🔘 The Silver Tees: Outdoor Launch Monitors - The Basics

Atlanta Golf
Mar 3
6 min read

By Jim Penman

Jim is a 61-year-old golfer who lives in the North Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta. Originally from the UK, he settled in the Atlanta area over 20 years ago and currently plays regularly at White Columns Country Club.

Article 1: Competitions for "Average" Senior Golfers in Metro-Atlanta

Article 2: Golf Fitness Tools for Seniors

Article 3: Elite Golf Fitness Programs for Seniors

Article 4: Chasing Past Glory, The Right Way and The Wrong Way

Although my focus in these articles tends to be on the more mature golfing community, this month’s effort is equally applicable to both young and old. I hope you enjoy.

There is an old joke about Engineers….

Question - How can you identify an extrovert Engineer?

Answer – he looks at “your” shoes when he is talking to you!

Ok, so as a group, we aren’t necessarily known as the most socially adept members of society. We do however have our uses, even when it comes to the sport of golf and particularly so, in the field of “golf practice”. Allow me to elaborate.

Many of us struggle from what might best be called “John Daly Syndrome”, a condition loosely defined as a pathological fear of the golf range. I actually enjoy golf practice, but I’ve seen examples of this chronic affliction first hand. One of my golf buddies immediately comes to mind. He’s a “roll up 10 minutes before tee time kinda player” and there is more chance of me winning the New York Marathon than there is of seeing this guy grinding a basket of range balls. I might add that his handicap is currently a little lower than mine which, combined with his more advanced years and smaller stature, really ticks me off!

I’m much more of a range rat myself. Always have been in fact since I moved to the States 20+ years ago and for the first time, joined a golf club that had pretty decent practice facilities. I enjoy the process of trying to get better and find short game practice in particular, quite therapeutic. I do however, like to take advantage of this time as much as possible and so about 6 or 7 years ago now, decided to purchase a golf monitor for the first time.

My monitor is a Swing Caddie SC300i. Even at the time I bought it for around $500, this unit wasn’t exactly what you would call “top shelf”. The intervening years, as you might expect, have not been kind and it is now firmly positioned in the same bracket as a Betamax video recorder. Nevertheless, the unit has served me well and added some valuable context to my range sessions over the years.

I keep pretty close tabs on golf technology in general - that Engineer within me can only be suppressed so much, you see. But it was at last month’s PGA Show in Orlando that I really witnessed just how far the launch monitor industry has come, even just within the last couple of years. There were two big take-aways for me:

At the top end of the market, the data now provided by launch monitors is extensive and of an incredibly high quality/accuracy.

At the budget end of the scale, there are some excellent monitors now available.

Before moving on to some of the specific launch monitors I would most recommend, let’s first think about the sort of data we are looking to acquire here. It might not be what you think!

This topic could easily take up a full article on its own, so I’m going to narrow things down to just the data I’m most interested in when hitting a Driver, notoriously the club that tends to interest golfers the most, me included. Here is what I tend to study when using a launch monitor at the range:

Club Speed – tells me if I am fully warmed up or not and effectively what my potential is that day; I’m a tired old man, so I’m looking at just under 90 mph on a good day.

Smash Factor – this is the ratio of ball speed to club speed and effectively tells you how close you are hitting to optimum position on the club face; a value of 1.50 is excellent.

Backspin Rate – too much spin and the ball will balloon and land short; something in the

2,300 – 2,700 rpm range is ideal for me.

Launch angle – ideally looking for something around 14° to 15° so I maximize run out.

Carry Distance – obviously as much as possible, but for me, north of 210 yards is acceptable.

Note that Total Distance isn’t one of the metrics I focus on, even though, along with ball direction, this is ultimately what I am predominantly interested in. The reality is, that the length a ball carries in the air, is relatively constant for a given set of climate, altitude and swing/impact parameters. However, what happens after it hits the ground, will vary greatly according to slope, grass length, surface moisture, etc. This introduces a key part of data acquisition then – normalize as many variables as you can during a practice session.

So what sort of launch monitor equipment is out there for us to choose from?

Well, the number of quality offerings has certainly increased significantly in recent years. What I’ve tried to do below is divide the launch monitor space into four broad categories according to price. In each category, based on a wide range of reviews I’ve seen online, a “personal product pick” has been selected along with a few additional products that might reasonably be considered.

Category 1: $700 or less