Is a SkyTrak+ launch monitor on your Christmas list?
Better check your naughty or nice status. Santa could have some tough decisions to make.
“We’re running a little short because we’ve sold way more than we forecasted for the holiday season,” says Nick Clearwater, GOLFTEC’s Vice-President of Instruction and one of the world’s top swing coaches.
“Our integrations into our facilities have slowed down so hopefully things are evening out on the inventory side. We know a lot of golfers are hoping a SkyTrak+ winds up under the Christmas tree.”
Can’t really blame them.
The second-generation SkyTrak+ features a dual Doppler radar system packed with machine-learning algorithms that now deliver clubhead speed, club path, face angle and smash factor data. The unit’s on-board camera system also got an upgrade for even better ball-tracking accuracy.
Did we mention it remains affordable? SkyTrak+ comes with a performance level that rivals launch monitors at premium prices.
“Our goal is to bring the ability to practice, play and compete to golfers everywhere. We think SkyTrak+ will be a game changer,” says SkyTrak CEO,Jeff Foster.
Did you know Santa has a history with SkyTrak?
The Original
Launched more than a decade ago, the $1,995 commercial-quality, consumer-focused product stunned the launch monitor market with its slate of performance features that rivaled units five to 10 times its price.
No wonder the original SkyTrak has sold more than 70,000 units worldwide.
“Consumers like it because it’s reliable, repeatable and every time you turn it on the thing just works,” Clearwater says. “There are a bunch of reasons it’s the best-selling launch monitor ever made but when it first came out you just couldn’t get that level of quality for the price. Honestly, two grand was always a steal for the original.”
GOLFTEC Acquires SkyTrak
This deal was kind of a head-scratcher when it was announced in August 2022. How would these two well-known and respected brands integrate to benefit each other?
“With this acquisition, we’re combining two companies that understand how data and personalized coaching can truly accelerate a person’s journey to better golf,” Joe Assell, GOLFTEC’s Co-founder and CEO, said at the time. “We’re excited about delivering an improvement experience that goes beyond the traditional GOLFTEC Training Bay and helps people improve with GOLFTEC anywhere.”
That’s all fine and good but something still didn’t add up.
Despite record sales in 2021 and a long list of industry awards and brand accolades, SkyTrak was over a decade old. The software? Even older.
Cue the Second Generation
Still shots from Feb 2023 Commercial Shoot for ST+
SkyTrak+ launched in May 2023.
Launch monitor chat rooms lit up about the second-generation product’s combined dual Doppler radar system and improved camera system for ball data.
But the upgrades didn’t end there.
Added to SkyTrak+ functionality:
- Camera system upgrade also improved outdoor performance off mats.
- New processor provided faster shot-to-show function.
- 40% larger hitting area.
- Access to over 100,000 courses using third-party course software companies.
- Updated Wi-Fi capabilities, USB-C charging and processor upgrade to integrate with more mobile devices and PCs. (This was a big one.)
- Indoors or outdoors still no special golf balls or club face fiducials (stickers) required – as long as you hit off a mat.
Price Increase Justified
Upgrading the internals meant a substantial price hike. After more than a decade, that was kind of expected.
While a 33-percent rise may seem inordinately high to some, the value-added proposition from an enhanced SkyTrak+ user experience helped justify the cost increase.
“What we have now is a $2,995 device that gets you really good fidelity of the golf ball relative to GC Quad,” Clearwater explains. “We did a couple of independent studies to compare the ball data and those show that ours is pretty much indiscernible on quality between the two devices.
“For us to be able to offer a good, accurate, dependable product at that price versus what you get at the top end with TrackMan outdoors or Foresight inside makes SkyTrak+ a great option for consumers who don’t want to spend $20,000 or more on a launch monitor.”
Putting SkyTrak+ to the Test
Indoor/Outdoor Photoshoot for SkyTrak+
GOLFTEC began internal testing of SkyTrak+ at some of its facilities in February.
