How it works
You hit a ball. Four seconds later you know where it went.
No PC, no box on the wall, no cables across the grass. A launch monitor on the ground, a phone in a stand, and whatever screens you point at it.
The chain
Four pieces. You only have to buy one of them.
Pair the monitor
Put the R10 down behind the ball, open the app, and connect it once. After that it just finds it.
Pick a course
Twenty real ones are in there. Pick nine or eighteen, add whoever is playing, and tee off.
Hit
Every strike comes through with the full set of numbers, and the ball flies the way those numbers say it should.
Putt it out
Set the ball where it tells you on the putting mat and roll it. A camera calls it in or out.
The physics
Ball flight from your real shot.
The monitor hands over ball speed, launch angle, azimuth, spin rate and spin axis. From there it's flown properly. Lift from the spin, drag from the speed, gravity, stepped out until it hits the ground.
So the descent angle is something the flight produces, not something we pick. A flushed wedge drops in steep and stops. A skulled one comes in shallow and runs forever, same as it does on the course.
Where it lands decides what happens next. Green, fringe, fairway, rough, the deep stuff. Each one rolls differently and holds a different slope. Land on a steep enough bank and it won't stay there.
What comes in off the monitor
- Ball speed
- Launch angle and direction
- Spin rate and spin axis
- Club head speed and smash factor
- Club path and face angle, on models that report it
What comes out
- Carry and total distance
- Apex height
- Descent angle, calculated from the flight
- Offline left or right
- The lie you are actually in now
Screens
Three screens, and two of them can be junk.
There is a small web server inside the app. Anything on your wifi with a browser can open the round, which is the whole trick to making this work with a group.
Phone one
The one that runs it
Pairs to the launch monitor, draws the hole, keeps the card. Mirror it to your projector or TV, or just leave it in a stand beside the mat and watch the big screen instead.
Needs to be your decent phone. The rest do not.
Phone two
The putting camera
Any old phone clipped to a tripod, pointed at the putting mat. It does one job and does not need to be fast or new. Somebody's phone who came over works fine for the night, then they take it home.
The one in the drawer with the cracked corner.
Anything else
The watch screen
Open the address on a TV, a tablet, a laptop or a smart projector. Full scorecard for everybody playing, the last five shots with whoever hit them, and the complete set of numbers next to the view of the green.
Whatever is already on the wall.
It all stays on your own network. The watch page is served by the phone in your yard, not by us. Nothing about your round leaves the house.
Putting
The part everyone else skips.
Most cheap setups gimme you inside some distance, or make you tap a number, and your card quietly turns into fiction. We wanted the putts to count.
So: a putting mat with cups, and a phone on a tripod looking at it. On the green it tells you out loud how far out you are and which cup to use, so you never pick a phone up. Then you putt and it calls it in or out.
It repeats the target every few seconds while you're standing over it, because you'll forget. It shuts up while the ball is rolling, because being hollered at mid stroke is awful.
This was the hardest part of the whole thing and it took a lot of rounds in the dark. If it ever calls one wrong, tell us.
What you need
Before you buy anything, check this list.
A launch monitor
The Garmin Approach R10 is what we build and test against. Used ones turn up around $300. What we know about the others.
Somewhere to hit
Inside or outside, it doesn't care. A net and a mat in the yard, or a projector and a sheet on the garage wall. The R10 wants a few feet behind the ball and a few feet of flight, so a shed is tight and a one car garage is fine.
A phone
Android or iPhone, anything from the last few years. A second old one if you want putting, and it really can be old. Charge it.
Optional: something to project on
A cheap projector makes it a lot more fun, on the net outside or on a sheet in the garage. Not required. Plenty of people just play off the phone.
Optional: a putting mat with cups
Only needed for camera putting. Without one you still play, you just handle the putts yourself.
Optional: lights
If you hit outside you'll end up hitting at night, and then you'll want them. Ask us how we know.
Want the email when it lands on the stores?
Apple and Google, $79, one purchase. One message from us, on the day.
One message. No newsletter. We do not sell or share the list.