local driving range adds new toy

[295yards]

One thing that’s really bothered me at our local driving ranges is how do you actually know how far you are hitting the ball? Just as importantly, are you hitting it consistently with whatever club you are using? Sure there are markers out there, and there’s a map posted in every stall with the yardages, but what good are they when one day you’re on the far left stall, the next day on the far right? Are the yardages marked from the center area? Even worse, both the local driving ranges in my area have a hill near the back, just past the 200 yard mark. Although only a couple feet high, there’s no way you can tell where your ball is landing back there,sucks.
Problem solved! Up at Takaya Driving Range(Deep Cove) they have an electronic distance monitor system in place, albeit they are only in 8 or 10 stalls, for now. For $2, you can use it for an hour, and today it was free so I gave it a whirl.
The software is easy to use, and if you’ve used a laptop with a touchpad, you’re good to go. The touchpad is on top of the frame of the LCD monitor, so all you have to do is double click on “New Game”, select which club you are using, and double click on the area you are focusing on…easy!
First, I tried my seven iron. As you can see in the following picture I should have highlighted the 150 yard area,but I screwed up and had 170 selected(no way I can hit a 7 iron 170 yards!). The reason I mention this is because when you hit the ball into the selected area, there’s a round of applause that come out the speaker system,nice! Just keep hitting balls, and every shot is recorded on the screen, you can see the pattern develope . Hopefully you’ll see a cluster, near the target, like this:

Pretty cool,huh? Ball speed, launch angle,distance.
You can also zoom in on your target area,which I did here with my 9 iron:

Next, I decided to see how my new wedge set does. I bought a 52,56,and 60 degree set recently and wanted to see the yardages. I hit 10-12 balls with each wedge and got a readout, and here they are. 52 on the left,56 center and 60 degree on the right.

Gotta like that! I’ve been trying to research the system, but all I know is that it’s called “Hard Drive”. I’ve met the fellow who owns it. He said he’s trying to make a full time business out of it, one range at a time, or at least put one in every stall for now. Hopefully it catches on, and although no matter how well it works, convincing people to use them can be a challenge as I witnessed more than a few times.

That would definitely be cool to see, especially since it is calling the distances back from the yardages. So you can quickly tell if that is off.
But from what I know, the launch and ballspeed is way off. 130mph with a 14* launch angle is close or more than a 200 yard carry.
Also you are launching your 7i 14* and one of your wedges only 13*?

 

[warbirdlover]

I'm hoping the fancy Madison, Wis range gets these.. Vitense? or something like that.

Very impressive.