Skytrak and Fairway woods and driver

[Jimsol]

I have been searching the forum and have tried many different ideas as to getting my driver to register my yardage correctly. My irons are almost dead on but once I get to my hybrids or woods they are way off.. I'm hoping that someone has figured out a way to get these number back on track. Side note- I do have TGC and adjusting the config file has helped but I shouldn't have to change it so much, and it is mostly the woods. Thanks

Jim

[BadEddieKit]

What kind of differences are you seeing from what you think they should be?

[Jimsol]

about 20-25 yards difference.. its considerable - considering that my irons are very close to actual

[Clevited]

Since you have been reading the forums trying to find answers, I am sure you have come across several items and tried them.

Can you tell us what you have tried to eliminate as suspect causes?
How much do you feel distances are off by?
Are we talking carry distance or total?

Without knowing anything, I will say the thing you probably read already and what I suspect is the likley culprit.....indoor swing. Longer clubs are a major issue for those of us swinging in confined spaces (even indoor spaces that aren't so confined, still can effect it drastically).

I will add that I know my carry distances with irons and woods on Skytrak, are definitely shorter than real life, mostly because of the way it models ball flight (how it handles spin I suspect is the likely issue), and partially because at higher ball speeds, my unit starts to deviate from Trackman ball speed, giving me shorter than true carry distances. With irons, I tend to see up to 10 yards short carry distance than what the measured launch numbers would suggest (and what I see in real life), and 10 or more with my best driver swings.

For instance, with a particular iron, I typically get ball speeds of 120-125 mph, launch of 23-25 degrees, and spin of 9k-10.5k with a nice little draw. Skytrak shows me 155 yards max, I know that goes nearer to 165 on the course, and other ball flight model applications show closer to 170 yards when I input the Skytrak measured launch numbers.

[BadEddieKit]

Really you will need to dive into the numbers that your are getting. Compare the ball speeds from say your 3 iron then for your hybrids and woods. Post those and we can dive into em and see if there is anything that seems off.

[Jimsol]

Sounds good.. I'm at work but I will try to get some numbers off Skytrak not TGC. But I have tried moving the laser back a inch to two inches and raising it up black tape over my white driver , moving it forward and nothing seems to work . still numbers from my driver way off.

[mikemcd22]

Just thought I would chime in and say, I see exactly the same results as you (Irons are dead on for clean strikes, and driver is 15-25 Yards shorter). Two things I have done (thanks to advice found here) is to place the ball about an inch behind the laser (relative to the screen) which apparently gives the cameras more time to reach and, of course, you can try tweaking software. In my case, I have raised the elevation significantly and found a happy medium using trugolf - Boost seems to do absolutely nothing while using Skytrak by the way...).

[Shifty]

Ya I played a bit yesterday, and as per "game golf" my typical drive is around 258, and the longest I could produce on skytrak was 230, with most being around 130 yards.... so not even close. On game golf I've only hit 13 drives under 200 yards since I got the driver. Even my bad indoor swing drives should be all over 200 I would think. Could be indoor swing a bit, but 120 yards short of my typical drives, something is off.

[aeroburner]

would love to see you hit off the GC2 and see if its hardware related

[mdniBruce]

I've not had any problems that I know of. My driver yardages were fairly accurate. I spent an afternoon hitting driver only, just trying to learn now that I get better feedback, and saw numbers that were making a lot of sense to me. After 500 shots I was looking at average numbers that were very close to what I walk on a course.

It will be hilarious to me if I am 15-25yds longer than what it's indicating as that would put me at 280+ carry (Best few hits) which is much longer than I would expect, even with the work I've done. The numbers I was hitting in DICK's when I tried out a G400 were very close, and I did bring my old driver as a sanity check.

Seems like a lot of the reports of inaccurate numbers could be attributed to spin decay like was being discussed recently, no?

The only shots where I'm losing more distance than expected are extremely high spin shots, but with out independently verifying these flights I can't prove or disprove the numbers. I honestly don't care, as any shot that bad just needs to be understood to be a bad shot. (For me, I know that's not going to be everyone's opinion.)

