00:00:00
Speaker 1: The guys from paying They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters. I just love that I can hit any shot.
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Speaker 2: I kind of want we're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
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Speaker 3: What's up, everybody, Welcome back to the Ping Proven Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon. That's Marty Jerts and Marty. We've got We've got a very polished guest today, a man that has kind of changed the way we think about golf, at least the way we interpret golf. Southsaya, the CEO and co founder of Arcos, is with us. Sal, I know wheeling on you guys a lot throughout the year in terms of gaining information. So we thank you for taking a couple of minutes to chat with us.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, thank you so much for having me And I don't know, I mean, I'm thankful for the words you use to describe me. Hopefully I can hold true through that.
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Speaker 2: Sal, I've kind of loved technologies that bring kind of the capabilities, tools, data that are traditionally only available to tour players to the to the people, and I've always kind of viewed. What you've built with Arcos is like bringing shot link data to the people. How did how did the idea of Arcos come to be? Tell us give us a little history, and you guys are cooking on your your new products laid there. We're going to get into that. But give us the kind of the short arc of of how Arcos came to be and in your story.
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Speaker 1: There, sure, I mean, I would give you like a brief summary. I was going to business school at Yale, had a couple of co founders over there, and one of the things for me, I would say, there were like maybe two moments for me personally which led me down this path. One of them was I was trying to get better myself. I was an eight index at the time, and I was like, how can I be a five or two or better? And my background was in data analytics and data architecture, and I was like, oh, maybe if I track my data manually, if I can track how many fairways I had, how many pots I'm having, It'll help me get better. And I had a realization that one it's very hard to track everything you're doing while you're golfing, because you're out there to golf. You're not out there to track and collect data. The second is I wasn't collecting the right data. If I hit a fairway and a drive by two hundred yards, that's very different than a drive that went three hundred yards and missed the fairway by three feet. And so so I think, recognizing one, I'm not collecting the right data. Two it's really painful led me to down the path and led Arcoes down the path of like automating all of that collection and simplifying it. But there's a second piece, which was I read a survey in the National I believe it was a National Golf Foundation. Need to go back and confirm this, but they were trying to figure out there's sixty seventy million golfers in the world. Why do people golf? And the superficial I would say, like the first level answers were, you know, I want to break eighty. I want to break like I want to be the shrew the best score I can. I want to get a hole in one. I want to maybe play a college golf forget on the PGA Tour or when my member guests. A bunch of different reasons, but all of them The conclusion of that study was all of those basically translated like what would be realized if you shot a better score if you played better golf? And so their conclusion was eighty four percent of golfers are playing golf to get better golf, and that better golf happens on the golf course. So, like I would say, connecting those two my personal journey and realizing I'm not unique, I'm not the only one. There's millions of golfers out there on the same path, and that improvement happens on the golf course. And if we don't know what's happening on the golf course, how can we improve Where I would say, like kind of like the light bulb moments for me.
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Speaker 3: Sal was there? What was the prototype when you originated this idea? Like what did the first piece of let's say R Coast technology look like.
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Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny we described we actually called it Frankenstein, so it looked like it was like glue oozing out of it. It was censors with wires. In fact, when we launched years and years ago, it was like almost ten years ago, actually a little more than ten years ago. The first product I remember we went to Apple. We had a close relationship with Apple, so I was like, Hey, this would be awesome to have an Apple store, So let me go pitch to Apple. And I showed up with wires hanging and everything, and I think in the end, like maybe that was endearing to them because they gave us the chance and we actually launched. We were like, I think we might have been and might still be the only product that ever launched in Apple stores as the first retail partner. And so it was. We called it Frankenstein. It's still around somewhere. It looked very ugly, it was very big. Since then, we've obviously, I mean there's technology. I mean it's it's really a one direction train where it gets simpler, more seamless, more like more invisible, and that's the direction we went on. But the first one was very visible. In fact, I would say even before the one sensor that we put on, it was a physical box you carried around. I remember I go to golf courses and there's like wires everywhere and there's a box somebody's holding and that's like analyzing all the data that's coming off. So it's been quite a journey and make me think of fond memories.
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Speaker 2: Sol how has used in your own product In this I absolutely love is creating solutions to the problems that you personally have yourself. Give us a few examples of your own using your Arcos data to inform club feting changes or where you need where you work on your game strengths and weaknesses.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean it's I'd say, like early on, it's really eye opening when you first start using it. There's like different things that happen over different stages of the data journey. So the first thing for me was I realized my what I thought my club's went, even though I was like eight or seven at the time. Now I'm like scratch a lot better than scratch, like a plus. But at that time, for me, there was a cognitive bias, and that's true for a lot of golfers. Like I remembered my best shot, so I was making decisions like my eight iron goes one hundred and fifty yards, I'm making that decision. Turns I was going one hundred and forty two. That was my expected value, but that was my expected distance, not one hundred and fifty. That immediately changed my approach game. I also thought, like before getting all this data, that putting was my problem, and I realized, actually, I'm a really good putter. My problem was my approach distance. Like the putt distances were too long. I'm leaving myself fifty footers and that's the thing that I can improve the fastest. So those were I would say early aha moments. And since then, I mean one of the things I would say, you realize is golf improvement journey. While it can be pointing north, has like I would say, natural variants built into it which you want to identify. So anytime a certain facet of your game. So for example, let's say I'm really good at putting, but if I start realizing through data, like you know, my lag putting is right now getting worse. Even if I spend a little bit of time right there, I can nip it in the butt so it doesn't become a bigger problem. So I says, staying on top of those things has been incredibly helpful on my journey personally, and we hear that from a bunch of different users, different members on the club fitting side. I mean, it's you know, all the John case Solheim stories around how his lie angle is actually based on Arcos Enforce data and not just not just simulator data. For me, it's been like, I mean, now I'm playing with a G four forty K and when James and Paying fit me like I sent him my Arco's dispersion data, which I mean some of the stuff we're going to be exposing to all our members in upcoming app releases. But we knew the bias on the club like my by misdirection, so I didn't have to go through any fitting honestly based on Arcos and based on what we knew about me previously on all the data paying head. But like for me as a golfer, I can look at my strokes gain stats with this new driver versus the last one. I can look at my driving distance, I can look at my mispatterns, and I feel more confident that I made this choice the correct choice, so that this driver is the right driver for me, because now I'm gaining. I think it's like point four strokes more so so I think all of those things, especially on the equipment side, is not just the fitting, but also closing the loop, Like the investment that I made, is it actually making me better? And if it's not I can go back to my fit, like, hey, here's the issue and we can address it. So I think that's been incredibly helpful.
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Speaker 3: I mean, Sally, you're speaking kind of to my soul on this stuff right now, because I feel like, and I kind of am speaking like for the people I play golf with my friends that maybe don't access you know, maybe the technology you're data necessary all the time. They're playing the wrong clubs in their bag. You know, they have big gaps in their bag. They don't know where they're good and bad. They're hitting a driver on a hole where they're not good from forty yards and if they pull the drive off, you know, they actually hit a big drive, they're going to be forty yards out. Like the enlighteningness of technology and golf right now is available, and sometimes you just want to scream at a golfer and go just try this stuff. It'll make you better.
