Tuesday, September 15, 2015

myRoundPro: A Must-Have App for Golf Trips


Frequent golf vacationers want nothing but a better game each time they visit a golf spot. And to achieve this goal, some vacationers turn to various gadgets marketed to have the potential to improve your golf. To name a few, there’s swing-optimizing smart watches, data collecting e-caddies, and hovercraft golf carts.  Unfortunately, all these golf dedicated devices tend to be practically expensive and can only be used when a golfer hits the link.

Fortunately, Microsoft teamed up with a distinguished company called TaylorMade and came up with golf-related apps that can be used on a daily basis – whether you are at a golf spot or not. The result of such collaboration is an analytics app that works with Microsoft Band fitness tracker.

For the uninitiated, Microsoft Band features a Golf tile that is fitted with algorithms, GPS, and accelerometers. This way, it can automatically calculate golf scores for every round. Microsoft, the high-tech company behind this app, prides that Microsoft Band is smart enough to differentiate a practice swing and an actual shot. It features sensors programmed to detect impact of the ball to the club. In addition, it can also fill in scores once it senses that the player has taken his last shot on a hole. Users of this app need to manually record scores if other players are not using it yet; but it really acts like an invisible scorekeeper.

Scores for each round of game played while on golf trip as well as GPS data are linked to a carefully researched and well-tested analysis tool called myRoundPro – a software based on an internal tool that was developed by TaylorMade to test club performance on actual golf courses. For the record, members of the UCLA golf team have been using this technology to analyze and improve golf performance – but this is the first time it was tied to a consumer product.

So what does myRoundPro do? Essentially, such system provides every golfer a mapped-out view of every round of golf played. It offers a sliced-and-diced data for every shot and swing executed – without any special golf ball or anything attached to the club or whatever gadget other than the fitness band itself. Interestingly, myRoundPro tracks distance covered for each drive, the average score over time, as well as the number of fairways hit. It also maps out each shot on the overlay of the course played.

The best thing about this app is that it is fully automatic, requiring only a few manual steps to set up. Golfers only need to search and select a course from TaylorMade’s 18,000 golf vacation spots in the Microsoft Health mobile app. Players would later have to select the tee box they plan to use for each round. Afterwards, golfers can practice swing to calibrate the system and get it ready for many more rounds.

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