Overlooked Ways to Benefit from a Launch Monitor

Mar 02, 2020 A golfer after hitting a drive

Are you using a launch monitor to improve your golf game? If not, you are missing out on a big opportunity to take a step forward on the links. Whether you would like to hit longer drives, more accurate iron shots, better putts—or all of the above—a good launch monitor can help make it happen. With the best launch monitor on your side, you’ll have all the data you need to make informed decisions and wise changes to your technique.

To provide you with all the motivation necessary to get started with a launch monitor, we would like to touch on a few of the key ways in which using this technology can lead you to lower scores.

Dial-in Your Distances

Distance control is one of the key elements of success on the golf course. If you don’t know how far your ball is going to go with each club, it’s pretty tough to hit your targets accurately. Unfortunately, hitting balls on the range won’t tell you too much about your distances since range balls don’t perform like regular golf balls (and it’s hard to see where they land on some practice ranges).

This is where a launch monitor can be so beneficial for your performance. By consistently hitting balls on a launch monitor, you can dial in your distances and know exactly how far to expect the ball to fly with each of the clubs in your bag. You can even write out a detailed chart of what kind of carry each club will provide when hit well. This will remove much of the guesswork that is often involved in picking clubs on the course, and your confidence should grow as a result.

Assembling Your Set of Clubs

This point goes right along with the first one, as it again has to do with managing distances properly. When you build a set of clubs, one of the key factors to consider is distance gapping. That means that you should pay attention to the gaps between the distances that you can hit each of your clubs. So, if you hit your 8-iron 140 yards under normal conditions, and your 7-iron 152 yards, you have a gap of 12 yards between those two clubs. Ideally, you will keep your distance gaps as even as possible between your clubs so there are no huge gaps in your set.

The detailed distance information provided by the best golf launch monitor in the business can help you make important equipment choices. Once you have put together the distance chart we mentioned above, you can look it over and decide if any equipment changes need to be made to even out your gapping and better cover all of the distances you will encounter on the course.

The two most common areas to have distance gapping problems are in your wedges and in the transition from fairway woods/hybrids to long irons. For instance, you might hit your pitching wedge 110 yards and your sand wedge only 85 yards, leaving a tricky 25-yard gap that needs to be filled. Likewise, you might hit your shortest fairway wood 200 yards and your longest iron 175 yards, again leaving you with a 25-yard hole. With some creativity, it’s usually possible to plug these gaps and create a well-rounded set.

Valuable Indoor Practice

It would be great if the weather were always suitable for outdoor practice and rounds of golf. Of course, that is not always the case, especially in some parts of the world. If you find that you need to practice golf indoors for a portion of the year, a launch monitor can help you get the most out of those sessions. Instead of just hitting balls into a net without any idea of how you are performing, a launch monitor can provide you with detailed information so you can work your technique and be better prepared to play good golf when the weather improves.

A golf course covered deep in snow.

For many players in seasonal climates, the early part of the golf season is spent struggling to regain form and find the swing that they had going when last summer ended. These days, there is no reason to waste the start of your golf year working on getting back to whatever it was that was working for you a year ago. Instead of dealing with that frustration, keep your game in condition by using a launch monitor throughout the winter and hit the ground running once the courses open up again.

Another Way to Enjoy the Game

One of the many things launch monitors can do is work in concert with golf simulators to provide players with a new and exciting golf experience. Again, this is a great option to help you get through the bad weather months, although it can be just as fun in the summer when you can’t get a tee time or don’t have enough time for a traditional round.

Golf simulators accomplish two things at the same time, as they let you work on your game while you have a ton of fun with friends. You’ll be seeing the data related to each swing, so you can work on improving your technique, all while virtually playing some of the best courses in the world. Even if you can’t personally get to Pebble Beach, St. Andrews, or some of the world’s other top courses, you can play them digitally with the help of a quality golf simulator.

Never Guess Again

When trying to improve your golf swing without the help of technology, there is a lot of guesswork involved. You might feel like you are making a certain mistake and, without any data to confirm or reject that hypothesis, you just run with it and assume that is actually the problem. Unfortunately, this kind of guesswork can lead golfers to work on fixing problems that weren’t problems in the first place.

A metal question mark sign

There are no such concerns when a launch monitor is used. Rather than guessing, you will have objective data in front of you to review. From there, you can not only make smart changes based on the feedback from your launch monitor but also see how those changes are impacting the flight of the ball. Taking the guesswork out of the equation means you will be more likely to make appropriate changes to your technique, and those changes are more likely to lead to great results on the course.

Foresight Sports Is the Industry Leader

There is no room for doubt in the game of golf. When you choose Foresight Sports for your launch monitor needs, you won’t have to wonder about the accuracy of the data you receive. We are the best in the business at delivering consistent, accurate measurements to golfers. To learn more about our products, please contact us right away.