DearChicago
Well-known member
Any recommendations for a reasonably priced watch? Cheers.
My view is that golf sat navs are a better idea than watches. Having a larger screen than on a watch makes a difference for me. Particularly when you are looking at lay up distances and approximate pin positions on greens.Any recommendations for a reasonably priced watch? Cheers.
That's probably all true, but there are so many other factors which will affect the distance your shot travels - not least your ability to make clean contact consistently,and to hit it straight. Wind, slope up to the green, or down to the green (none of which you are allowed to measure), air temperature, whether the green is soft or hard, the speed of the green will all impact how far the ball will go. GPS is just an estimate really to help. A laser will give an exact yardage but is line of sight only.What is the watch for, scores or locations?
I just use my apple watch and the golfshot app, but to be honest in summer I used my phone more, held onto my trolley by a bike phone mount. I've just got the new apple watch linked to my sim and with a data pack so will probably use that more now, it does many jobs.
Be careful if you're half decent though, as a golf watch can do more harm than good for location accuracy. A phone/ watch/ golf GPS is only ever going to be 3-5m accuracy at best, and that's radius too. So you could be anywhere within a 6-10m circle, then you estimate the flag and could be 10-20 yards/ meters off. You could be 2-3 clubs out.
It's not easily possible to get <3m accuracy with standard phone/ watch/ golf watch/ sat nav GPS unless using some sort of additional GPS correction like WAAS/ SBAS/ DGPS (which I don't think any watches or sat navs have) but these are good for getting your location to 0.5m, then you have RTK which can get you to about 5-15mm accuracy but that's 15k worth of survey kit and a 1k yearly licence.
That's probably all true, but there are so many other factors which will affect the distance your shot travels - not least your ability to make clean contact consistently,and to hit it straight. Wind, slope up to the green, or down to the green (none of which you are allowed to measure), air temperature, whether the green is soft or hard, the speed of the green will all impact how far the ball will go. GPS is just an estimate really to help. A laser will give an exact yardage but is line of sight only.
I was watching videos on this yesterday (mainly US). Do you pay a yearly subscription fee?I use Arccos Caddie Smart Sensors paired to my phone. Id really recommend it, the caddie feature is very accurate and even does optimum strategy previews for courses before you play them. The app is brilliant, shows shots gained/lost on each area of your game so gives you good insight on what is costing you and what you need to practice.
A watch or satnav reduces one of the many items of error in golf. For players like us knowing a distance to within 3 metres is a great help in club selection. For me it makes a big difference in my confidence in my club selections.That's probably all true, but there are so many other factors which will affect the distance your shot travels - not least your ability to make clean contact consistently,and to hit it straight. Wind, slope up to the green, or down to the green (none of which you are allowed to measure), air temperature, whether the green is soft or hard, the speed of the green will all impact how far the ball will go. GPS is just an estimate really to help. A laser will give an exact yardage but is line of sight only.
A bit of nostalgia. In the 1980s I worked for a company called Scicon.
They worked on all sorts of projects while I was there. Including differential GPS where they used a device with a radio signal paired with GPS. So that a radio signal from a known location in the area would provide an estimate of current GPS error. To try to get location accuracy to within a metre. I believe that this was used in the oil industry.
Another fun one from the 80s. They produced one of the first ever computer systems to monitor the performance of a formula 1 racing car. It was only used in practice. As you had to remove one of the fuel tanks from the car to fit the computer system temporarily.
You do yes, didn’t have to on the original version but I’m guessing that model wasn’t working for them! I still think it’s worth it, albeit I am a bit of a data/stats nerd!I was watching videos on this yesterday (mainly US). Do you pay a yearly subscription fee?