Automatic shot detection and analysis to help lower that handicap
TomTom has officially announced the Golfer 2, the golf watch successor to the almost perfect Golfer launched last year.
Along with a TomTom Spark inspired design makeover there’s a couple of pretty big features on board that golfers who want to make improvements are going to like a lot.
Essential reading: The best golf wearables
At its heart this is still a GPS watch like its predecessor with key features like the ability to map distances to the front / middle / back of the green. It’s also one of the few watches out there that can give you detailed information on hazards and it also comes with a digital scorecard.
There’s Bluetooth onboard to update the watch daily with a database of 40,000 golf courses. Battery life in GPS mode is 11 hours, so you get an extra hour of tracking over the original as well.
Joining the GPS sensor is an accelerometer and a gyroscope, so when you get to the course and tee off, you should a feel a little vibration to show that the shot is registered. You’re free to take practice swings and it won’t register those as shots as scores are recorded automatically.
In the clubhouse
The other side of the Golfer 2 is the analysis after the round. That means heading to the TomTom MySports app you can zoom into different holes on the course and see shot patterns and where you’ve dropped shots.
It also supports shot dispersion, so if you’ve played a hole multiple times, you can try to understand why you’re hooking too much to the left and hopefully improve your handicap and get a few shots back.
Automatic shot detection is not new. The Microsoft Band 2 recently added the feature to its armour recently, although we weren’t exactly blown away by its credentials as a golf watch.
“I’m not here today to talk about the competition,” says Tom Brown, UK vice president of at TomTom. “There are a host of products that have tried things like auto shot detection and they’ve tried in a more complex way. The accuracy is quite low. We’ve kept it very simple. We’ve allowed you to take as many shots as you want.”
Future updates
One of the features the Golfer 2 lacks, much like the Spark running watch is smartwatch notification support. According to Andy Clayton, category sales manager at TomTom, it’s not a feature that’s in demand.
“Our consumer research told us that people didn’t want that,” Clayton tells us.
“What they wanted when they’re out on the golf course is to forget about work and get away from it. We could put it on tomorrow if we wanted to.”
Clayton wouldn’t comment on future software plans but does believe TomTom could do more with the new sensors. “With the gyroscope, you only have to look at some of the swing analytics that are currently being done,” says Clayton. “That could be a direction. But we haven’t quite defined the roadmap just yet.”
The Golfer 2 is launching in May for £199.99. There’s no details on a US price, but you can keep an eye on more info when it’s available over on the TomTom website.
