Game Golf tracking system (merged)

[avrag]

I realized that I'm coming up on two years using the system and have now put 40 rounds into it (I dont always remember it for 9 hole or practice rounds).

 

But I realized last night I'm still incredibly underwhelemed with where they are at after two years. Their customer service is *extremely* good at making quick corrections to things like course mapping or round errors. Extremely good.

 

Boy I just think they are really dropping the ball in terms of "big picture" types of improvements. Their website interface is essentially the same as it was 2 years ago. The strokes gained stats are...questionable in terms of accuracy. They still - admit - that their scrambling stats are just flat out wrong.

 

And I cant figure out why. Maybe they put too many resources into GG Live? Maybe not having a monthly income stream really limits their resources?

 

Personally I've only had two minor issues in two years with the hardware. 1 - the tag labels are worn 90% flat and 2 - the port plug/cover came off long ago. I consider this a pretty good success for something that takes the beating GG does.

 

So I still love it and will continue to use it, I just wish they had come farther.

 

I have just recorded, edited and saved my first round with the system, and I also think that you are spot on. The biggest criticism I have is that the editing for lost balls and out of bounds is really primitive. I hope that they will improve that.

Or that I improve in such a way that I don't need that any more.

(strange thing is I hadn't lost a ball or hit one out of bounds for months and then it happened twice in the first round I played with game golf).

[QEight]

The biggest criticism I have is that the editing for lost balls and out of bounds is really primitive. I hope that they will improve that.

 

You mean deleting a shot and adding penalty (+2)?

[dcmidnight]

The biggest criticism I have is that the editing for lost balls and out of bounds is really primitive. I hope that they will improve that.

 

You mean deleting a shot and adding penalty (+2)?

 

But you cant - to my knowledge - mark it as out of bounds. Which is a very basic label IMO. So there's then no way to go back into the data and say, OK, I want to work on my driving - so tell me how many OB shots I've had off the tee in last 5 rounds. Should be easy enough for them to track - but they dont.

 

Now that I think of it, there's no way to even go in and display how many penalty strokes you've taken in the last X rounds.

[ParHunter]

I agree, it seems that development (or improvements to the side) have stalled. I do like the SG even though you have to take the data with some caution. Especially the putting SG as you can't really enter the distances correctly (and the GPS is too far off to be useful for the putting SG).

 

But SG was the last improvement they've made and that was introduced and the end of last year if I remember correctly.

 

I think they have two key problems:

a) maintaining the system is too labour intensive. Every problem with a round requires support. They are admittedly very fast in responding and fixing the problem. It does however mean that a lot of their resources are used on support.

b) They don't have a repetitive income yet have to provide the service to all customers over years to come - not a sustainable business model IMHO.

[North Butte]

Yeah, unless they come up with a very attractive value-added subscription program of some sort (frankly, can't imagine what that would be) I can't see how they survive past the point where 99% of the people who want a Game Golf already have one. At some point there will be an equilibrium between incoming new GG users and the flood of used GG units floating around on eBay. At that point surely their income stream will go to zero, more or less.

 

I suppose they might be monetizing our data by building a big database of who plays where, when and who else plays there. Maybe someone will pay them to mine that data for marketing purposes or something. The dataset must be getting pretty big now. Come to think of it they also know what kinds of clubs most of us use.

[avrag]

The biggest criticism I have is that the editing for lost balls and out of bounds is really primitive. I hope that they will improve that.

 

You mean deleting a shot and adding penalty (+2)?

 

Yes. I didn't say it was complicated, I meant that it was not very sophisticated.

I am no software engineer and I don't have the slightest idea how difficult it would be to implement this, but in y perfect world (my perfect world at least), it would go like this:

After hitting a second shot from the tee you have two recorded drives, the first one with a distance of 0 yards. Now, instead of having to delete this, there could be an option to mark it as OoB or lost, which then would automatically add a penalty stroke and turn the 2nd recorded drive into the 3rd shot.

For the sake of the stats, it would be even better to have the option of dragging the result of the first shot to the general area, where it ended up, then mark this as OoB or lost (again, with the program then "knowing" that you could not have hit your next shot from there, but sticking with the starting position of the next recorded shot, which was the second drive).

Overall I still think that it is a great system. I don't have any issues with the putting either. I think it is very easy to drag the flag to the actual hole position during the editing process, so that you also get a very good approximation of the length of putts holed. I was also amazed about how accurate it seems to be, at least on my home course. I hit one shot right next to a bush, and it was also recorded that way, I'd guess within a foot or so. I hit another shot to a narrow strip of semz-rough in between two greenside bunkers, and this one also showed up exactly in the correct position.

[QEight]

The biggest criticism I have is that the editing for lost balls and out of bounds is really primitive. I hope that they will improve that.

 

You mean deleting a shot and adding penalty (+2)?

 

But you cant - to my knowledge - mark it as out of bounds. Which is a very basic label IMO. So there's then no way to go back into the data and say, OK, I want to work on my driving - so tell me how many OB shots I've had off the tee in last 5 rounds. Should be easy enough for them to track - but they dont.