00:09:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you that. I will also say that there have been, like I mean, maybe I'll pivot into like some of the things that keep people from adopting like a technology like arcos are some of the behavior changes you have to make. So for example, till I would say a week ago, you have to put sensors on all your clubs to track all that data, and that to a lot of people sounded like I would say, they were like put golfers in two camps. One the really elite golfers, we're really finicky about every little like how the grip should feel where they're holding the club, like how the vibration the shock should feel. So while Arcos did not change any performance characteristics of the club, like it does look different with the censor on there, and if it throws people off, like the really elite golfers we were not able to attract. And then similarly, the second set of golfers that we were not able to attract, were you know, like pairing fourteen censors on my club. That just sounds like a lot of work And I'm just out there at golf and I totally get that. And that's like I would say, listening to those two key messages from our potential members or even members who've tried it and then said it let us down this path, which we just launched Arcos Air about a week ago to address, like, Shane, exactly what you're saying where it takes so much of the friction away. All you have to do is put arcos Air in your pocket and go play, and it's going to do all the work for you. And we believe that that's going to be a game changer in terms of getting that as you mentioned, data enlightenment, enlightenment to a much broader set of golfers out there.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: So arcos Air you're talking about is uh is the ability to capture shots on the course. I've used I've used it kind of when it was in the R and D space, and it's kind of magical in the way it works. You get done, you're like, hey, I might need to edit a putter to putt distance or two, but you're like, whoa, this thing just gotten my whole round Now, I don't need to If I don't want to, I can just not even look at my phone play golf in a very kind of frictionless way. As you mentioned, gathers all the data. Was arcos Air part of your kind of kind of the technological grand plan. You needed all this training data or was this Hey, Over the ten plus years that ARCO has been around, new capabilities came to be and and you guys engineered your way towards it. How did that Arcos Air evolution come to be? Technologically speaking?
00:11:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say it was a full circle moment in this sense for Arcos because we actually started with censor less first, and we realized we couln't solve it. The technology wasn't there and the data wasn't there. So when Arcos first came out, I actually shared, like when when we were launching Arcos here a week and a half ago, I shared this message with the entire company, which was, it's it's it's in a sensor realization of some vision that I had shared vision team had had years and years ago. And we tried it and I'd say, I drove the enginet. It's crazy. I'm like, hey, how can Shazam figure out which song it is with just the phone? And there's like a billion songs out there and you can't figure out there's a golf shot that was taken with which club. Turns out it was I was wrong and the team was right, and we couldn't do it that And so then we went down the censored path of like we need something on the club to understand when a shot is taken and obviously it's Census plus GPS. We're not guessing where the SHOT's going. We're detecting impact and location, and then we record the location. Then when you take your next shot, that's how we know where a previous shot ended up. So by virtue of that and the by virtue of the fact that we've recorded one and a half billion shots, we started recording all kinds of data around those shots, all the IMU motion sensor data from accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, GPS, and it was it's recorded a super high fidelity. And I think like the analogy here is similar to how like every time I drive my Tesla, I'm actually training the Tesla self driver less vehicle, like the self driving thing, which is amazing. Similarly, the hundreds of thousands of users members that have been playing with Arcos and played with Arcos, they helped us train the sensor less model, which is Arcos Air that you don't need sensors on clubs. And like I would say, that's probably the easiest way for me to describe it beyond saying I mean, just like I can't describe our chat GPD works but it does, or clock works but it does. Similarly, this is the secret is in the data capture and the data collection. Once you capture the right data, which is the hard part, then you can build the right models on it to predict when the shots taken versus not when it's a practice saying when you're just hanging out over there. And the other thing that's really interesting is these models are going to get better and better and smarter and smarter. The first time you play with AIR is going to be the worst experience you'll ever have. Every successive time is going to get better and better, and like what it's going to look like a year from now is obviously going to be way better what it is now. But the more it learns about you, more it learns about your golf behaviors, the better it's going to be.
00:14:43
Speaker 3: Is this the biggest leap for you guys to date in terms of the technology Arcos AIR?
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Speaker 1: I think from a capturing of data standpoint, there's no doubt that for the for every golfer out there has not been a technology that's existed so far and the exist in the history of golf that allows them to capture data this seamlessly so cool.
00:15:05
Speaker 3: I mean, I've seen I'm buddies with some Marcos. I'm some of my Arcos pals out there, and I've seen them kind of messing around with it the last few months, and I've got a sense from everybody this is the next generation of what we're going to be doing. So very cool to kind of see it out and about and uh and available for the public now.
00:15:22
Speaker 1: Awesome.
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Speaker 2: And so how does the you know, I think I was a little surprised when you guys launched a rangefinder, right, so tell us a little bit about the rangefinder you guys launched, and what is the interplay into Arcos Era just the whole uh, you know, maybe accuracy, the pin location and things of that nature.
00:15:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean, I would say it ties back to her mission, which is to improve the dedicated performance of dedicated golfers at every level through seamless data collection and actionable intelligence. And when we look at the actionable intelligence part, one of the things that we realized was one of the most love features of our experience is us giving you insights on how when you look at a certain shot and let's say you have one hundred and fifty yards, what do you do from there? Where should you play, where should you aim? And we factor in your game. We factor in all the elements around it. What's the wind doing, what direction is it coming from, what's the humidity? Are you playing in Arizona where it's like fifteen hundred feet above sea level VEREREUS sea level which might be your home course? Take all that into account and listening to our members, we heard that, you know, like we would love to see all this information and rangefinder because we're actually lasering the pin it's a part of for experience, and so I would say for us, it was we either integrate with other laser technologies or build our own. And one of the things we realized was this requires a connected experience, smart device, and it's the same thing as like Tesla could integrate itself driving technology into other cars or built their own. And the reason Tesla did their own is because the other cars are not built ground up as a connected experience. So what we've done is built the smart laser as a connected experience, so it works absolutely seamlessly with your app. It's always like we were experts in Bluetooth, So there's a live weatherfeed that's going into the smart laser. It knows what hole you're on when you're going to the next hole. It's got all this hole switching automatic hole switching algorithms built. And we also know what direction the wind's coming, what direction you're going, and how what's the interplay of that, what the gust is doing. And so with all of that, when you laser a flag, we're able to give you And then for a user, it's like a super simple there's no difference we are using a smart laser Arco smart laser versus using any other laser in terms of the user experience. You just point and click. The information you get out of it is five times more valuable. And the reason it is five times I would say, yeah, five times more valuable, is the other rangefinders only give you nineteen percent the answer. So when you look at what goes into figuring out how far lay, there are various factors. One is slope, which is the only innovation that's happened in lasers since before smart laser, and that when you look at it accounts for only nineteen percent the answer. The rest of the eighty one percent the answer because we have now millions of apps taken we have that data, so basing it on all the data I have the rest eighty one percent, the answer is what's the wind doing, what's augusting, what's the wind direction, what's the temperature? Is it cold, is it hot? Because it changes things? And what's your altitude and elevation and actually barometric pressure too because when you got in Arizona where the air center like, stuff changes. So all those factors are accounted for in the smart laser that no other laser is doing. And then in addition to that, the other thing we're able to do, like one of the things smart you mentioned is when we zap, we can set your pin location and we also show you an arc on the green where the pin is, so in the case that you don't have pin sheets, you can see how far deep or how short like, so it's an immense value. In addition to that, because it's a connected experience, we also give you green maps, so you can look at the map of the whole. You can you get like map of the whole, but you also get all the green slopes for that. I think we have over nine thousand courses with green maps and it's ever increasing. And then you get AI strategy with it, which is and I won't get into a strategy with the idea being that it's a smart laser that's always going to be improving. It's a connected technology. We're going to be releasing more and more updates. It's going to be more exciting stuff you can do with it. You get green maps, and you'll get a bunch of software stuff with it, and it's up to your house. You going to interact with it, you know.
