Golfication--AI comes to golf. Maybe.

duffer18 · February 15, 2019

Anyone tried this attempt at bringing ai to golf? Bought it for fun last summer off a kickstarter--like app. Has a small square that clips on the back of a glove, then has plugs to put into grips at the end of the club. Has a UBS connection to a computer for loading data post-round, and there's an app that analyzes the data. Have not had a chance to use it as I'm stuck in the northeast. System doesn't require a phone on the course or tagging, both of which are good. Looks like it will operate in a practice mode, which means maybe I can use it indoors. Has no screen and no GPS. Supposedly gives all sorts of metrics. Will report on it when I get it up and going.

Duke of Hazards · February 15, 2019

Huh. I hadn't heard of this. Looks like a small outfit out of India. It looks similar to Shotscope, except that it uses the module on the back of glove, rather than a watch. A little to be desired as far as the polish on their marketing, but it actually looks pretty solid. It has more bells and whistles than other competitors (swing analyzer, AR view of course, and a 'simulated' AI competitor). It also has what appears to be 'true' strokes gained stats (Broadie), rather than the 'pseudo' strokes gained that Arccos and Shotscope use.

Price point seems pretty good- $274 hardware, $40/yr app subscription

If any of the additional features are halfway functional and if they refine their marketing a bit ('Golfication X' sounds a bit silly to me, tbh), could have legs in the space as it does quite a bit.

Keen · February 18, 2019

I’m waiting on mine, but early reviews on their Facebook group haven’t been all that promising. Lots of glitches, but they seem fairly good with responding and fixing issues with firmware updates.

Feels like they pushed it out a bit early without sufficient testing, but we’ll see how they develop.

duffer18 · February 19, 2019

Just a warning. The app looks cool and maybe someday it will be a great system. For now, it's useless because I can't synch the plugs in the club ends to the app. And so far my e-mail inquiry to the company has gone unanswered. Not good signs.

Duke of Hazards · February 20, 2019

Thanks for the update.

Gilligandavis · February 21, 2019

I am still waiting for my order (bought 2)...we'll see if they've been able to make software and firmware strides by the time I receive them, but results from the Facebook group have been lackluster.

SecondandGoal · September 19, 2019

Way late posting this, but I got one, and it was absolutely unusable. They definitely released this without sufficient testing. It was 100% NOT ready for prime time. The problems I had:

* Club tags didn't properly sync to the app. They stayed labeled as whatever the default was. The tag on my driver was the 9-iron in the app. All messed up.

* One tag was defective. Wound up being the one I had on my putter, which was also defaulted to the putter. They were supposed to send a replacement, but never did.

* There was no way to manually end a hole (see problem above with putter tag). Even when I manually moved forward a hole, the device was still scoring me for the first hole.

* It got totally screwed up when you manually moved forward holes. At one point, it told me I was on hole 21 (it was actually the 14th hole).

* Because of the problems ending a hole, for the 6 rounds I wore it, it never synced a single hole with the app.

* Took WAY too much manual intervention for something that is supposed to be fully automated.

They kept wanting me to be a guinea pig and test update after update after update, basically throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it would fix the problems. It never did. They refused to give me a refund, but I wound up getting one by filing a complaint with PayPal. The unit definitely did not function as described on their web site (see my last point), so PayPal sided with me. Even though the unit was shipped by Amazon Fulfillment, they tried to get me to give up by making me ship it back to India. I ate the $40 it cost to ship (with tracking and signature verification, as required by the PayPal resolution team) just to say "f*** you" to these people and wash my hands of this worthless piece of crap.

Bottom line, stay far away. Maybe in a few years if they get their act together and actually develop a device and app that work the way they describe it will be a good unit, but right now it's useless.