 

Now that I think of it, there's no way to even go in and display how many penalty strokes you've taken in the last X rounds.

 

True that. I would not care about OB statistics, but penalty statistics would be good.

 

Also any trend statistics would be more than welcomed.

[ParHunter]

Looks like they concentrate their efforts on other stuff ;-(

 

http://articles.gamegolf.com/new-in-app-product-feature-live-leaderboard-6311/

[Enfynet]

Is GG Live not subscription based? I figured they want to go that route to establish an income.

[North Butte]

Didn't see the new LEADERBOARD stuff.

[joergensen]

Is GG Live not subscription based? I figured they want to go that route to establish an income.

No it isn't.

[dcmidnight]

Still a real problem with how GG calculates scrambling. Had at least two holes last night where it was not marked correctly so my scrambling % shows up as 0% for the round. I just dont understand why they cant get this right. Why even list it as a stat for your round or as a stat within your "strokes gained" if you KNOW its incorrect? This lack of giving a crap on behalf of GG is SO frustrating. If you can offer scrambling, then fix it, make it correct. If you cant, then DONT!

 

Or, well, you guys tell me. Should these be scrambling opportunities or not? IMO I thought they were.Two holes I got up and down for birdie on from very short range.

 

http://www.gamegolf....ole_id=27226358

 

http://www.gamegolf....ole_id=27226373

[larrybud]

Scrambling is saving par, not "saving" birdie.

[dcmidnight]

Scrambling is saving par, not "saving" birdie.

 

 

IIRC GG scrambling has always been definined as getting up and down for par **or better**. And that is what GG themselves has always used. If you get up and down for birdie, that is a succesful scramble.

[dcmidnight]

Edited to say GG claims they have now changed their definition and will be completely redoing their stat in the future. Joy.

[larrybud]

It does include par or better, you're right, but you have to miss the GIR. You can't have a scramble save AND a GIR.

[larrybud]

I now have > 200 rounds with GameGolf. There's a fundamental flaw in their strokes gained comparison, primarily with putting, and that problem is either missed taggings by players, or incorrect pin placements. Their stat is ONLY as good as the data.

 

Just go ahead and look at the details of players you follow. For example from some of the guys I follow:

 

hole 1: first putt of 4 feet, and a 2nd putt (holed) of 9 feet.

hole 2: first putt 5 feet, 2nd (holed) 7 feet.

34 feet/13 feet

19/7

4/6

 

another guy who plays in my league

1st hole: 324 yard drive... except the tee shot wasn't from where we play. Subtract 75 yards from that

1st hole: first putt, 11 feet. 2nd putt (holed) 34 feet

2nd hole: 12/12 feet

4th: 13/13

5th 18/18

 

You can see the pattern. Players aren't correcting missed taggings (like the 324 yard drive) and they're not altering the pin location to reflect accurate putt lengths.

[dcmidnight]

Oh I think you are absolutely right about that. A month or so after I got GG - so almost two years ago - I submitted a suggestion that they allow putt distances to be entered manually. So if you two putted the two shots would be tagged and you could manually enter the distance in feet. Nope, they werent interested, they said the way it was is perfectly fine. No, its not fine. If the GPS is accurate to 3-5 yards or whatever they claim, thats nearly 10 feet when it comes to putts. I guarantee that anyone here could eyeball the distance of a putt in feet more accurately than GPS makes it - 100%.

 

The even distance splits just come from adding a putt. So if I two putt from say 12 feet and for some reason it doesnt pick up the 2nd putt, I have to add one in. So it will just split it to 6/6.Most of the time, I will make corrections. But honestly it becomes a chore after a while and given that they dont properly use the data anyway, I dont really care.

 

I also looked more into the Strokes Gained calculations, specifically for "Short Game" - whatever that means to them. As a 5.6 hdcp I was -1.67 strokes gained to a 5 handicap in my last round. Which is odd since I had 0% scrambling for the round and 37 putts. But their definition says that its for "any shot inside 100 yards not on the green". So OK , not putting. But clearly they arent using chipping either since I was 0% in scrambling.

 

Not only is a stat only as good as the data behind it - but its only as good as the algorithms or the work that goes into it. I'm going to continue using GG until there is a better option but I am anxiously awaiting a better option.

[North Butte]

I now have > 200 rounds with GameGolf. There's a fundamental flaw in their strokes gained comparison, primarily with putting, and that problem is either missed taggings by players, or incorrect pin placements. Their stat is ONLY as good as the data.

 

Just go ahead and look at the details of players you follow. For example from some of the guys I follow:

 

hole 1: first putt of 4 feet, and a 2nd putt (holed) of 9 feet.

hole 2: first putt 5 feet, 2nd (holed) 7 feet.

34 feet/13 feet

19/7

4/6

 

another guy who plays in my league

1st hole: 324 yard drive... except the tee shot wasn't from where we play. Subtract 75 yards from that

1st hole: first putt, 11 feet. 2nd putt (holed) 34 feet

2nd hole: 12/12 feet

4th: 13/13

5th 18/18

 

You can see the pattern. Players aren't correcting missed taggings (like the 324 yard drive) and they're not altering the pin location to reflect accurate putt lengths.