00:19:55
Speaker 3: It's it's so interesting you say that about the kind of the progression of the range finder. I mean, I remember my uncle, who you know, at any given time in his prime was anywhere between a three and a ten handicap, and I remember the sky Caddy days, and he would have the sky Caddy on the cart and it would say front and back, And I remember always thinking that was more helpful to him than shooting the pen, because all of a sudden, it gave him thirty or forty yards to play with, because he's not necessarily going to hit an eight iron to one forty every time, but having an idea of what the green looked like, and to your point, shooting the flags sometimes can be a detriment to the player if you have no other information right, because you don't know if it's on the front of the green, in the back of the green, what the wind's doing. So all of a sudden, you're I was messing with the laser last week, and it's incredible. I mean, the fact that it can give you adjusted distances is so cool. I mean, the fact that it's so much smarter than every other laser sal I mean, it just seems like a layup in terms of that next step of what this technology can be.
00:20:57
Speaker 1: Thank you totally agree. Couldn't agree more.
00:21:00
Speaker 2: Let's say somebody, let's say somebody tried arcos uh three four years ago and they had the sensors on there, maybe they maybe they didn't like the field, the grips, what have you, and and we're we're a little bit of a like you said, maybe a better player nitpicky in terms of feel and things of that nature. Fast forward to today, because I feel like you guys are really turn up the heat here with the green scans and the AI caddy and the uh the range smart range finder now and now you have air give you know, what is somebody uh maybe coming into the arcos ecosystem today going to experience relative to you know, let's say they came in three four years ago and tried it out.
00:21:38
Speaker 1: I think what they will experience is probably like I'll say, two fundamental shifts, excuse me. One is the seamlessness of capturing your data is dramatically different, like in the past you had to I mean, just let me just walk you through the pairing process with sensors, which I'm not saying don't do it. It just requires like people are still doing it, it just requires a lot more work. You have to install fourteen sensors on each club, You have to put the clubs in the bag, then you have to put them out one by one and scan them. And that's like a ten to fifteen minute process to get set up. And for a lot of people, like they, it might that just might sound like too much, like because you don't remember to do your golf things till you get to the golf course and by that time you're focused on just playing your around. Now that has gone down to like how long does it take you to pay an AirPod? Like five seconds? It's like gone down to that. So that's a fundamental shift. Like and then similarly, while you're playing with sensors, we recommend you carry your clubs upside down, don't throw them in anger or whatever, like it could trigger false positives, generally won't. But with air, because we don't have anything on clubs, you can filling them, you can do whatever you want to do, like do not you don't need to change your behavior, and so so I think that's one piece that's going to be really fundamentally different. The other is the insights that you're getting, whether it's the smart laser where like now it's more integrated into your golf experience, or like when you go into the app, like what you'll see is we've made a lot of experiences better and in the next couple of months they're going to be like just the insights that you're going to get are going to blow your mind and out. I mean like maybe maybe in a couple months will be chatting about that, but the there's mind blowing insights coming based on the virtue of all the data we've collected, which will and those insights are going to be unbelievably actionable, and they're already are. It's the most actionable insights platform in golf. It's most accessible to every golfer from we have players Marty like you, and like Mason Howell and others like really elite paying athletes that are utilizing this data where we do unbelievably detailed analysis for them, but at the same time we're able to distill those insights and make them super actionable, so you give so you can act upon it, and like that is also very different than would have been three four years ago.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: So how about your relationship with Ping and John k specifically, how did that? How did that come about?
00:24:22
Speaker 1: So I would say, Uh, it's a great relationship. I love John, He's such a great leader. That came about I met him Mary. I don't know if you were there when I first met him. I remember going golfing with him, Uh, and there were a couple other people, and he used Arcos for the first time, and he immediately saw the power of the data. And I think it harkens back to Ping's roots. Ping has always been at the forefront of utilizing data to improve golfer's performance, with the whole I mean fitting concept really essentially being introduced by Pings. So I would say this keep is in keeping with the tradition that Ping has of making sure that Ping is using the latest and greatest of any technology possible as long as it helps golfers play their best. So I think there is a lot of synergy there. There's a lot of autenticity because we truly that's what we do is making sure like everything we're doing, every action we're taking, every decision we're making internally as a product team as a company is advancing or mission of improving the performance of every dedicated golfer at every level. And and so I think we bonded over that shared vision, shared mission. Since then we've become great friends. We have a Actually I'm going to do something cool, which is so every match John, every time John and I play, we play for what I call the Saad Solheim Cup. Also no, no, it's not called Solheim Cup, but we have a little cup. It's an Oakmond Cup, and whoever wins it, they get it. And all rounds from every time we've played are recorded in arcos. So I'm gonna have Claude go in and create like a little storybook. So it's it's really fun. We both look at our data. We're both data centric and John is very like I would say among golf leaders, he is unique in terms of how tech forward he is from a vision standpoint, and I think part of it is also that he was an early investor in Tesla and so he's always been kind of ahead of the curve on that.
00:26:30
Speaker 3: Who's leading this series.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: Currently, I'm I'm leading the series, but he holds the cup right now. Okay, I I gotta get that back.
00:26:38
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to figure out who the next round is.
00:26:40
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll get it.
00:26:41
Speaker 3: We'll get Marty to roll out with a camera. Marty, I wanted to ask you about Arcos. I mean, we've been doing this podcast for a few years now. You say the word Arcos probably every episode in some capacity. I mean how important it is in terms of R and D and what ping does as the research in kind of the you know, the the every day golfer. How impactful has Arcos been for you guys?
00:27:04
Speaker 2: It's just been gold Shane because before having the Arcos data set, and I think we've captured sol three hundred and twenty million shots from from you know, Pink of customers out there playing Pink product using Arcos together, and we can data mind that we're always sitting in conference rooms. Uh is Shane asking the question? Well, I wonder we have this great PGA tour data from shot link. I wonder what our what our actual you know, customers are doing out on the golf course.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: Right.
00:27:32
Speaker 2: So before Arcos, it was we were guestimating or we were having to go recall memories, and each of us have our own cognitive bias that were laying on layering onto that. When I play in pro ams, I observe back. So it's been gold to have that information. Uh, I mean a couple examples there, Shane or uh, you know, I think the thriver concept. What percentage of the time do players use their fairy woods off the te versus the fairway? And this is different for players like us than players who drive the ball to fifty or two hundred yards. There's how much are folks using their highest lofted wedge around the green out of the rough versus the fringe, different versus the bunker, different terrain scenarios. That informs, for example, our groove designs. We want to we wanna optimize our groove designs for more out of the rough conditions, bunker conditions. It changes how we do fitting protocols, how much time we spend green side versus around the green, tons of gapping information, tons of Hey, we can go in and say this SFT players are generally drive the ball only two hundred and twenty five yards. We can do a different face design, we can change our durability standards based off of that. So instead of guessing, now, we have all this data to to kind of back it up. One other very fun pichae that always comes to my mind is that Carston Solheim in the early days of club fitting, he would you would you would you know, get your club fitting specs and on there it said, hey, here's a little stats tracking. Go track whether you miss the ball right or left and if you're if you if you see a pattern there, uh, send your clubs in and we'll adjust your color code. Right, this is the very early days of Hey, there's club fitting, then there's how how do you perform on the golf course? And really that's what Arcos has helped us do is to bring we're gonna we're gonna change our club fitting protocols to better match how you play on the course. But the but the optimal club fitting is never ending. Right the tour club fitting, the truck is there every week, so you're always kind of have this never ending and uh it's been great to have Arcos to help us kind of be at the intersection of those two pieces.
