it comes to mapping to a real ball, it might be accurate or it might not, because it just seems to scale everything up with no cross checking etc. And again, it's not measuring spin.

 

[Imurg]

And if it's not measuring spin then it has no chance of getting distances correct..

 

[sjw]

And if it's not measuring spin then it has no chance of getting distances correct..

For a normalised ball, I agree. For the range balls, though, there is the camera.

 

[nickjdavis]

And if it's not measuring spin then it has no chance of getting distances correct..

The system at my local range gets the range ball distances exactly spot on...because they are measured...tracked from launch to landing.

Its the method used in converting said range ball distances to a "premium" ball distance that I was interested in. Unsurprisingly its a relatively simple formulaic conversion...and even if the system were measuring spin (I dont believe it does...its certainly not presented as a metric), the conversion from range ball spin to premium balls spin (and launch and apex) and how that would ultimately convert to distance would be hugely complex.