Arccos Caddie

Arccos Caddie has made it onto the Golf Monthly Tech 50 2019/20 list

Arccos Caddie

WATCH: Arccos Caddie video review

Price: £249 with Smart Sensors

Tech Talk

Artificial Intelligence is playing an increasing role in golf, specifically in helping us to understand how we perform and where we can improve. Information is power, so they say, and one of the best providers of performance data from the golf course is Arccos.

When paired with the free Arccos smartphone app, all shots are automatically detected via Smart Sensors in the tops of grips that either screw in or are embedded.

Available through the app is Arccos Caddie, a next-generation Artificial Intelligence product said to help amateur golfers shoot lower scores by giving them the information to make more optimal club and strategy choices. The data also ties into the Arccos rangefinder GPS and ‘Play Like’ distance functions.

The latest Arccos Caddie 3.2 version provides golfers with real-time strategies for every shot on any hole in the world, and now enables users to provide fellow golfers with daily hole locations on a global scale. The data also ties in to the Arccos rangefinder GPS and ‘Play Like’ distance functions to help players achieve lower scores.

Powered by the Microsoft Azure cloud computing service, the Arccos Caddie gives users the opportunity to ask Apple’s Siri assistant to recommend a club, mark a hole location or add a duff shot to the score. It can calculate optimum strategy by taking into account the user’s shot history, historical performance of other Arccos users, the wind and other weather conditions, elevation changes, hole geometry and hazard locations. The strategy information that Arccos Caddie provides off the tee is even legal for competition use.

Game Booster

Arccos is arguably the most comprehensive and detailed shot-tracking system around. It’s as close as most of us will get to having a caddie at our local course, and, while you still have to execute your shots well to reap the benefits, if you’re always employing the best strategy and hitting the correct club it should lead to you shooting lower scores over time.

In fact, a study showed that Arccos users improved their handicaps by 3.79 shots on average in 2018.

When you factor in that the Caddie system is being improved all the time, and that Ping has recently announced it will be offering Arccos Smart Grips as a custom upgrade, there's clearly considerable merit in the product. It could well represent the future of performance analysis in golf at amateur level.