00:29:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's uh it, I think to your point, I mean, getting the information on the everyday golfer has always been something that an OEM would want to attain and the fact that now it exists, I mean what we were two billion shots?
00:29:54
Speaker 1: Is that?
00:29:54
Speaker 3: Is that where we're at right now in terms.
00:29:56
Speaker 4: Of maybe a billion and half we actually had all shots. We have a map of the world over there. Lives happen anytime there's a shot taken. It's like it's like lights going off. So we have also like seven hundred shots a minute right now.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: And this is not even golf.
00:30:12
Speaker 3: N Have you changed anything in your bag or maybe adjusted a gap in your bag because of Arco's data that you probably maybe wouldn't have tried out or wouldn't have ventured into maybe a different wedge. Sure, Martin you you is there is there any like locks maybe you threw in there?
00:30:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you like a few changes. I mean I can go through like fitting like at nauseum here, but like I'll give you two examples for my home course, which is Tamarack Country Club. What data showed me was I use my hybrid on there are two long part threes and that's basically where I'm using my hybrid, and on both those the penal misses on the left when you look at a stroke standpoint, and my hybrid would miss left more often. So I switched to the four iron crossover and now my like so my scoring average on those two holes improved. So that was one specific, core specific change based on data that I made, and it's been like, Actually I showed John Kay that the missing my hybrid more left be is there any other thing? He's like, Oh, we have this new club like this specifically that you won't miss more left with that, and it's been unbelievable. So that's been huge helped me with my club championship and then my wedge gaping. So my I used to have a fifty to fifty four and sixty, now I have based on that gaping, I have a forty eight fifty four and sixty and that works better based on where my pitching wedges and to even those out. Otherwise I was trying to hit a lot of field shots with a fifty degree, and that's generally for somebody who's not who's scoring doesn't depend on living. I'm not practicing my fifty degree like nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock. So like there's an easier way to solve make the gap in a little bit. So it's only maybe you have two swings and maybe just one. Yep, those are two quick examples that come right on the top of my head.
00:32:09
Speaker 2: I love that. So I think there's the big data side Shane and sal which is, okay, let's look at on average what these groupings do. But sal brought uh brought up a couple of examples where he comes into our fitters and we look at his data ahead of time. And this is this is the ultimate. This is where I think every golfer should be is to be able to bring your data in. So start collecting the data. It's lower friction now with air than it's ever been. Start bringing your data into your fitter and using that to inform the process, not not to eliminate the fitting, but it's just one better piece of information that's from your en course. Salas brought up another great example where you know, for a good chunk of the year, sow. You're playing a lot of your golfer your one home golf course, you can optimize your bag for that one golf course, right versus another golfer that's traveling around a little bit more. Might little need a little bit more diversity in their club setup.
00:33:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes it makes total sense. It's kind of like Arcos feels kind of like that therapist for your golf game, you know it just it's kind of like in the background, just consistently helping you out to get a little better, maybe when you don't even need to know you need to get better, Marty, I'm imagining. I mean you mentioned the Thriver earlier, but I mean you basically through Arcos you discovered a whole new golf club that I know you've leaned on heavily over the last few years.
00:33:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think you're you're seeing this on the PGA Tour. You know, all the number of players play, whether it's a a twelve degree Thriver build from US Mini Driver, a type of concept category kind of came to fruition out of that. Another big one for US, Shane is just looking at what percentage of the time golfers are in the fairway versus the rough versus hitting shots off of tee. So again this might be obvious in hindsight, but through the Arcos data, we found that players hit their mid irons a third of the time off of tee on par threes, a third of the time in the fairway, and a third of the time in the rough. This is super valuable because now when we're fitting iron, when we're fitting irons, it's totally okay. Not only is it okay, but we actually encourage you to hit a good number of shots with our seven iron, our AFS fitting club off of tee because yeah, that might be obviously in hindsight now, but without this data, we didn't have this enlightenment that you're hitting that on par three's a good percentage of the time. You're also spending a lot of time from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and seventy yards. Sally, I'd love to get your take on this, because I know you're a golf course architecture history buff, but we see a lot of people hitting their approach shots centered around one forty plus or minus twenty yards or so, what what are your thoughts on that from a golf course architecture standpoint, maybe at the viewpoint of the macro level history of golf course architecture as well.
00:35:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like, I will say the same thing. It was really interesting we were looking at the same thing and looking at the distribution of shots, and it really centers around like doesn't matter what your skill level is, Like at least in the amateur database. It's almost like people are normalizing to like outlay the t's where I'm like, subconsciously is like almost like happening where it's really like one forty eight yards is like where we find the peak, like the wh when you look at the curve and so like we looked at like a twenty. When you look at twenty handicappers scratch golfer, it's kind of the same, Like they're hitting their appro shots. The highest frequency is from one hundred and fifty yards, and like it's like I haven't spent time thinking about how are humans adjusting to the T boxes subconsciously so that that's happening, But it is like true for every skill set, which is wild, like the thing matches up. I mean, I don't know, it's just like from our course architecture standpoint. Maybe, I mean, honestly, it shouldn't be that way, Like somebody who's are twenty handicappers should not be hitting their pro shots from one hundred and fifty on average. They should be a little closer than that. But somehow people are normalizing and maybe part of it is people are just making their tea decisions so that they're hitting their pro shots from the same spot that the longer driver's hitting. And I'll just spend a little bit more time thinking about it. But that's the only thing come up right off the bat. But it is interesting.
00:36:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've kind of come to I think golf courses sell need probably a bit more diversity in the tea boxes, right So I think when the USJ did the play it Forward initiative and and a lot of the courses just didn't have tea boxes forward enough for folks to tee off at. But I always find that there's a there's a lot of different nooks and crannies you can go to and you look at just kind of organic pattern data out on the golf course, and that's the interesting one that folks bunch up around one fifty, but from a upfitting standpoint. This is super important Shane and sal because we want to make sure we don't have too big of yardage gaps in there. And with a modernization of losts. You know, some of our models have seven iron loss that are stronger than previous years. We can't forget about that distribution where golfers play a lot of golf and hit a lot of shots, which is one thirty to one seventy centered around one Sal mentioned. So we've used that to informed our our gapping, our loss and second figuration quite quite strongly.
00:37:36
Speaker 1: Sal.
00:37:37
Speaker 3: Well, congrats on Arcos, Ayer, I mean, I know you guys are fired up for it. I know it's It's obviously a big leap for Arcos. As I mentioned, the lasers awesome for anybody out there that is in the market for a new laser, I would definitely give the Arcos. Is it smart lasers?
00:37:51
Speaker 1: That was that where we're smart?
00:37:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, the smart laser is definitely one to consider. I mean, obviously it gives you so many more data points, which is something we're always trying to attain.
00:38:00
Speaker 1: Sal.
00:38:00
Speaker 3: We gotta get out and play this year, by the way, We've got we got.
00:38:02
Speaker 4: To sleep out and play.
00:38:03
Speaker 3: Uh, get Musso out and uh and we'll go get a round.
00:38:06
Speaker 1: In or something. Let's do it. That'll be fun.
00:38:09
Speaker 2: Uh.
00:38:09
Speaker 1: Sal I appreciate the time. This is the thing.
