Many of you will probably ask “How do I get a better tracking of my golf shots?”. The goal of tracking is to get a good understanding of your current level. All this in order to find ways to improve it for your next game. In the following article, we discuss how to use Hello Birdie GPS golf app at its best to get solid predictive data about your golf game.
How does it work?
The philosophy behind the tracking is the following: we interpret everything out of your GPS trace. In particular, we look at all the locations where you stayed long enough to shoot. Then we match these locations with your scorecard that contains your club sequences and lie you played from. We also combine this with your bag distances & dispersions to see what combinations are realistic.
Later on, we will add movement detection from the watch to make it even more reliable.
From a simple golf case to a more complex one
Obviously, if you play alone and you hit every ball exactly as expected, it is straightforward for the algorithm to interpret the data.
In case you follow multiple “ball traces” -multi-players round- the algorithm might have more difficulty to detect your own shots.
Hence, the algorithm will use some intelligence to define what data should be ignored and what should be used.
As an exemple, in case your golf’s partner did hit the ball at the same distance as you. You, being on the left side of the fairway while he is on the right side. Let’s assume you go to each location whatever the reason. The algorithm will then see 2 “credible positions” where you stayed long enough. Hence, it will keep in mind the distance – that is the same – but will not store the info of dispersion as it can not be 100% sure of the info. If the ambiguity is too high, the shot won’t be used at all to update the characteristics of your profile. But no worries! We don’t need to “see” all your shots to get a good understanding of how you play in order to predict your game.
How to make it more accurate?
If you want to raise the capacity of the algorithm to detect properly your game, here are some hints:
- Use an Apple Watch if you have one, as the GPS trace will always be exactly where you stand.
- If you don’t want to keep your smartphone in your pocket, keep it in your golf bag and try to follow only your ball with your golf bag.
- Enter properly the type of club in the “Easy Shot Tracker” to reduce the ambiguity of the interpretation of your GPS trace. As an exemple, using “C” -for Chipping- is very important every time you don’t play a full shot. Even if it is played with your 7 iron.
If you still have a doubt on which one is the best GPS golf app for you, the best would be to try it by yourself directly on a golf course.
You can install it for free and use Hello Birdie on 40,000 golf courses around the world. Hence, don’t hesitate to download it right now so it’s ready for your next golf round.
