When we met Cobra Puma CEO Bob Philion at the PGA Merchandise show in Orlando he told us that the connected smart club was the future of the game.
We were certainly impressed with the potential when we put the Cobra Connect GPS Shot Tracking System through its paces. That integrated the Arccos sensor into the grip of the Cobra King F7, King F7+ and King LTD Black drivers providing GPS location information as well as capturing driving distance and accuracy stats on its smartphone app.
The Arccos 360 system takes the data tracking a step further with 14 ultra-light sensors, one for each club in the bag, that will automatically detect each shot a golfer hits.
This information, together with GPS data, is then entered into an enhanced version of the Strokes Gained algorithm to provide every player with the same ShotLink-style analysis used by every player on the PGA Tour.
Arccos helps players know how far they hit every shot thanks to an inbuilt GPS rangefinder that can identify any point on more than 40,00 courses worldwide. This gives golfers data on the true averages for each club in the bag, what Arccos calls "Smart Distance", ensuring you pick the correct club for every situation on the course.
On top of this, the proprietary Tour Analytics platform provides insights about a player’s strengths and weaknesses, including handicap breakdowns for driving, approach shots, chipping, bunker play and putting.
Sal Syed, Arccos CEO and Co-Founder explains:
Until now, amateurs haven’t had access to the type of data-driven insights that the world’s best players are using. We’ve pioneered a system that does just that by seamlessly capturing and analysing every shot a golfer hits, helping them go beyond guesswork to lower their scores.
The Arccos 360 sensors communicate with a free app for iOS and Android devices, delivering data for distances hit, club averages, driving accuracy, greens in regulation, sand saves, putts and more.
This data can be mined via the Tour Analytics web dashboard to give users and their instructors valuable insights via deep dives into stats, playing patterns and rich data comparison for every club, shot, hole and round.
Arccos are able to power this big data revolution thanks to a new partnership with Microsoft that allows it to track and store the data set of 50 million golf shots recorded so far by Arccos users on its Azure cloud platform. Microsoft then use Machine Learning, part of its Cortana Intellilgence system, to deliver insights which help golfers of all skill levels play smarter to shoot lower scores.