00:38:11
Speaker 3: Proven Grounds Podcast
Speaker 1: The guys from paying They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters. I just love that I can hit any shot.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: I kind of want we're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
00:00:11
Speaker 3: What's up, everybody, Welcome back to the Ping Proven Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon. That's Marty Jerts and Marty. We've got We've got a very polished guest today, a man that has kind of changed the way we think about golf, at least the way we interpret golf. Southsaya, the CEO and co founder of Arcos, is with us. Sal, I know wheeling on you guys a lot throughout the year in terms of gaining information. So we thank you for taking a couple of minutes to chat with us.
00:00:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, thank you so much for having me And I don't know, I mean, I'm thankful for the words you use to describe me. Hopefully I can hold true through that.
00:00:48
Speaker 2: Sal, I've kind of loved technologies that bring kind of the capabilities, tools, data that are traditionally only available to tour players to the to the people, and I've always kind of viewed. What you've built with Arcos is like bringing shot link data to the people. How did how did the idea of Arcos come to be? Tell us give us a little history, and you guys are cooking on your your new products laid there. We're going to get into that. But give us the kind of the short arc of of how Arcos came to be and in your story.
00:01:21
Speaker 1: There, sure, I mean, I would give you like a brief summary. I was going to business school at Yale, had a couple of co founders over there, and one of the things for me, I would say, there were like maybe two moments for me personally which led me down this path. One of them was I was trying to get better myself. I was an eight index at the time, and I was like, how can I be a five or two or better? And my background was in data analytics and data architecture, and I was like, oh, maybe if I track my data manually, if I can track how many fairways I had, how many pots I'm having, It'll help me get better. And I had a realization that one it's very hard to track everything you're doing while you're golfing, because you're out there to golf. You're not out there to track and collect data. The second is I wasn't collecting the right data. If I hit a fairway and a drive by two hundred yards, that's very different than a drive that went three hundred yards and missed the fairway by three feet. And so so I think, recognizing one, I'm not collecting the right data. Two it's really painful led me to down the path and led Arcoes down the path of like automating all of that collection and simplifying it. But there's a second piece, which was I read a survey in the National I believe it was a National Golf Foundation. Need to go back and confirm this, but they were trying to figure out there's sixty seventy million golfers in the world. Why do people golf? And the superficial I would say, like the first level answers were, you know, I want to break eighty. I want to break like I want to be the shrew the best score I can. I want to get a hole in one. I want to maybe play a college golf forget on the PGA Tour or when my member guests. A bunch of different reasons, but all of them The conclusion of that study was all of those basically translated like what would be realized if you shot a better score if you played better golf? And so their conclusion was eighty four percent of golfers are playing golf to get better golf, and that better golf happens on the golf course. So, like I would say, connecting those two my personal journey and realizing I'm not unique, I'm not the only one. There's millions of golfers out there on the same path, and that improvement happens on the golf course. And if we don't know what's happening on the golf course, how can we improve Where I would say, like kind of like the light bulb moments for me.
00:03:47
Speaker 3: Sal was there? What was the prototype when you originated this idea? Like what did the first piece of let's say R Coast technology look like.
00:03:58
Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny we described we actually called it Frankenstein, so it looked like it was like glue oozing out of it. It was censors with wires. In fact, when we launched years and years ago, it was like almost ten years ago, actually a little more than ten years ago. The first product I remember we went to Apple. We had a close relationship with Apple, so I was like, Hey, this would be awesome to have an Apple store, So let me go pitch to Apple. And I showed up with wires hanging and everything, and I think in the end, like maybe that was endearing to them because they gave us the chance and we actually launched. We were like, I think we might have been and might still be the only product that ever launched in Apple stores as the first retail partner. And so it was. We called it Frankenstein. It's still around somewhere. It looked very ugly, it was very big. Since then, we've obviously, I mean there's technology. I mean it's it's really a one direction train where it gets simpler, more seamless, more like more invisible, and that's the direction we went on. But the first one was very visible. In fact, I would say even before the one sensor that we put on, it was a physical box you carried around. I remember I go to golf courses and there's like wires everywhere and there's a box somebody's holding and that's like analyzing all the data that's coming off. So it's been quite a journey and make me think of fond memories.
00:05:25
Speaker 2: Sol how has used in your own product In this I absolutely love is creating solutions to the problems that you personally have yourself. Give us a few examples of your own using your Arcos data to inform club feting changes or where you need where you work on your game strengths and weaknesses.
00:05:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean it's I'd say, like early on, it's really eye opening when you first start using it. There's like different things that happen over different stages of the data journey. So the first thing for me was I realized my what I thought my club's went, even though I was like eight or seven at the time. Now I'm like scratch a lot better than scratch, like a plus. But at that time, for me, there was a cognitive bias, and that's true for a lot of golfers. Like I remembered my best shot, so I was making decisions like my eight iron goes one hundred and fifty yards, I'm making that decision. Turns I was going one hundred and forty two. That was my expected value, but that was my expected distance, not one hundred and fifty. That immediately changed my approach game. I also thought, like before getting all this data, that putting was my problem, and I realized, actually, I'm a really good putter. My problem was my approach distance. Like the putt distances were too long. I'm leaving myself fifty footers and that's the thing that I can improve the fastest. So those were I would say early aha moments. And since then, I mean one of the things I would say, you realize is golf improvement journey. While it can be pointing north, has like I would say, natural variants built into it which you want to identify. So anytime a certain facet of your game. So for example, let's say I'm really good at putting, but if I start realizing through data, like you know, my lag putting is right now getting worse. Even if I spend a little bit of time right there, I can nip it in the butt so it doesn't become a bigger problem. So I says, staying on top of those things has been incredibly helpful on my journey personally, and we hear that from a bunch of different users, different members on the club fitting side. I mean, it's you know, all the John case Solheim stories around how his lie angle is actually based on Arcos Enforce data and not just not just simulator data. For me, it's been like, I mean, now I'm playing with a G four forty K and when James and Paying fit me like I sent him my Arco's dispersion data, which I mean some of the stuff we're going to be exposing to all our members in upcoming app releases. But we knew the bias on the club like my by misdirection, so I didn't have to go through any fitting honestly based on Arcos and based on what we knew about me previously on all the data paying head. But like for me as a golfer, I can look at my strokes gain stats with this new driver versus the last one. I can look at my driving distance, I can look at my mispatterns, and I feel more confident that I made this choice the correct choice, so that this driver is the right driver for me, because now I'm gaining. I think it's like point four strokes more so so I think all of those things, especially on the equipment side, is not just the fitting, but also closing the loop, Like the investment that I made, is it actually making me better? And if it's not I can go back to my fit, like, hey, here's the issue and we can address it. So I think that's been incredibly helpful.
00:08:47
Speaker 3: I mean, Sally, you're speaking kind of to my soul on this stuff right now, because I feel like, and I kind of am speaking like for the people I play golf with my friends that maybe don't access you know, maybe the technology you're data necessary all the time. They're playing the wrong clubs in their bag. You know, they have big gaps in their bag. They don't know where they're good and bad. They're hitting a driver on a hole where they're not good from forty yards and if they pull the drive off, you know, they actually hit a big drive, they're going to be forty yards out. Like the enlighteningness of technology and golf right now is available, and sometimes you just want to scream at a golfer and go just try this stuff. It'll make you better.