 

Yep. I suspect most GG users want to just tag their shots and take the results at face value. Relatively few people are going to be willing to spend 10-15 minutes trying to drag fiddly pin position markers around (trial and error) until the putt lengths read like they remember them. Especially on a dinky smartphone screen. I would never edit/correct a round if I had to do it on an iPhone or iPad, only doing it on a PC with a mouse makes it tolerable.

 

For my part I use GG for a dozen or so rounds at a time to get a snapshot of my club distances and dispersions, taking care to edit everything carefully when necessary. Then I quit using it an just play golf until I'm ready to check out the state of my game again. I can't imagine messing around getting all the info correct 100+ times a year after every round. Especially given that, in the end, they can't even correctly distinguish between Strokes Gained Tee Shot and Strokes Gained Approach because GG's maps don't know from obstructed shots...

[QEight]

I have never used GG for any putting statistics, except the number of putts. Either the GPS accuracy or course mapping accuracy or both can be seen clearly when the approach on the map is ten yards off from where you actually were. So no point in moving anything around the green. Do you start with the approach and make that shot perhaps shorter and then adjust the putts and the pin? I just leave them as they are, if they are on the green.

[North Butte]

That's the main reason I decided GG is for club distance and dispersion mainly, with the strokes gained stuff pretty much window dressing. Once you talk about putting, chipping and approach shots a few feet plus or minus matters. And he GPS locations are often plus or minus several yards.

[Geaux Gators]

I have lost 5 tags in the last 4 rounds... Thats the only problem I have had to speak of in the 3 seasons I have been using the thing, first with the original and second with the Live (i never use it with my phone) I use Pure Grips, and ever since i switch to them, I have had trouble getting them to stay in. I have purchased an entire set now 2 times.. lol. But I like the grips more than I want to switch to something else. SO I will have to deal with it. I have super glued them on my wedges, and that has worked. but I lost one on my driver when I let it go in the follow through after hitting a bad shot, and it was super glued...

 

I guess I will have to keep buying tags

[dcmidnight]

I have lost 5 tags in the last 4 rounds... Thats the only problem I have had to speak of in the 3 seasons I have been using the thing, first with the original and second with the Live (i never use it with my phone) I use Pure Grips, and ever since i switch to them, I have had trouble getting them to stay in. I have purchased an entire set now 2 times.. lol. But I like the grips more than I want to switch to something else. SO I will have to deal with it. I have super glued them on my wedges, and that has worked. but I lost one on my driver when I let it go in the follow through after hitting a bad shot, and it was super glued...

 

I guess I will have to keep buying tags

 

I had the same issue when I got my new driver shaft, it had a Pure grip on it and the tag wouldnt stay in, I have the MCC+4 on the rest of my clubs and definitely dont have this issue. But I bought some plumbers thread tape and wrapped the tag screw in it, it worked really well, give it a shot.

[larrybud]

I go through every single round and every single hole and position the pin and each putt to the best of my ability. I stay on top of my rounds as well, so it only takes about 5 minutes to fix it.

[North Butte]

Assuming of course you remember your putt distances after the round.

 

I can run a Strokes Gained-Putting calculation after the round, using my recalled first putt distances and a chart I keep on my iPhone. I find that calculation takes about the same amount of time per round as fiddling my hole and putting locations in GG so I do that routinely even if I'm not bothering to use GG.

[larrybud]

I could probably tell you shot by shot every shot I hit for the last 10 rounds... lol

[North Butte]

Yeah, me too. And I've got a few doozies in the current stack that I'd love to forget.

[QEight]

I go through every single round and every single hole and position the pin and each putt to the best of my ability. I stay on top of my rounds as well, so it only takes about 5 minutes to fix it.

 

I did that, but seems like on PC (or Mac) dragging the flags or putts is very inaccurate, I mean small movement can be 2-3 feet and with putting that is just futile. If I could zoom closer it might be easier.

[RSinSG]

I started zooming in and placing the pin so it was more representative of the round. For the last year I was happy with the score being accurate with little attention paid to putting distances. Then the strokes gained stat shows me as the worst putter on the planet so I figured I'd take the time to tidy it up.

 

I'm like others though - I use GG for club distances and dispersion. That has been useful.

[ParHunter]

I edit my rounds every time and I spend the most time correcting the putts. Trying to move the pin to where it was and the putts but I have to agree it is very difficult. Small movements are already a few feet. Often after I moved the putts and pin the distances appear to be a lot longer than they actually where (but they are roughly in the positions I remembered - so it shows that the resolution on the green is too low).

 

The problem is that not doing the putts right does not only screw up your own stats but that of others as well as Strokes Gained relies on averages from all users. So if most users have random putting data ...

 

While I have no problem editing the round when I played at my golf club, I struggle to do it when I played a new course as I can't remember the locations most of the time. Anyone else having that problem as well?