Is SkyTrak distance accurate?

[Alex Ma]

Does anyone have issues with SkyTrak distance accuracy, especially with long irons? I've struggled to reproduce what I hit with SkyTrak on the course with my 4-6 irons. Attached are some of the shots I hit with 4 and 6 irons this morning and what Arccos calculated average. Please note that this is not an issue of good shots vs average because I pretty much never hit 170 yards carry with 6 iron and 180+ carry with 4 iron on the course but it happens often with SkyTrak. One possible explanation is that I'm fine tuning my swing so I haven't been able to take my swing to the course yet, which is kinda what I'm hoping is the truth. Does anyone have similar experiences?

[Morini]

Guys, to provide some update. I continue to see low spin results. My 6 irons will genera less than 6000 or even less than 5000 spins often times

For reference, average spin on PGA tour is 6231 (as per Trackman data). Given that you are hitting off a mat, your numbers are in line with tour pros. It is of course possible to spin it more than PGA tour average, but that requires a swing with extreme clubhead speed, and/or atypically high spin loft.

[dg_1983]

Not much help but I see accurate numbers through the bag. Longest carry is 280, for me, that not a 300,yard carry irl

[golfnhockey]

I'm having issues with mine being accurate as well. I spoke with customer service for a while over the phone and tried numerous fixes and tweaks to try to get the readings to be accurate, but Im still not having any luck unless I crank the altitude way up. The things I tried were placing a dark solid color blanket behind me that runs all the way to the net from the ground to about 3' high, tried outside in shaded light as well as inside with the curtains closed and lights off in mid-afternoon to try to darken the space a bit to help with readings, placed the ball logo toward the Skytrak unit, and even tried changing from a Country Club Elite mat, to some cheap thin mat that I had lying around. I also tried placing the ball about 2" behind the laser dot.

Set up is as it should be...unit parallel to ball, etc. Ive tried the Skytrak sitting on the mat, as well as created a wood platform next to the mat at the same height as the mat to place the Skytrak on in case the mat was moving during the swing.

With the changes I made, it cut down on the amount of misreads, but only marginally improved the distance accuracy with my higher lofted irons. I am picking the ball cleanly off the CCE mat without hitting down into the mat, so there is no issue there with the club getting slowed down.

It seems as though the unit reads my wedges through maybe 9i well, but once I get to 8i it reads about 20 yards short (reading 135-140 instead of 160), and my driver is consistently 40-50 yards short (reading 235-250 instead of 275-300). My guess is that the Skytrak doesn't like higher ball speeds, thus the reason that it is reading my wedges fairly accurately.

The only fix that I have found to be able to get it to read right is to crank the altitude up to about 6500 ft and temperature up to 95 degrees (Im at sea level in CA), but even then its still a bit of a guessing game to pick the right altitude where all clubs read accurately.

This is discouraging because I dont know why some people get it to work well without settings tweaks, but mine is struggling. I dont think I should have to tweak the altitude like that to get it to work. I know there is a fix coming soon for the higher ball speed issue, so Im holding out hope that that will be the fix.

Customer service has said to get back to them with all the tweaks they suggested and if nothing seems to work then to send it in so they can test it out. Dont want to be one of those people who sends it in prematurely and have them say that nothing is wrong with it and send it back, then Im back to square one, but Im out of options and thoughts.

Anyone got anything else? Thanks!

[golfnhockey]

Dave Lee: Ive messed around with lighting inside, with darkest seeming to be best. Ball color is normal white ball. I am not using a case and its been both directly on the mat, and on a wood platform I made that is exact mat height.

I figured that small variations to distance are acceptable and that its not going to be 100% exact, but 20yds (and getting worse the longer the club) short starting with an 8 iron is unacceptable.

[Morini]

Hi golfnhockey.

I can only go based on what I have seen in the past, but the majority of issues turn to be indoor swing. Some feel the indoor swing, others swear that it doesn't affect them, but later admitted that in hindsight it did. It is of course entirely possible that there are issues with your unit, but I believe it is very rare for a unit to be short plain and simple. Even rarer to be shorter for longer clubs. If the unit gets a clear picture of the ball, there is no reason why it would work any different for a long or short iron. The exception is ball speeds in excess of 160 mph.

[Morini]

golfnhockey, just curious would you mind giving the backspin, spin axis, and VLA for one of your shots that you feel came up short.

[Supraracer]

Could it be your mat? Did you hit off a tee to see if there is a difference?

[golfnhockey]

Supraracer,

Yep, hit both off a mat and tee. Also tried two mats. Been picking the shots clean off the mat.

[golfnhockey]

Morini commented:
"golfnhockey, just curious would you mind giving the backspin, spin axis, and VLA for one of your shots that you feel came up short."

Yes, here's a 10-shot average with my driver: backspin 3108, spin axis -.8 with 925 side spin, launch angle 15.

[Morini]

There a couple of things that could be robbing you of distance (other than unit itself).

Based on the real life distances you indicated, you have tour+ club head speeds. As such, launch angle is way too high. Tour driver VLA is 11 degrees, versus your 16. Tour spin is 2700 and you are significantly above that, so ball is likely ballooning. Spin axis is quite high as well. Put together, clearly not center impact, thus low smash. All this would rob you of yardage. But not nearly enough to turn your tour+ club head (115-120 mph) into LPGA ball speed, so not sure what is up.

I suggest switching to spin axis rather than side spin. Much more useful.