00:09:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you that. I will also say that there have been, like I mean, maybe I'll pivot into like some of the things that keep people from adopting like a technology like arcos are some of the behavior changes you have to make. So for example, till I would say a week ago, you have to put sensors on all your clubs to track all that data, and that to a lot of people sounded like I would say, they were like put golfers in two camps. One the really elite golfers, we're really finicky about every little like how the grip should feel where they're holding the club, like how the vibration the shock should feel. So while Arcos did not change any performance characteristics of the club, like it does look different with the censor on there, and if it throws people off, like the really elite golfers we were not able to attract. And then similarly, the second set of golfers that we were not able to attract, were you know, like pairing fourteen censors on my club. That just sounds like a lot of work And I'm just out there at golf and I totally get that. And that's like I would say, listening to those two key messages from our potential members or even members who've tried it and then said it let us down this path, which we just launched Arcos Air about a week ago to address, like, Shane, exactly what you're saying where it takes so much of the friction away. All you have to do is put arcos Air in your pocket and go play, and it's going to do all the work for you. And we believe that that's going to be a game changer in terms of getting that as you mentioned, data enlightenment, enlightenment to a much broader set of golfers out there.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: So arcos Air you're talking about is uh is the ability to capture shots on the course. I've used I've used it kind of when it was in the R and D space, and it's kind of magical in the way it works. You get done, you're like, hey, I might need to edit a putter to putt distance or two, but you're like, whoa, this thing just gotten my whole round Now, I don't need to If I don't want to, I can just not even look at my phone play golf in a very kind of frictionless way. As you mentioned, gathers all the data. Was arcos Air part of your kind of kind of the technological grand plan. You needed all this training data or was this Hey, Over the ten plus years that ARCO has been around, new capabilities came to be and and you guys engineered your way towards it. How did that Arcos Air evolution come to be? Technologically speaking?
00:11:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say it was a full circle moment in this sense for Arcos because we actually started with censor less first, and we realized we couln't solve it. The technology wasn't there and the data wasn't there. So when Arcos first came out, I actually shared, like when when we were launching Arcos here a week and a half ago, I shared this message with the entire company, which was, it's it's it's in a sensor realization of some vision that I had shared vision team had had years and years ago. And we tried it and I'd say, I drove the enginet. It's crazy. I'm like, hey, how can Shazam figure out which song it is with just the phone? And there's like a billion songs out there and you can't figure out there's a golf shot that was taken with which club. Turns out it was I was wrong and the team was right, and we couldn't do it that And so then we went down the censored path of like we need something on the club to understand when a shot is taken and obviously it's Census plus GPS. We're not guessing where the SHOT's going. We're detecting impact and location, and then we record the location. Then when you take your next shot, that's how we know where a previous shot ended up. So by virtue of that and the by virtue of the fact that we've recorded one and a half billion shots, we started recording all kinds of data around those shots, all the IMU motion sensor data from accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, GPS, and it was it's recorded a super high fidelity. And I think like the analogy here is similar to how like every time I drive my Tesla, I'm actually training the Tesla self driver less vehicle, like the self driving thing, which is amazing. Similarly, the hundreds of thousands of users members that have been playing with Arcos and played with Arcos, they helped us train the sensor less model, which is Arcos Air that you don't need sensors on clubs. And like I would say, that's probably the easiest way for me to describe it beyond saying I mean, just like I can't describe our chat GPD works but it does, or clock works but it does. Similarly, this is the secret is in the data capture and the data collection. Once you capture the right data, which is the hard part, then you can build the right models on it to predict when the shots taken versus not when it's a practice saying when you're just hanging out over there. And the other thing that's really interesting is these models are going to get better and better and smarter and smarter. The first time you play with AIR is going to be the worst experience you'll ever have. Every successive time is going to get better and better, and like what it's going to look like a year from now is obviously going to be way better what it is now. But the more it learns about you, more it learns about your golf behaviors, the better it's going to be.
00:14:43
Speaker 3: Is this the biggest leap for you guys to date in terms of the technology Arcos AIR?
00:14:48
Speaker 1: I think from a capturing of data standpoint, there's no doubt that for the for every golfer out there has not been a technology that's existed so far and the exist in the history of golf that allows them to capture data this seamlessly so cool.
00:15:05
Speaker 3: I mean, I've seen I'm buddies with some Marcos. I'm some of my Arcos pals out there, and I've seen them kind of messing around with it the last few months, and I've got a sense from everybody this is the next generation of what we're going to be doing. So very cool to kind of see it out and about and uh and available for the public now.
00:15:22
Speaker 1: Awesome.
00:15:25
Speaker 2: And so how does the you know, I think I was a little surprised when you guys launched a rangefinder, right, so tell us a little bit about the rangefinder you guys launched, and what is the interplay into Arcos Era just the whole uh, you know, maybe accuracy, the pin location and things of that nature.
00:15:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean, I would say it ties back to her mission, which is to improve the dedicated performance of dedicated golfers at every level through seamless data collection and actionable intelligence. And when we look at the actionable intelligence part, one of the things that we realized was one of the most love features of our experience is us giving you insights on how when you look at a certain shot and let's say you have one hundred and fifty yards, what do you do from there? Where should you play, where should you aim? And we factor in your game. We factor in all the elements around it. What's the wind doing, what direction is it coming from, what's the humidity? Are you playing in Arizona where it's like fifteen hundred feet above sea level VEREREUS sea level which might be your home course? Take all that into account and listening to our members, we heard that, you know, like we would love to see all this information and rangefinder because we're actually lasering the pin it's a part of for experience, and so I would say for us, it was we either integrate with other laser technologies or build our own. And one of the things we realized was this requires a connected experience, smart device, and it's the same thing as like Tesla could integrate itself driving technology into other cars or built their own. And the reason Tesla did their own is because the other cars are not built ground up as a connected experience. So what we've done is built the smart laser as a connected experience, so it works absolutely seamlessly with your app. It's always like we were experts in Bluetooth, So there's a live weatherfeed that's going into the smart laser. It knows what hole you're on when you're going to the next hole. It's got all this hole switching automatic hole switching algorithms built. And we also know what direction the wind's coming, what direction you're going, and how what's the interplay of that, what the gust is doing. And so with all of that, when you laser a flag, we're able to give you And then for a user, it's like a super simple there's no difference we are using a smart laser Arco smart laser versus using any other laser in terms of the user experience. You just point and click. The information you get out of it is five times more valuable. And the reason it is five times I would say, yeah, five times more valuable, is the other rangefinders only give you nineteen percent the answer. So when you look at what goes into figuring out how far lay, there are various factors. One is slope, which is the only innovation that's happened in lasers since before smart laser, and that when you look at it accounts for only nineteen percent the answer. The rest of the eighty one percent the answer because we have now millions of apps taken we have that data, so basing it on all the data I have the rest eighty one percent, the answer is what's the wind doing, what's augusting, what's the wind direction, what's the temperature? Is it cold, is it hot? Because it changes things? And what's your altitude and elevation and actually barometric pressure too because when you got in Arizona where the air center like, stuff changes. So all those factors are accounted for in the smart laser that no other laser is doing. And then in addition to that, the other thing we're able to do, like one of the things smart you mentioned is when we zap, we can set your pin location and we also show you an arc on the green where the pin is, so in the case that you don't have pin sheets, you can see how far deep or how short like, so it's an immense value. In addition to that, because it's a connected experience, we also give you green maps, so you can look at the map of the whole. You can you get like map of the whole, but you also get all the green slopes for that. I think we have over nine thousand courses with green maps and it's ever increasing. And then you get AI strategy with it, which is and I won't get into a strategy with the idea being that it's a smart laser that's always going to be improving. It's a connected technology. We're going to be releasing more and more updates. It's going to be more exciting stuff you can do with it. You get green maps, and you'll get a bunch of software stuff with it, and it's up to your house. You going to interact with it, you know.
