Yardage’s short. Moving mat or something else?

[Zappster]

Hey guys I’m having some trouble with my yardage’s being short and am not sure why. I don’t think I really have the indoor swing syndrome anymore as I’ve been swinging enough to get over it (except maybe with driver).

My yardage’s seem most accurate for 7-4 iron but any club above or below that seem to be short. In the pictures below you’ll see a 9 iron, 2 iron, and pitching wedge shot. The clubs head speeds and launch angles to me seem it would go further than the skytrak distances. I have similar issues on TGC but mostly on 8 iron and shorter.

In the stores I’ve hit on GC2 a ton as well as knowing my yardage’s in real life quite well. My pitching wedge is 135 normal swing or 140 harder swing. 9 iron is 150. 2 iron is 235. Those are all carry distances by the way. These yardage’s are very similar and real life and on GC2 but you can see here on skytrak they are quite a bit shorter consistently.

I think I’ve set up my Skytrak to the right height in its metal case as the mat I use. I use good premium balls. The mat I use is the same as at the driving range, pretty heavy. The only thing I can think of causing an issue could be my mat moves a tiny bit on some shots. Maybe every 8 shots I’ll notice it’s crooked by an inch or two. Other than that all I can think of is the skytrak just not being quite accurate or something, which would be really unfortunate. I wouldn’t want to have to completely secure my mat to the ground as I need to move it a bit here and there.

Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions?

[shank12u]

When I first started on SkyTrak all my distances were way off (short) and I duck hooked Everything. 8-wedges weren't off too much but the longer clubs including tee'd up drivers were short and left. My CCE mat was bad about grabbing the club and slowing it down even on clean contact...the mat also moved a bit as I swung this massive body around.

Fixes: I worked very hard to make sure my SkyTrak and projector were perfectly aligned... heavy Velcro to keep the mat still...and I got a Divot Action and mounted it in my CCE...that made the most difference along with alignment.... also making sure my swing was on Plane was huge cause I was really off. Just make sure the SkyTrak is slightly above the hitting area and aligned and make sure you have all the updates downloaded and it should start coming around for you.

[Morini]

Since you report real life carry distances that are almost exactly PGA tour averages, that is a good starting point.

For 9 iron you had ball speed 106 vs Tour 109. That will account for about 4 yards. You had spin about 200 more than tour, but that is within Skytrak margin of error. Your launch angle was almost 7 degrees higher than tour. That will take off about another 6 yards. Putting your numbers into Flightscope optimizer for 9 iron, I get 136 yard carry, identical to ST, so it is not the flight model.

I have no reason to believe that the Skytrak ball speed numbers are off, so unless you did not hit it clean, that is your ball speed. Or possible, the mat somehow robs you of ball speed. In any case, 106 ball speed cannot possible carry 150 unless you get spin to 6000 or below. I don't believe that is physically possible, especially since mats spin less than grass. So either your carries are a bit shorter than you think, or the mat is the culprit.

Hitting off a mat WILL increase launch angle, probably by about 2-3 degrees for most golfers. You exceed this by an additonal 4 degrees of launch, again, could be a mat issue or perhaps something unique in your swing.

I guess one test would be to take the ST to course and see how launch and ball speed numbers change when hitting off grass.

[Zappster]

Thanks for the reply! Sweet info. Wow they really deloft their clubs at impact. How accurate do you think the clubhead speed is on skytrak? It’s telling me my 9 iron swing speed was quite high, higher than I would think but I’m kind of thinking I’m losing a lot of efficiency somewhere. Maybe my strikes aren’t as clean I believe or the mat movement/material is messing it up. Taking the skytrak to the range is a great idea, but my stupid range only has flight limited balls. I’ll probably give it a shot anyway though and compare it to what I laser.

Also, I believe that trackman data was taken at all kinds of altitudes so that may inflate their distance a tiny bit. I'm right at sea level near the west coast. I really don't mind if I'm shorter than the PGA Tour Average, I just don't want to fly the greens in real life if I rely on Skytrak yardages and be at a slight disadvantage on the TGC tour. (I know I can boost my yardages but feel I shouldn't need to especially since the 7-3 iron is usually accurate).

[Morini]

First of all totally ignore the ST swing speed numbers. They are not measured.

Good point about the altitude of PGA tour numbers. It was compiled by Trackman, and Trackman "normalizes" for altitude, so I'd guess those are sea level.

I believe that Skytrak ball speed is very accurate. When I compared it to Trackman indoors, they were often a fraction of an MPH apart and never off by more than 2.

I recommend that you do the club gapping in ST. Something is up with your launch angle, but need bigger sample size. For reference, your pitching wedge LA was also proportionally high, 6 above tour. And oddly, your pitching wedge only had 7300 backspin, over a thousand less than your 9 iron.