Jimsol , where are you located? You might find a member nearby that can help you validate your suspicions. If you're near the Denver/Boulder area I'd be happy to swing by after work or on the weekend. I know that's unlikely, but there's likely someone near you with a known, working ST or better.

Also, is this Total or Carry distances? Both? All the write-ups I see say that the Total numbers are often short compared to other LaunchMonitors.

[Clevited]

I tend to see 10-15 yards short with well struck driver shots which I do expect has something to do with spin decay. I check these shots against flightscope online calculator and its off about that much and I have gps'd many good drives of mine and lasered range carries and it also shows me Skytrak can be 10-15 short.

People also depends on how far one hits as I am sure it gets worse the faster your ball speed is. In fact I know it does.

[Taingbeast]

Hi Jimsol. I’m kinda in the same boat as you. I hit my driver 230 once and was super excited to get that much. IRL I normally hit my drives 230ish total and occasionally 250+ but when I hit on my ST I usually expect 180 to 200. I have had my unit about 4.5 months now but haven’t played as much because I just got my impact screen less than a week ago but I expect to ramp it up quite a bit given the weather changing too. Hopefully I figure out the cause, but I do think it has to with the indoor swing for me

[skytrakali]

Indoor swing is definitely real. It also affects the longer-hitting clubs more than the short irons.

For me though the key difference will probably be in the roll predictions. I find it's quite hard to really know how far I carry my driver on the course. There are a few indicators, but it's not like there's a green 142 yds away when I am hitting say my 8 iron. There it's much easier to estimate the real carry - but it's much harder to do this for longer shots. So for most people I observe that they measure their total drive using their GPS and that's the stat that they tend to know. The roll variability is at its greatest with a driver. Last week I played on a rain-sodden, very muddy course and my driver carry was about 190 yds, but my total drive was about 190.001 yds (OK slight exaggeration but you get the point). Skytrak trends to give quite low roll distances (even when "firm conditions" are selected) and this is a very hard thing to model - much harder to model than flight characteristics.

[tonybrown32]

Indoor swing is definitely real. It also affects the longer-hitting clubs more than the short irons.

For me though the key difference will probably be in the roll predictions. I find it's quite hard to really know how far I carry my driver on the course. There are a few indicators, but it's not like there's a green 142 yds away when I am hitting say my 8 iron. There it's much easier to estimate the real carry - but it's much harder to do this for longer shots. So for most people I observe that they measure their total drive using their GPS and that's the stat that they tend to know. The roll variability is at its greatest with a driver. Last week I played on a rain-sodden, very muddy course and my driver carry was about 190 yds, but my total drive was about 190.001 yds (OK slight exaggeration but you get the point). Skytrak trends to give quite low roll distances (even when "firm conditions" are selected) and this is a very hard thing to model - much harder to model than flight characteristics.

Agree here... roll out is very different on course depending on slope and conditions. Also VERY hard to see what your true carry is on course unless there's a green or marker at a certain distance... I too thought my distance was quite short indoors on SkyTrak or my ES14 monitor... turns out my real life carry distances are pretty close.. within 5 yards.. it does seem the accuracy is more varible with the longer clubs indoors, but not as far off as I think.

I just got a new ShotScope V2 GPS I use for tracking on course (to replace my game golf system) around the same time I got the SkyTrak. I thought my driver distances on Skytrak were kind of short, only showing me maybe 215-220 carry.... 230ish total distance... I know temp has some impact on distance (it's only 45-50 degrees here now), but still thought this was short, when my summer average was around 255 total distance. Went to the course though with my ShotScope tracking, and heck, the unfortunate truth is my average driver total distance was 230. Pretty close to what Skytrack told me....

Have to say the truth hurt a little.. at least that's how it worked out for me

I also know however my course plays soft... so does the SkyTrak it seems. Mid summer, if dry, or playing at a firm fast course, I get much more roll than SkyTrack gives... so my total distances when firm/fast average closer to 265. Soft fairways or longer cut grass ave. total distance is 245-250 in summer temps. That 230-235 Skytrak gives me is right on for 45 degree temps in my garage...

[shank12u]

Do what I do....swing harder