00:19:55
Speaker 3: It's it's so interesting you say that about the kind of the progression of the range finder. I mean, I remember my uncle, who you know, at any given time in his prime was anywhere between a three and a ten handicap, and I remember the sky Caddy days, and he would have the sky Caddy on the cart and it would say front and back, And I remember always thinking that was more helpful to him than shooting the pen, because all of a sudden, it gave him thirty or forty yards to play with, because he's not necessarily going to hit an eight iron to one forty every time, but having an idea of what the green looked like, and to your point, shooting the flags sometimes can be a detriment to the player if you have no other information right, because you don't know if it's on the front of the green, in the back of the green, what the wind's doing. So all of a sudden, you're I was messing with the laser last week, and it's incredible. I mean, the fact that it can give you adjusted distances is so cool. I mean, the fact that it's so much smarter than every other laser sal I mean, it just seems like a layup in terms of that next step of what this technology can be.
00:20:57
Speaker 1: Thank you totally agree. Couldn't agree more.
00:21:00
Speaker 2: Let's say somebody, let's say somebody tried arcos uh three four years ago and they had the sensors on there, maybe they maybe they didn't like the field, the grips, what have you, and and we're we're a little bit of a like you said, maybe a better player nitpicky in terms of feel and things of that nature. Fast forward to today, because I feel like you guys are really turn up the heat here with the green scans and the AI caddy and the uh the range smart range finder now and now you have air give you know, what is somebody uh maybe coming into the arcos ecosystem today going to experience relative to you know, let's say they came in three four years ago and tried it out.
00:21:38
Speaker 1: I think what they will experience is probably like I'll say, two fundamental shifts, excuse me. One is the seamlessness of capturing your data is dramatically different, like in the past you had to I mean, just let me just walk you through the pairing process with sensors, which I'm not saying don't do it. It just requires like people are still doing it, it just requires a lot more work. You have to install fourteen sensors on each club, You have to put the clubs in the bag, then you have to put them out one by one and scan them. And that's like a ten to fifteen minute process to get set up. And for a lot of people, like they, it might that just might sound like too much, like because you don't remember to do your golf things till you get to the golf course and by that time you're focused on just playing your around. Now that has gone down to like how long does it take you to pay an AirPod? Like five seconds? It's like gone down to that. So that's a fundamental shift. Like and then similarly, while you're playing with sensors, we recommend you carry your clubs upside down, don't throw them in anger or whatever, like it could trigger false positives, generally won't. But with air, because we don't have anything on clubs, you can filling them, you can do whatever you want to do, like do not you don't need to change your behavior, and so so I think that's one piece that's going to be really fundamentally different. The other is the insights that you're getting, whether it's the smart laser where like now it's more integrated into your golf experience, or like when you go into the app, like what you'll see is we've made a lot of experiences better and in the next couple of months they're going to be like just the insights that you're going to get are going to blow your mind and out. I mean like maybe maybe in a couple months will be chatting about that, but the there's mind blowing insights coming based on the virtue of all the data we've collected, which will and those insights are going to be unbelievably actionable, and they're already are. It's the most actionable insights platform in golf. It's most accessible to every golfer from we have players Marty like you, and like Mason Howell and others like really elite paying athletes that are utilizing this data where we do unbelievably detailed analysis for them, but at the same time we're able to distill those insights and make them super actionable, so you give so you can act upon it, and like that is also very different than would have been three four years ago.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: So how about your relationship with Ping and John k specifically, how did that? How did that come about?
00:24:22
Speaker 1: So I would say, Uh, it's a great relationship. I love John, He's such a great leader. That came about I met him Mary. I don't know if you were there when I first met him. I remember going golfing with him, Uh, and there were a couple other people, and he used Arcos for the first time, and he immediately saw the power of the data. And I think it harkens back to Ping's roots. Ping has always been at the forefront of utilizing data to improve golfer's performance, with the whole I mean fitting concept really essentially being introduced by Pings. So I would say this keep is in keeping with the tradition that Ping has of making sure that Ping is using the latest and greatest of any technology possible as long as it helps golfers play their best. So I think there is a lot of synergy there. There's a lot of autenticity because we truly that's what we do is making sure like everything we're doing, every action we're taking, every decision we're making internally as a product team as a company is advancing or mission of improving the performance of every dedicated golfer at every level. And and so I think we bonded over that shared vision, shared mission. Since then we've become great friends. We have a Actually I'm going to do something cool, which is so every match John, every time John and I play, we play for what I call the Saad Solheim Cup. Also no, no, it's not called Solheim Cup, but we have a little cup. It's an Oakmond Cup, and whoever wins it, they get it. And all rounds from every time we've played are recorded in arcos. So I'm gonna have Claude go in and create like a little storybook. So it's it's really fun. We both look at our data. We're both data centric and John is very like I would say among golf leaders, he is unique in terms of how tech forward he is from a vision standpoint, and I think part of it is also that he was an early investor in Tesla and so he's always been kind of ahead of the curve on that.
00:26:30
Speaker 3: Who's leading this series.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: Currently, I'm I'm leading the series, but he holds the cup right now. Okay, I I gotta get that back.
00:26:38
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to figure out who the next round is.
00:26:40
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll get it.
00:26:41
Speaker 3: We'll get Marty to roll out with a camera. Marty, I wanted to ask you about Arcos. I mean, we've been doing this podcast for a few years now. You say the word Arcos probably every episode in some capacity. I mean how important it is in terms of R and D and what ping does as the research in kind of the you know, the the every day golfer. How impactful has Arcos been for you guys?
00:27:04
Speaker 2: It's just been gold Shane because before having the Arcos data set, and I think we've captured sol three hundred and twenty million shots from from you know, Pink of customers out there playing Pink product using Arcos together, and we can data mind that we're always sitting in conference rooms. Uh is Shane asking the question? Well, I wonder we have this great PGA tour data from shot link. I wonder what our what our actual you know, customers are doing out on the golf course.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: Right.
00:27:32
Speaker 2: So before Arcos, it was we were guestimating or we were having to go recall memories, and each of us have our own cognitive bias that were laying on layering onto that. When I play in pro ams, I observe back. So it's been gold to have that information. Uh, I mean a couple examples there, Shane or uh, you know, I think the thriver concept. What percentage of the time do players use their fairy woods off the te versus the fairway? And this is different for players like us than players who drive the ball to fifty or two hundred yards. There's how much are folks using their highest lofted wedge around the green out of the rough versus the fringe, different versus the bunker, different terrain scenarios. That informs, for example, our groove designs. We want to we wanna optimize our groove designs for more out of the rough conditions, bunker conditions. It changes how we do fitting protocols, how much time we spend green side versus around the green, tons of gapping information, tons of Hey, we can go in and say this SFT players are generally drive the ball only two hundred and twenty five yards. We can do a different face design, we can change our durability standards based off of that. So instead of guessing, now, we have all this data to to kind of back it up. One other very fun pichae that always comes to my mind is that Carston Solheim in the early days of club fitting, he would you would you would you know, get your club fitting specs and on there it said, hey, here's a little stats tracking. Go track whether you miss the ball right or left and if you're if you if you see a pattern there, uh, send your clubs in and we'll adjust your color code. Right, this is the very early days of Hey, there's club fitting, then there's how how do you perform on the golf course? And really that's what Arcos has helped us do is to bring we're gonna we're gonna change our club fitting protocols to better match how you play on the course. But the but the optimal club fitting is never ending. Right the tour club fitting, the truck is there every week, so you're always kind of have this never ending and uh it's been great to have Arcos to help us kind of be at the intersection of those two pieces.
