William L. Coney Blog: TaylorMade Partners with Samsung to Power myRoundPro Shot Tracking App

Ever get a sense of déjà vu when it comes to golf equipment? From Bertha is back, to every Anser style putter ever, and even the recent uptick in driving iron releases; gear comes and goes, and then eventually comes back again. It’s as cyclical as the seasons.

While myRoundPro has remained available post-Band on both Android and iOS devices, it’s this new and exclusive wearable version that has our attention. The app is available for the Samsung Gear S3 SmartWatch and the Gear Fit 2 Pro fitness tracker.

So what does myRoundPro do?

First up it serves as a golf GPS. We all know how golf GPS systems work. Satellites that track where you are on the golf course and give your yardages to the front middle and back of the green. Many also tell you how far you hit your last shot.

On top of what most GPS apps offer, myRoundPro also allows for shot tagging – and that’s what makes the wearable integration interesting. After hitting your shot, you let the watch know what club you hit. Once the round is over, it can churn that data into an impressive array of stats. It knows where you miss, your average distances, and how many putts you've made. Finally, it can aggregate all of your round data in into a Strokes Gained value. We're not sure everyone fully understands Strokes Gained methodology yet, but we believe it’s a critical metric for evaluating and understanding performance on the golf course.

The Watch Advantage

Using GPS apps on the phone has proven to be a real battery drainer. Getting through the 4+ hours needed to complete a round can sometimes be a challenge. What’s more, it’s easy to forget to pull your phone out of your pocket to tag every shot. While shots can be tagged after the round, it’s not the most accurate way of tracking your round.

With a wearable, your input device is already on your wrist, and it's not draining your phone's battery. We haven't tested the app on the course yet, but from playing about with a Samsung S3 SmartWatch in-store, it seems that the revolving bezel design will make the system significantly more user-friendly in comparison to other smart wearables we’ve tried. On the downside, tagging every shot remains a manual process. Speaking as a guy who doesn’t always remember to zip my fly, forgetting to tag is going to happen – and probably often. It’s one of the inherent problems with using devices without shot detection technology to track your round.

Are Samsung and Android the Right Platforms?

While the integration appears excellent, it’s fair to wonder if TaylorMade has again chosen the wrong platform for its app.

21.1 million SmartWatches were sold globally in 2016. 11.6 million of those were Apple. That’s a solid 63% of the market. Samsung is number 2 with 2.4 million units sold and 11.4% market share. The Samsung Gear S3 wasn’t launched until the middle of November in 2016, so only a small portion of the 2.4 million Samsung wearables sold are compatible with the myRoundPro app.

When you consider that there are an estimated 24 million golfers in the US and around 60 million globally, the odds of a golfer owning a Samsung SmartWatch are relatively slim, and it’s unlikely many will buy the hardware just to get the most out of myRoundPro.

Figures for the iOS App Store aren't easy to get hold of, but the myRoundPro app has been downloaded 5000 times from the Google Play store. While we can’t tell you how many times the Gear app has been downloaded, we can’t imagine it to be anywhere near that number. In all likelihood, the vast majority of people using it on their Samsung Gear devices work for one of the two companies.

It’s early in the release cycle, but for comparison, the free Motocaddy GPS app has been downloaded 10,000 times since launching in the summer, while the market leading Swing by Swing and GolfLogix apps have been downloaded over 1 million times. TaylorMade is entering an established and crowded market with an abundance of strong competition, and it’s doing so without sensor technology, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity.

Given the difficulties experienced on the Android platform by users of Arccos and other hardware-integrated golf apps, leveraging the Samsung/Android combination could make sense. While it’s likely that the Samsung/TaylorMade partnership is a marriage of convenience, it’s certainly possible TaylorMade believes it can offer Android users the stable and robust shot tracking application that others, to date, haven’t.

Also working in TaylorMade’s favor is the fact that Android is the number one mobile operating system in units sold and apps downloaded. Still, Apple's iOS store generates more revenue for the app developers and tends to be the first port of call for any new app.

No doubt an Apple Watch integrated app would have brought the product to more golfers faster, but we guess that Samsung paid for the development of the myRoundPro app as a way of securing a big name stand-alone golf app for their Tizen powered smartwatches. At the very least they likely contributed towards the development of the app for its platform.

What’s In It For TaylorMade?

It’s reasonable to assume that TaylorMade isn't offering up all of this powerful software from the goodness of its heart – and there’s a reason why it has persisted despite the demise of the Microsoft Band.

Everyone is in the big data business right now, and golf companies are no exception. From the moment that you download the app, TaylorMade is gathering information about you. From simple information, such as does the user have an iPhone or an Android device, to asking your handicap along with a series of multiple-choice questions about the equipment you are currently using, myRoundPro is learning what it can about you. And that's before you've hit your first shot.

By knowing how far you hit each club and knowing how you tend to miss hit your drives, TaylorMade’s systems will start to get an idea what your course management is like, whether or not you hit fairways and greens. They’ll know how often you short-side yourself, and on average how many putts you take per round. And while all this data will be used to help you understand your game, you can bet your bottom dollar that TaylorMade will be using it to target sales.

Just picture this - you’ve just gone out and shot an 80. You were bombing it off the tee, you were hitting the heart of every green. But the flatstick let you down, and you found yourself three putting 4 greens. By the time you’ve bellied up to the bar, there will be an email in your inbox, extolling the virtues of the latest Spider putter. It's super forgiving; it rolls end over end, it will guarantee you hole more putts. Buy now.

If you’ve missed five fairways to the left, and TaylorMade knows you’ve got the latest M1 driver, you might receive a bespoke email suggesting you move the weight to the toe or adjust the hosel setting. What if you’re using a Callaway driver? Perhaps TaylorMade will send you an email recommending you try the latest M1 or M2. The possibilities for direct marketing when the golfer is at their most vulnerable are endless.

We do applaud TaylorMade for launching this software, even if it's not for totally altruistic means. It does, if the golfer is serious enough, put the power of their stats into their own hands/wrists/smartphone for free. These stats can provide a golfer with a genuine way to analyze and improve his game.

The execution of the software isn't amazing, and there is no good reason for there not to be an Apple Watch version of the software, so any reasons are likely commercial ones. We can't see how the experience will improve too much until TaylorMade starts including some tech in the clubs themselves (as Cobra has done through its Arccos partnership). It's not too much of a stretch to think that TaylorMade clubs may come with built-in NFC tags in the near future. The less user error and more automated these systems become, the more people will use them, and in theory, the better we all get at this stupid game.