1. Being able to execute the shot
2. Knowing how far the ball will travel
3. Knowing the distance to the target
For my birthday this year I was lucky enough to receive a Shotmiser G500 that is helping substantially with points 2 & 3. I unfortunately haven't had the time to focus on painstakingly measuring my exact distances yet, but I do know them to about 5 yards. Since using the Shotmiser on course my wedge play has significantly improved and I can only see that getting better as time goes on. In fact the Shotmiser is partly responsible for my first ever birdie. We have quite a few two tiered greens and knowing the right distance is critical when you want to land on the bottom or top tier.
On Sunday the pin was on the bottom tier. I'd left myself 78 yards to where I wanted to finish (more on that later) but I had to clear a bunker and not land it on the top tier. Using the Shotmiser I gauged an accurate distance to the slope and hit my wedge into the slope, knowing it would roll back down the hill to the pin without any risk of landing short in the bunker.
The Shotmiser is slightly different to other GPS systems. Firstly, there is no annual subscription but you do pay per course. This is ideal for me who will invariably play 4 or 5 courses regularly. If I travel to another course on the odd occasion I can either buy a strokesaver, play without it or pay a little more than the strokesaver would cost and buy the file for that course. Since I got my Shotmiser, Garmin have released a competitive product G3 or G5 which may be worth a look for those people that tend to play a lot of different courses.
The next main difference, and for me the best feature, is that the Shotmiser tracks you around the course. By this I mean that as you walk to the hole the overhead view of the hole rotates and zooms in. This means that what you see ahead of you on the course is accurately depicted on the screen. Let's go back to my earlier example. I'd hit my tee shot slightly left so the screen showed the bunker directly in front of me and the green and back of green.
Which leads me nicely into point three, the touch screen technology. On the Shotmiser you can tap any point on the screen and it will tell you the distance to that point, I tend to use my tee as a stylus. So I touched the screen just past the bunker, mmm if I didn't hit my Sand Wedge cleanly I could end up in the sand. I touch again at the point on the green where I though the hole was, and a third time for where I felt the slope ended. All of this took about 10 seconds and I knew that I needed to hit a half swing with my gap wedge. If I caught it a little fat I'd still clear the bunker and a little too clean and I had some wriggle room on the slope. The ball hit the slope and rolled back to six foot from the pin and it's not the only time it's helped me with my approach shots over the past two weeks.
If like me you could end up anywhere on the course and need to know accurate distances for a variety of reasons this system is a great help. You can also record each of your shots and then review your round to see your distances and in my case how you zig zagged up the fairway!
So the cons. The sleep mode can be a little annoying as it takes a few seconds to wake up. The stats package could be more detailed something they are working on in an end of season software update. Courses cost £5 each to download and if your club has more than one course they charge you per course rather than as a package, which is a little cheeky. It will take you at least a round to get used to it, but once you are it is extremely simple to use. They do render the whole course so as long as you are not Out of Bounds you can get your bearings. I find this particularly useful as it allows me to record shots on our practice hole and get my distances that way.
Overall I found this to be an excellent product, let down slightly by the cost of the individual course downloads, though you can buy bundles where you get a number of free courses. My course was a little out of date following a series of modifications this year but they have promised to update the file asap. I'm very content with this purchase and would recommend to anyone in the market for a GPS.
But don't just take my word for it the Shotmiser also won the Best on Test Gold Award from Today's Golfer.
To find out more or to buy the Shotmiser G500 visit:
Rating: 88%
No comments:
Post a Comment