00:29:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's uh it, I think to your point, I mean, getting the information on the everyday golfer has always been something that an OEM would want to attain and the fact that now it exists, I mean what we were two billion shots?
00:29:54
Speaker 1: Is that?
00:29:54
Speaker 3: Is that where we're at right now in terms.
00:29:56
Speaker 4: Of maybe a billion and half we actually had all shots. We have a map of the world over there. Lives happen anytime there's a shot taken. It's like it's like lights going off. So we have also like seven hundred shots a minute right now.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: And this is not even golf.
00:30:12
Speaker 3: N Have you changed anything in your bag or maybe adjusted a gap in your bag because of Arco's data that you probably maybe wouldn't have tried out or wouldn't have ventured into maybe a different wedge. Sure, Martin you you is there is there any like locks maybe you threw in there?
00:30:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you like a few changes. I mean I can go through like fitting like at nauseum here, but like I'll give you two examples for my home course, which is Tamarack Country Club. What data showed me was I use my hybrid on there are two long part threes and that's basically where I'm using my hybrid, and on both those the penal misses on the left when you look at a stroke standpoint, and my hybrid would miss left more often. So I switched to the four iron crossover and now my like so my scoring average on those two holes improved. So that was one specific, core specific change based on data that I made, and it's been like, Actually I showed John Kay that the missing my hybrid more left be is there any other thing? He's like, Oh, we have this new club like this specifically that you won't miss more left with that, and it's been unbelievable. So that's been huge helped me with my club championship and then my wedge gaping. So my I used to have a fifty to fifty four and sixty, now I have based on that gaping, I have a forty eight fifty four and sixty and that works better based on where my pitching wedges and to even those out. Otherwise I was trying to hit a lot of field shots with a fifty degree, and that's generally for somebody who's not who's scoring doesn't depend on living. I'm not practicing my fifty degree like nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock. So like there's an easier way to solve make the gap in a little bit. So it's only maybe you have two swings and maybe just one. Yep, those are two quick examples that come right on the top of my head.
00:32:09
Speaker 2: I love that. So I think there's the big data side Shane and sal which is, okay, let's look at on average what these groupings do. But sal brought uh brought up a couple of examples where he comes into our fitters and we look at his data ahead of time. And this is this is the ultimate. This is where I think every golfer should be is to be able to bring your data in. So start collecting the data. It's lower friction now with air than it's ever been. Start bringing your data into your fitter and using that to inform the process, not not to eliminate the fitting, but it's just one better piece of information that's from your en course. Salas brought up another great example where you know, for a good chunk of the year, sow. You're playing a lot of your golfer your one home golf course, you can optimize your bag for that one golf course, right versus another golfer that's traveling around a little bit more. Might little need a little bit more diversity in their club setup.
00:33:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes it makes total sense. It's kind of like Arcos feels kind of like that therapist for your golf game, you know it just it's kind of like in the background, just consistently helping you out to get a little better, maybe when you don't even need to know you need to get better, Marty, I'm imagining. I mean you mentioned the Thriver earlier, but I mean you basically through Arcos you discovered a whole new golf club that I know you've leaned on heavily over the last few years.
00:33:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think you're you're seeing this on the PGA Tour. You know, all the number of players play, whether it's a a twelve degree Thriver build from US Mini Driver, a type of concept category kind of came to fruition out of that. Another big one for US, Shane is just looking at what percentage of the time golfers are in the fairway versus the rough versus hitting shots off of tee. So again this might be obvious in hindsight, but through the Arcos data, we found that players hit their mid irons a third of the time off of tee on par threes, a third of the time in the fairway, and a third of the time in the rough. This is super valuable because now when we're fitting iron, when we're fitting irons, it's totally okay. Not only is it okay, but we actually encourage you to hit a good number of shots with our seven iron, our AFS fitting club off of tee because yeah, that might be obviously in hindsight now, but without this data, we didn't have this enlightenment that you're hitting that on par three's a good percentage of the time. You're also spending a lot of time from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and seventy yards. Sally, I'd love to get your take on this, because I know you're a golf course architecture history buff, but we see a lot of people hitting their approach shots centered around one forty plus or minus twenty yards or so, what what are your thoughts on that from a golf course architecture standpoint, maybe at the viewpoint of the macro level history of golf course architecture as well.
00:35:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like, I will say the same thing. It was really interesting we were looking at the same thing and looking at the distribution of shots, and it really centers around like doesn't matter what your skill level is, Like at least in the amateur database. It's almost like people are normalizing to like outlay the t's where I'm like, subconsciously is like almost like happening where it's really like one forty eight yards is like where we find the peak, like the wh when you look at the curve and so like we looked at like a twenty. When you look at twenty handicappers scratch golfer, it's kind of the same, Like they're hitting their appro shots. The highest frequency is from one hundred and fifty yards, and like it's like I haven't spent time thinking about how are humans adjusting to the T boxes subconsciously so that that's happening, But it is like true for every skill set, which is wild, like the thing matches up. I mean, I don't know, it's just like from our course architecture standpoint. Maybe, I mean, honestly, it shouldn't be that way, Like somebody who's are twenty handicappers should not be hitting their pro shots from one hundred and fifty on average. They should be a little closer than that. But somehow people are normalizing and maybe part of it is people are just making their tea decisions so that they're hitting their pro shots from the same spot that the longer driver's hitting. And I'll just spend a little bit more time thinking about it. But that's the only thing come up right off the bat. But it is interesting.
00:36:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've kind of come to I think golf courses sell need probably a bit more diversity in the tea boxes, right So I think when the USJ did the play it Forward initiative and and a lot of the courses just didn't have tea boxes forward enough for folks to tee off at. But I always find that there's a there's a lot of different nooks and crannies you can go to and you look at just kind of organic pattern data out on the golf course, and that's the interesting one that folks bunch up around one fifty, but from a upfitting standpoint. This is super important Shane and sal because we want to make sure we don't have too big of yardage gaps in there. And with a modernization of losts. You know, some of our models have seven iron loss that are stronger than previous years. We can't forget about that distribution where golfers play a lot of golf and hit a lot of shots, which is one thirty to one seventy centered around one Sal mentioned. So we've used that to informed our our gapping, our loss and second figuration quite quite strongly.
00:37:36
Speaker 1: Sal.
00:37:37
Speaker 3: Well, congrats on Arcos, Ayer, I mean, I know you guys are fired up for it. I know it's It's obviously a big leap for Arcos. As I mentioned, the lasers awesome for anybody out there that is in the market for a new laser, I would definitely give the Arcos. Is it smart lasers?
00:37:51
Speaker 1: That was that where we're smart?
00:37:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, the smart laser is definitely one to consider. I mean, obviously it gives you so many more data points, which is something we're always trying to attain.
00:38:00
Speaker 1: Sal.
00:38:00
Speaker 3: We gotta get out and play this year, by the way, We've got we got.
00:38:02
Speaker 4: To sleep out and play.
00:38:03
Speaker 3: Uh, get Musso out and uh and we'll go get a round.
00:38:06
Speaker 1: In or something. Let's do it. That'll be fun.
00:38:09
Speaker 2: Uh.
00:38:09
Speaker 1: Sal I appreciate the time. This is the thing.
00:38:11
Speaker 3: Proven Grounds Podcast
