Equipment Review – Arccos Golf

Arccos Golf performance tracking is making its way into Ping golf clubs after several years of partnering with Cobra. But can more data help the average golfer?

Arccos is a pretty amazing little product. You can visit their site for all the details, but it’s basically a shot tracking and data organization tool for golfers. Each Arccos grip has a little sensor that pairs with your smartphone through the Arccos app. You put the phone in your pocket during the round and then just play.

The Arccos app also provides GPS, an Apple watch app, and in-round club suggestions based on distance, elevation, and even weather. Pretty snazzy. So, does it work?

The answer is a frustrating yes… and sort of.

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One of the coolest features of the Arccos app is that you can go home and relive your round, shot-by-shot, on your phone or computer. You can see on a Google map exactly where you hit a shot, what club you used, and how far it traveled.

This feature is particularly exciting when you play courses on your bucket list. If you take a golf trip to Pebble Beach, you can essentially relive that round any time you like – shot-by-shot. It allows you to remember the round more clearly and genuinely provides a valuable memento.

Arccos also slices and dices all the data during a round to show you accuracy, putting stats, sand saves, etc. The other great feature is that is will take every shot with the same club and create a data set just for that club.

This is particularly useful with the driver. You can see average distance, accuracy, dispersion – it’s impressive. The problem with club tracking on other clubs is that a green-side ship with a 9-iron goes into the data set with all the other 9-iron shots, skewing average distance and other data points.

Regardless, the data the Arccos system collects and organizes is clean, helpful and, dare I say fun, to go through after each round.

Arccos does have some issues that are frustrating.

The sensor and the app don’t pick up every shot. I would guess there 3 to 5 shots each round the app misses that I have to go add in later. The app makes it easy to do this and, generally, it’s no big deal. But it still chaps me that I have to do it.

More concerning, the app will go nuts if you happen to hit a ball outside the current hole parameters designated by the app. I play on an old course where the holes are all right next to each other. Hitting a drive near another fairway happens for a mid-handicapper like me.

Arccos doesn’t like this. It may add my next shot not to the hole I’m on, but to the one I’ve temporarily borrowed while I get back on track. In other words, Arccos doesn’t know which hole you are playing, it just knows where you are on the geographical boundaries set for each hole and assigns shots based on that geography, not linear time.

If this happens a couple of times each round your data will be pretty messed up. The Arccos scorecard tracking your game will also go bananas and you’ll spend 15 minutes after the round getting it back in order. Not cool. But, like all high-tech golf gadgets, there is amazing potential coupled with some frustrating glitches.

So, once you get your shots in order, what do you get out of all this new data?

Arccos will help you build a better bag with fewer gaps in your yardages.

• This is particularly helpful at the low end of the bag with long irons, hybrids, and woods. You may have two hybrids but find out they both have similar performance. You may find hitting 3-wood off the tee actually gives you more accuracy – or even yards. You might find that you carry a club you never use. All this knowledge will help you fine-tune your 14 sticks.

You will get a better handle on average club distances.

• Most golfers don’t have distances dialed-in from hours spent in a Trackman studio. Arccos will give you a good idea (once you have 20+ rounds in the app) of what distance you typically hit a club. The data is often humbling, as none of us are as powerful as we think we are. At your home course, you can easily club yourself, but on a new course, these data points and club performance stats are very helpful.

Arccos will show you where your game stinks.

• One of the cooler features is how they handicap each phase of your game. Driver, approaches, chipping, sand, putting, Arccos will give you a “virtual” handicap in each phase. This is helpful to show you where you need to focus your practice. Yes, most of us know what needs work, but Arccos puts it in stark reality with hard data. It’s motivating and interesting to see it presented that way.

Overall, I’m a fan of what Arccos and others like Game Golf are doing with data integration. I’m not good enough to really get the most out of the app, but the gamification of my rounds has added to my knowledge of my own game and benefitted my course management.

I do believe it’s the future of golf. With Ping jumping in on Arccos and Cobra already established, look for the other big boys like Callaway and Taylormade to join or build their own data capture tools. In five years, I suspect every club will be “smart”, able to capture data on every swing and shot.

The current Arccos sensor is about the size of three stacked dimes and sits in the butt of the grip. New tech will shrink that sensor down soon, allowing manufacturers to integrate it into equipment with greater ease.

We will all benefit as it gets more reliable and easy to use. I think it will help most golfers enjoy the game more and give them the insights they need to improve at the same time.