Part II of Brian Sommer’s four-part series: Why Golf Monitors Cannaot Save Golf
The phrase “key statistics” deserves rather more attention than it usually receives. Not because there is anything inherently wrong with statistics. There isn’t. The problem lies in the adjective.
Key to what? Improvement? Learning? Performance? Confidence? Awareness? Participation? Or simply measurement? The answer is rarely examined because the industry quietly assumes they are all synonymous.
They aren’t.
Clubhead speed may be a key statistic if one is evaluating physical output. Ball speed may be a key statistic if one is comparing golf balls or driver faces. Smash factor may be a key statistic if one wishes to evaluate strike efficiency. Carry distance is certainly useful for club fitting and course management. Total distance may prove invaluable under particular conditions.
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None of this is controversial. Where the conversation quietly leaves solid ground is when these measurements become explanations. A launch monitor can tell you your seven iron carried 167 yards. It cannot tell you why. Those are profoundly different enterprises. Suppose your driver suddenly loses fifteen yards. The launch monitor reports lower ball speed. Higher spin. Lower launch angle. Excellent. Even if we assessed face-to-path, dynamic loft, club speed, attack angle, swing plane, low point, or any of the 40 or more variables some modern systems can measure, we would still be confronted with precisely the same question.
Why?
Why is the golfer delivering the club at a different speed? Why has the attack angle changed? Why has the club path altered? Why has the low point moved? Those observations are almost certainly accurate.
The machine falls silent. Not because it has malfunctioned. Because it has reached the edge of its jurisdiction. It has described. It cannot explain. Were you tired? Were you rushing? Were you attempting to steer the golf ball? Had your attention narrowed? Did you stop noticing the breeze? Were you thinking about your takeaway instead of responding to the target? Did your relationship with the shot change before your relationship with the golf club changed? The launch monitor cannot answer those questions.
Nor should anyone expect it to. It measures consequences. It does not measure consciousness. There is another question that deserves asking. One almost never hears it discussed. How would we know if our explanation were wrong?
Suppose the launch monitor reports a steeper attack angle and reduced ball speed. A coach immediately concludes that the golfer became
too steep through impact. Perhaps. The following shot is struck beautifully. The explanation congratulates itself. Suppose, however, the next ten shots are poor. The explanation survives once again. The golfer lost concentration. The golfer failed to commit. The golfer reverted to old habits. Notice what quietly happens. Every good shot confirms the explanation. Every poor shot merely demands another explanation. The launch monitor has not created this habit.
It has simply made it easier to mistake description for understanding. This is not a criticism of Shot Scope. Nor TrackMan. Nor GCQuad. It is a criticism of our own appetite for certainty. Human beings have always preferred explanations that survive every outcome. Science does not. Science asks a rather more uncomfortable question. What evidence would convince me I am wrong? That question appears remarkably absent from much of modern golf instruction.
The Accuracy Question
One of the more curious debates among golfers concerns accuracy. Which launch monitor is right? TrackMan? GCQuad? Bushnell? Garmin? Rapsodo? Shot Scope?
The argument is rather amusing because it usually assumes a certainty that golf itself refuses to provide. TrackMan and GCQuad are astonishingly accurate under proper conditions. Ball speed is measured within fractions of a mile per hour. Launch angle within fractions of a degree. Spin rates with remarkable repeatability. Carry distances with extraordinary consistency.
This is engineering of the highest order. Yet golfers frequently become distressed when different systems produce slightly different numbers. One machine says the seven-iron carried 168 yards. Another says 165. The range ball behaves differently from a premium urethane golf ball. Humidity changes. Temperature changes. Altitude changes. Radar
systems observe differently from camera systems. Indoor assumptions differ from outdoor observation. Reality, as always, proves gloriously untidy. Yet golfers behave as though one of the machines has somehow betrayed them.
The irony is almost too obvious. The golfer, whose swing varies dramatically from one shot to the next, demands absolute perfection from the machine. Perhaps we have placed the wrong subject under investigation. The machine is usually doing exactly what it was designed to do. The golfer remains the largest variable in the equation.
The Seduction of Certainty
This is where launch monitors become genuinely interesting. Not technologically. Psychologically. Or perhaps philosophically. Human beings have always preferred certainty over uncertainty. It is comforting. It is orderly. It gives the reassuring impression that reality has become understandable.
Golf has always resisted that temptation, despite many within the industry doing their utmost to assign systems and processes better suited to manufacturing widgets to an inherently variable game. Golf is played in wind. On imperfect lies. With changing energy. Changing confidence. Changing weather. Changing attention. Changing bodies. Changing intentions. No two swings are ever completely identical because no two moments are ever completely identical. The launch monitor offers a wonderfully seductive alternative. Every shot now possesses an explanation. Not merely an outcome. An explanation.
Instead of saying, “I never really committed to that shot,” we say, “My spin loft increased.” Instead of, “I stopped seeing the target,” we say, “My face-to-path changed.” Instead of, “I became tentative,” we say, “My attack angle became too steep.” Notice what has quietlyhappened.
The experience became secondary. The explanation became primary. The golfer no longer asks, “What did I experience?” The golfer asks, “What does the machine say happened?” There is an irony here that deserves mentioning.
The better the technology becomes, the more tempted we become to surrender our own judgment. The launch monitor was invented to support observation. Increasingly, observation serves the launch monitor. The golfer no longer watches the golf ball to discover something the machine cannot know. He watches it just long enough to verify what the machine will shortly report. Verification quietly replaces inquiry. This is not an engineering problem. It is a philosophical one.
The Shot Scope LM1 did not invent that temptation. Nor did TrackMan. Nor GCQuad. They merely expose something that has always existed. Human beings have an extraordinary talent for mistaking the map for the landscape. The launch monitor has become remarkably good at drawing maps. Golf, however, is still played on the landscape.