[golfnhockey]

Morini,
Interesting assessment, thanks. How are you calculating these figures? Ill switch it to spin axis tomorrow and hit a few shots and report back (if the spin axis helps you analyze better?) Something isnt right, because the same swings outdoor on the course are producing 280-300yds consistently at sea level. Based on the #s, is it worth having the unit looked at? I'm out of ideas on what to try to fix it.

[Morini]

This may be a dumb question at this point, but you do mean 280-300 carry, not total?

I looked up tour averages from Trackman: https://blog.trackmangolf.com/trackm...ge-tour-stats/

Spin axis is easier to use. Each 6 degrees of spin axis gives you about 3.5 yards off line per hundred (again, as per Trackman).

I am very confident in Skytrak's VLA, as it never differed by more than a half degree from Trackman, and others have confirmed that. Thus, it is likely that you really did have 16 degrees VLA on that one swing, which is ridiculously high for tour swing speeds. Thus, something is likely up with your impact indoors. Try some foot spray to see where you make contact.

For fun, I punched in your backspin and spin axis for tour ball speed into flightscope trajectory optimizer, and it reduced carry by 10 yards and total by 18 compared to optimal numbers. However, I am sure ball speed would drop by at least 10 percent with those numbers due to missing sweet spot. Reducing ball speed by 10% dropped carry to 243 from 283, which is pretty well what you are seeing.

As has been recommended by wbond, do take it outside before sending back.

[wbond]

Since you haven't taken it outside to confirm, I would highly suggest that you do that. It will clearly tell you if you are having an issue with the unit or not. This should be quite simple, laser a 150 target, hit the 8 iron and if you are carrying past it and the skytrak shows more than 150 then you know it's not the unit and you now need to start chasing down other potential causes. Many people swear it's not indoor swing only to be proven wrong. Whether or not this applies to you can only be confirmed with full ball flight outside.

BTW, don't use the crappy range balls, use a few balls in fairly decent condition that you don't mind donating. Make sure the logo is facing the unit to give you the best possible readings.

[Morini]

I second the range ball concern. I took my ST to the range to show my friend how accurate it is. It was brutally bad, particularly with yellow balls. . But even with premium balls you should make sure there is little or no wind.

[golfnhockey]

wbond,

I havent gotten there yet, but I will try that at some point hopefully soon.

[skwierczynski]

I find this topic interesting. I went to GOLFTEC for a driver lesson. Don't laugh but my outdoor driver distance is 200 to 220ish. But...For some reason the GOLFTEC sim had me topped out at 150 or so. The lesson was awesome and I felt like they worked out some kinks in my swing. but by the end of the lesson I was barely reaching 200 on the sim. ⁣Things that make you go hmmm

[Nasdaqsam]

That is probably more of an issue with a swing change that you need to get used to before you start getting your distance back.

[golfnhockey]

Sooo, not sure what happened with my Skytrak but all of a sudden it started to give me fairly accurate readings. I had the elevation cranked up to about 6500 ft, temp up to 95, and humidity up to 90% in order to give me accurate numbers. Then I decided to drop it back down to 500 ft (the default), but left the temp and humidity up. After this the numbers started being within what I would say are a margin of error. My 8 iron started carrying 160yds+, and my total distance with my driver started to show 270-295yds...all numbers that I normally see on the course. Ive had three sessions now with decent numbers, and I did NOTHING different than I was doing before when I was getting very short yardage readings. May seem dumb to say, but makes me think there is some sort of break in period to get the unit to start measuring and analyzing shot data accurately. The shorter the club, the more accurate the readings still seem to be, but for now Ill take it.

Next test is to take it to the range and see how accurate the ball flight patterns are and shoot some laser distances to cross reference the distances on the Skytrak.

[jut111]

Right... it's a break in period on a photometric system. couldn't possibly be the user getting more accustomed to swinging indoors. I swear, golfers and their ego's never cease to amaze.

[golfnhockey]

Right...swinging indoors...when I use it outdoors on my patio....right.

[Morini]

Indoors or outdoors, it takes very little to affect a swing. Let's assume that you have exact tour club head speed (113 mph) for every swing, and zero out your path and club face, so that the ONLY variable is where on the club face the ball impacts. Each dimple you are away from center of face results in a spin axis of 6 degrees. Thus one the one swing we discussed, you were off by 4 dimples, or roughly half an inch.I can't reconcile the vertical, because hitting below center of face should result in low launch, and high spin. You had high spin, high launch. In either case, If I punch in your exact numbers, assume a club head speed of 113 with smash of 1.35 (due to off center strike), Flightscope trajectory analyzer gives almost exactly the distances you reported (243 yards carry).

Thus whatever the reason, it is very likely that you simply weren't hitting it clean. The "indoor swing" is mostly about feeling confined, but there are other variables as well. Just hitting into a net, or not having a defined target in the distance may throw you off ever so slightly. Or perhaps the tee not being ideal height. Whatever the cause, all it takes is being 4 dimples off. The good news is that it seems to be resolved, so hopefully good times from here on.

[Supraracer]

Those are all great points.

[golfnhockey]

Either way, Im glad to see the numbers come back up to where I know they should be based on years of knowing my distances from playing on the course. Im a 4 handicap, so I know my swing well enough to know if I wasnt swinging normally, whether its inside or outside. My thoughts arent that the numbers that are displayed dont calculate out correctly when put into the trajectory optimizer on flightscope's website (they seem to be), my feeling is that the unit is not reading the actual ball speeds correctly, which is what Skytrak has identified as an issue and are working on fixing. Pretty hard to go from 118mph ball speeds with my driver, up to 150mph ball speeds the next day. Again, either way, I hope all is good now!