The bustling winds of the Old Course at St. Andrews. The dry, thin air at Troon North in the Phoenix desert. The humid air and steady breezes from the nearby ocean at THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. The thin mountain air at Keystone Resort in Colorado where the ball seems to never want to fall out of the sky.
Four different golf destinations that offer an incredible experience, and four completely different conditions for your ball flight. So how do you prepare for these changing conditions? Data, that’s how. We now live in a day and age where technological advances can give us all of the information we could ever possibly want for our golf game.
When these devices first hit the market, they featured a $20,000+ price point which made it a luxury rather than a staple. Luckily for us, the team at FlightScope has created multiple products at a significantly lower price point with the Mevo at $499 MSRP, and the Mevo+ at $1,999 MRRP giving you the ability to determine how much data you need for your daily practice sessions at an affordable rate.
Understanding the data
The use of a personal launch monitor gives you a plethora of information for your game, and all this data can be incredibly useful for understanding your swing and your ball flight. This data can be used to help you tweak your swing, and it can also be used to help you tinker and figure out how to hit different shots in varying conditions.
If you’ve ever used a launch monitor, you know there are a few items that us golfers can’t help but obsess over like club speed, ball speed, spin rate, carry distance, vertical launch, apex height, flight time, and smash factor. Seriously, is there any cooler sounding golf term than smash factor?!
All these readings can be found on the Mevo for you, and the Mevo+ goes several steps further and includes all eight of those readings plus spin axis, spin loft, angle of attack, launch direction, roll distance, total distance, lateral landing, shot dispersion, and the shot type. You also can use the Mevo+ to improve your putting with readings on the launch speed, total distance, and ball direction on your putts.
To understand what these all mean, we’ve defined several of these key terms for you:
- Club Speed: The speed in MPH of the clubhead just prior to impact with the ball.
- Ball Speed: This is the speed of the ball right after impact. The higher your ball speed, the longer you will hit it.
- Smash Factor: Like we said…this is our favorite term! The smash factor is simply the ball speed/ divided by the clubhead speed. This is a tool to help you determine the efficiency of your swing which generally comes from a solid strike and optimizing the club’s delivery to the ball. The higher the smash factor, the better.
- Spin Rate: This is the revolutions of the golf ball per minute (rpm) immediately after impact. The spin rate can be very telling for your ball flight, and optimizing this for certain conditions can be extremely valuable when traveling.
- Carry Distance: This one is self-explanatory and shows you the distance the ball has traveled in the air.
- Roll Distance: The amount of yardage the ball rolls once it hits the ground.
- Total Distance: Carry distance and roll distance combined.
- Vertical Launch: This is the measurement of the angle of the launch of the ball in relation to the slope of the ground.
- Apex Height: This is the peak height the ball reaches during flight.
- Flight Time: This is a measurement of how long your ball stays in the air.
- Spin Axis: Combines both of the back spin and the side spin to show you if the ball is flying left or right off the clubface.
- Angle of Attack: The angle that your club face is at when the club approaches impact with the ball. For example, a negative number here with a driver can mean you are hitting down on the ball too much which would lead to a higher spin rate, more of a “ballooning effect” to your tee shot, and shorter drives.
- Spin Loft: This is the difference between the angle of attack and the dynamic loft.
- Launch Direction: The direction of the golf ball off of the face of the club at impact.
- Lateral Landing: The distance between where the ball lands and your target line.
- Shot Dispersion: A grouping of the landing positions of shots with a selected club showing you the distance and direction deviations of that cluster of shots.
- Shot Type: Allows you to adjust the type of swing from normal to pitch/chip/flop.
How to use the data to help you travel well
Understanding how to use the data to help you prepare your game for travel can be a fun exercise to mess around with on the driving range. For example, learning how to manipulate your swing to adjust the numbers for different playing conditions will help make you a more consistent golfer, and you’ll quickly realize adjusting your swing to impact one of these numbers will likely change several of them, so they all work in conjunction together to determine where your ball goes.
One great example of this would be if you were preparing for a trip to a place like Scotland, Ireland, Texas, Florida, the Caribbean, or anywhere where you know that wind is going to be a factor. As you hit some balls and figure out your normal swing’s numbers, you may find that you’re hitting the ball at an exceptionally high apex height with a high spin rate and long flight time. This may be great for your home course, but it may not play so well in one of these suggested environments. It would be time well spent to start messing around with how to hit a knockdown shot to control your trajectory a bit more. This will likely lower all the numbers we just mentioned, but a more piercing and consistent ball flight in windy conditions will almost assuredly lead to lower scores and a better experience on your next trip in those windy conditions.
Recommendation
We are so fortunate to live in a time where this data exists in such an affordable and portable solution. FlightScope has created the Mevo+ (MSRP $1,999) and the Mevo (MSRP $499) that are affordably priced for all, and invaluable with how it can assist with your game.
If you haven’t had a chance to use one yet, then try and add it to your list of priorities as there is nothing better than watching a little tweak here or a shift of your grip there help you pick up 1-2 MPH on your swing speed which undoubtedly will add distance to your drive.