The Green Fee 3 or 4 months ago I walked into the Dallas golf show hoping to walk out with some new irons and golf balls. Instead I ran into a company who was displaying their new practice device. The company was CTRL golf. After a visit to their HQ I got even more excited for what the product can be.
The Start
Most great ideas start with a solution to a problem a lot of us dont realize is even an issue. The issue the founder Ian, was finding was that people were getting sick using Virtual Reality. One of the things that caused this motion sickness was the disconnect between your arms and the arms on the screen. He wanted to create a sleeve that helped with this. He could put some sensors in an arm band and the VR would pick up exactly where your arms were. Well after he created his prototype his instructors at Texas A&M told him to table the prototype and start figuring out if there was actually a market for the product. After doing some market research he learned that there just wasnt any money in the VR game right now. He decided to do a pivot and use this sleeve and sensor for a weight training. He quickly learned there wasnt any money in that either. Then like all good stories he met a guy who knew a guy. Thats where the pivot to golf happened. The guy who the other guy knew was Nick. Nick was enrolled at Sam Houston St as part of their PGA Certification program and he was interested in the prototype and what it could do for the world of golf instruction. The first prototype was a bulky machine that “looked like a bomb was strapped to my arm”. When Nick had some free time during his internship he would hook up the prototype and start swinging. It was big and bulky but it was the start. Now as you can imagine after a few shots the soldering on those wires started to break off causing some other issues
“One day Ian was programming the machine while I hit some shots. I looked down and saw a little plume of smoke.” Nick said “It was almost like a cartoon”
It was around that time they decided to go fully wireless. With bluetooth tech getting smaller and smaller they knew that was the way to go. With the help of a programming team and lots of different prototypes they could get all the tech they wanted into smaller sensors and create the product they had always wanted.
The product
So when talking about CTRL there are 2 different things to know. There is a software and a hardware component. Thje first thing to talk about is the hardware. The actual sensors are small probably a couple of inches in length. They attach to a compression type arm sleeve. The sensors pop right into the 2 slots. Now my biggest concern was that the sleeve would get hot. In Texas especially if it makes a golfer hotter than the sun already does I’m out. Granted we were indoors but it didnt feel uncomfortable. The other concern I had was for the sensors to get hot and after about 30 minutes of hitting balls it didnt. I was happy with the hardware in terms of actual usage.
The most important aspect of CTRL though in my opinion is the software. It works through your phone so there is an app to download but the app was pretty intuitive. The thing the CTRL software does is help you learn your good swing. What a good swing feels like to me is different that what feels good for you. Thats the goal of the app. To get what is a good swing to you ingrained. When you open the app and get it synced you create a profile. When you create the profile you hit 10 good shots. The sensors read your tempo and wrist angle, and club path. If you mark it as a good swing it saves it. The app learns what a good swing for you. From then on you can start a practice session. After every shot the app will actually talk to you. It will tell you if something was different from your good baseline shots. It is actually pretty receptive. There were multiple swings where I would go “that was awful” and the app would tell me my tempo was off and my path was super steep.
My thoughts
I think its an awesome concept. CTRL would be the first to admit that it isnt quite ready for market but its damn close. I hot about 30 shots and it missed 2. Hell Trackman misses some occasionally. The path and club face reading could use a little bit of work. A few shots I tried to slam the club closed came out as square but I knew it was shut just based on how the ball hit the net. I do think this could change the way individuals look at their game. Not all of us know what we are looking at when we look at our swings but we do know if the ball was a good shot or bad. We know if the ball flew how we wanted. To have an app and some sensors that can tell us if our latest swing matched what we consider good is a game changer. I cant wait to see the product fully finished and ready to go to retail.
For more info head on over to ctrl.golf.