Category: Golf

Golf: Pelz Short Game and Putting Tests

paschmann

Dave Pelz is one of the best golf instructors in the world, and he invented a short game and putting game to test, and score, your short game skills to gauge progress and improvement. I was given this during one of his short game clinics in Atlanta and have been using it to quantify my improvements.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it

Here are some of my scores from the Short Game Test:

Date3/4 Wedge1/2 WedgeLong SandShort SandLong Chip – FWShort Chip – FWPitch – FWPitch – Rough Cut Lob – RoughTotal PointsHCP
10 balls (yards)30 – 7020 – 4016 – 357 – 1515 – 307 – 1410 – 2010 – 2010 – 20
6/21/2018 – Hole 62 (50)4 (30)2 (20)7 (15)4*7 (20)13 (15)9 (15)0 (20)4820
7/3/2018 – Hole 10 (60)7 (30)6 (20)10 (15)71361577113
7/18/2018 – Hole 22 (50)3 (30)1 (24)5 (15)10 (20)18 (7)8 (1)1556714
7/23/2018 – Hole 181 (50)5 (30)0 (25)9 (15)1121 (15)12 (15)13 (22)13 (20)859
7/26/2018 – Hole 121 311041824213859
7/31/2018 – Hole 62 (70)1 (50)1 (40)7 (15)4 (30)28 (12)13 (18)19 (18)7 (10)8210
8/28/2018 – Mixed 14/151 (70)82141 (30)20 (8)16 (20)18 (20)11 (20)917
9/4/2018 – Hole 20 (90)3 (70)3 (35)9 (10)5 (30)9 (10)1411116514
short-putts-3-feet

short-putts-6-feet
Dave Pelz - Makebale Putts Skills Test
Dave Pelz Putting Skills Test - Breaking putts
Dave Pelz Putting Skills Test - In between putts
Dave Pelz Putting Skills Test - Lag putts

DIY: Golf Yardage Books

paschmann

I have collected well over 30 yardage books from all over the world. Most of them from bucket list courses like Pinehurst #2, Harbor Town or one of my favorite courses, The Ocean Course at Kiawah. But sometimes courses didnt offer or sell them, so I started down the rabbit hole of designing and printing my own.

Majority of them were for tournaments I played in on the Golfweek Amateur Tour. The design process included using Google Maps to get an aerial photo of the course, and then subsequently outlining each hole using Adobe Illustrator and vector shapes. Then measuring and taking the yardages from the course and annotating the map.

Book size: 3.75″ x 6.5” read more

iOS App: Snapswing

paschmann

This was a fun project app, I often used my iPhone to record my golf swing at the range or in my golf simulator, but it was always time consuming and tedious to “hit record” – hit a golf shot – “hit stop”. I sometimes missed the shot, had too long of a lead in, lead out or was interrupted. Trying to solve this I thought of multiple ways that “just the swing” could be recorded; a button to record, stop? Machine learning with various “hit boxes” using video or using “Sound” as a trigger for the shot, which is what I ultimately ended up using. Setup your phone, hit record and just het shot would be recorded 🙂 Essentially I created an app that has a temporary video capture buffer, and that each shot gets clipped and trimmed for each ball hit. Pretty simple and effective. read more

DIY: Greens Mapping

paschmann

As an avid amateur golfer, I always look at the professionals for ideas, tips or tricks on what they are doing to improve their game, or gain a competitive advantage. One of the differentiators between amateurs and pros is their green reading books. It is essentially a layout and guide to each unique element of green helping them to decide where to hit their ball on approach shots, and what to expect on any given putt. While these are still simply a guide, and the golfer still needs to putt the ball along a planned path, they do provide valuable insight which is not always evident or visible when looking at the green.

Because of this I spent some time trying to understand if it was possible to map greens for this purpose and develop my own green reading technology as a startup or, simply improve my own golf game through this innovation. Here is what I have found on this journey: read more