Behind the scenes, the company’s teaching quality team had collaborated with SkyTrak engineers on software applications tailored specifically to GOLFTEC coaches. Everyone involved wanted feedback.
The survey results were telling.
More than seven out of 10 coaches “strongly preferred” SkyTrak+ over what they’d been using.
“A lot of that was driven by the hardware because it’s really good but the software capability and all the things that can be done to make custom environments for people while sharing data back and forth between our systems is pretty powerful integration,” Clearwater says.
Taking SkyTrak+ LIVE
GOLFTEC couldn’t ignore the obvious.
SkyTrak+ was designed and marketed to be a consumer-specific launch monitor (just like the original SkyTrak) but bringing it in-house to GOLFTEC locations was practical on multiple levels.
Especially as a marketing initiative.
That the worldwide leader in golf instruction could trust an affordable consumer launch monitor—even one it now owned—to be the performance conduit between coaches and students at its facilities was a strong validation of the quality of the product and the accuracy of the data.
“We could have kept rolling right along with our Foresight GC2s in our hitting bays. We’d been using those products forever,” Clearwater says. “We came to realize that if it was just like GC2, why not make the change? If people who teach two million lessons a year trust SkyTrak+ it has to be pretty good.”
Ownership Has Its Advantages
Acquiring SkyTrak meant GOLFTEC also took ownership of the software. What that meant was the creation of unique eco-systems to help its coaches make the learning environment more fun for students.
“Something simple like putting objects up and in the way to practice a specific skill—curving a ball around a tree or flighting shots underneath a branch—that kind of freedom was never available to us in the past,” says Clearwater.
“Now that we have vertical integration of a really good launch monitor and the software is ours, we can do a lot of cool things.”
Other cool things included a “Shot Optimizer” feature. It uses red and green boxes to indicate when shots are struck at optimum range levels.
“Shot Score” was another neat feature. Bank enough shots with a specific club and SkyTrak+ provides a performance assessment.
There’s also a wedge matrix, practice randomizer, bag mapping and a skills assessment.
“The software development team is really the power we have over some competition,” Clearwater says. “We have seven golf teachers here with me and all they do is teach golf on LMs. We have people dedicated to this on the SkyTrak side.
“Between the two groups coming together with all that shared brain power, we have some pretty robust and aggressive plans to make software so compelling it will resonate with consumers.”
Unpacking Improvement Over Time
SkyTrak’s ability to build custom environments for people to play and practice on and share data back and forth seamlessly between its systems is a powerful integration tool for consumers and coaches.
And there’s room for it to grow.
Up next for the SkyTrak research team is to address improvement over time, something Clearwater says has not been very well displayed or thought out in the launch monitor category.
“If you finish a session on Foresight or TrackMan, you get a data table of all the shots you hit but you might not know what to do with that data without a lot of expertise or moving that spreadsheet into an Excel spreadsheet and trying to look for standard deviations or patterns of shots you hit.
“We’re going to automate that experience with SkyTrak+ so at the end of your session you get that same list of shots but we’re going to tell you what they mean to you. And depending on what type of golfer you are or the type of golfer you want to be, we want to add this as a golf education piece and help people get better.”
Wrapping Up (SkyTrak+)
GOLFTEC is doing its best to keep up with the SkyTrak+ holiday demand.
“We have golf teachers over at our warehouse packaging up boxes and sending them out. It’s been pretty crazy the last six weeks or so,” laughs Clearwater.
That loops back to price.
Before departing for his next lesson appointment, the award-winning swing coach offered one final thought on SkyTrak+.
“No launch monitor is perfect at any price point. Including ours. But if you’re a coach who values the data and hasn’t felt like he or she has had the opportunity because you’ve been priced out of a product that covers it all, that’s not the case any longer.
“If you’re a consumer using it at home, SkyTrak+ is everything you want. It’s reliable, affordable and gives you great fidelity of accuracy of data. As a company, the goal is simple: take those three points and point people towards better.”
Editor’s Note: This article was written in partnership with SkyTrak.
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