Founded in Denmark in 2003 by brothers Morten and Fredrik Tscherning, TrackMan Golf utilized the brothers’ background in radar technology to create a device capable of accurately measuring the trajectory of a golf ball. Initially targeted at professional golfers and coaches, the device provided an innovative way to improve golfers’ understanding of ball flight and swing dynamics. It’s now become so commonplace on tour, there are running Twitter threads of players carrying their Trackman tablets by hand through airports across the US. From these roots, TrackMan Golf transitioned to the consumer market, leveraging the power of radar technology to create home golf simulators. These high-tech systems have revolutionized golf practice and play, offering accurate metrics on ball flight and swing dynamics in a virtual environment. They can be used outdoors or indoors to track carry distance, spin rates, and hundreds of other metrics per swing. Currently the only drawback comes at checkout – each simulator currently comes with a steep price tag, with systems starting around $21,000 and scaling up based on customization and added features.
The potential of this market is immense as golf simulators offer several advantages. They offer a convenient way to practice, analyze performance, and even compete with friends in virtual courses from all over the world. This past winter, I joined a club in downtown Boston called Five Iron Golf that had Trackman simulators available to members. I’ve played 30+ times and can confidently say I have never had my yardages and overall game so dialed in this early in the year while living in New England. While there is snow on the ground, there is currently no better way to ensure a full practice routine is maintained over the winter months. Plus, in major cities access to full length driving ranges are an impossibility that can only be thwarted by a 30+ minute ride in the car. In essence, they provide a fully-featured golf training and practice experience while only requiring a quarter of the time to be spent.
TrackMan has taken their technology a step further by leveraging internet connectivity to introduce virtual competition. This allows golfers to compete in tournaments or join leagues without needing to be physically present at the same location, adding a social and competitive element to the mix. Each player signs up on their own trackman, and over the course of each week everyone plays the same course from the same set of tees in the same conditions. With one attempt per tournament, every shot counts (shoutout Mark Broadie aka Mr. Strokes Gained). Each player plays on their own and after their round is submitted, the worldwide leaderboard is shown to see where their card stacks up. It’s a nice way to introduce competition on a system that has a very isolated feel to it – everything you are doing is really only with the individual console that is being used. I think the feeling to using the Trackman is similar to using a Playstation 2 or Gamecube back in the early 2000s begging the question in my mind of “What if these were all actively connected?” I don’t mean this in the way they currently stand. As it stands today, it’s great to feel a bit of competition in each weekly tournament but there is a huge market opportunity smacking us in the face that is not yet being addressed…
This transition parallels the evolution we see in the video game market. The global video game industry has seen exponential growth in the past decades, with revenues surpassing $150 billion in 2020. Within this market, sports video games like the “PGA Tour 2K” series have gained popularity providing a realistic golfing experience, albeit one played with a controller and not a club, complete with online features that enable global competition. Players are connected with one another via headsets able to communicate in live time throughout each round. Course designer mechanics have allowed the creation of thousands of new tracks for everyone to access in seconds – something that Trackman could benefit from. These include mock-ups of real life courses ranging from someone’s local muni to the wood paneled halls of TCC down the road in Brookline. This is yet another classic example of putting the power of the internet to good use. Finally, Trackman simulators will explode in popularity if they find a way to feel more connected. This starts by adding a voice chat feature to play with friends. Add in a video monitor to provide video chats and a “playing-through” box in the corner of the screen to see what shot your friend is making in live time. Adding a few more of these seemingly nuanced features will drastically increase rounds played on the Trackman and expand the target demographic of users from mainly hard-core golf nuts to the most casual golf fan that wants to hang with their buddies on the weekends that live multiple zip codes away.
The key to understanding the future of golf simulators and the potential expansion of this market lies in a principle known as Moore’s Law. Coined by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, Moore’s Law predicts that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. This exponential increase in processing power has led to significant reductions in technology costs. Where we stand today, the price of top golf simulators is not accessible for the average person. Only a very small fraction of the population can cover the two main hurdles: 1) having $20,000+ to punt on a tablet that guesses how far the shot you just hit into a wall would have traveled if you were outside and 2) having a room in their house large enough to swing a club in without breaking something (most of the time). The latter issue can be worked around as room use-cases can, and will be, repurposed once the former issue is corrected.
Moore’s Law has been at the heart of several major technological revolutions. It played a pivotal role in the internet revolution of the ’90s and 2000s, as falling costs for computing power made personal computers affordable to the masses. An article in the MIT Technology Review from 2000(!) puts this into context, “The effect of Moore’s Law on daily life is obvious. It is why today’s $3,000 personal computer will cost $1,500 next year and be obsolete the year after.” As we have the benefit of hindsight going one step further identifies that today smartphones that fit in our pocket can be bought for less than $100. Access to the internet in the US is widespread and personal computers can be purchased by almost everyone in the country, regardless of socioeconomic status. This paved the way for widespread internet use and the birth of countless online services.
Similarly to the personal computer revolution the home video game console market saw a revolution in the 2000s and 2010s due to Moore’s Law. As technology became cheaper and more powerful, consoles could offer high-quality graphics and complex gameplay at an affordable price, making them commonplace in households worldwide. Being born in the late ‘90s as I was allowed for an interesting childhood. Growing up my first video game console was the Gameboy, then the Gamecube, and finally the Xbox 360. The first two consoles had 0 connectivity to the internet, so if you wanted to play against someone they had to be physically next to you. The 360 opened my eyes to how massive the internet truly was. No longer did it matter if you were the best out of your friends at school at any given game, now you were ranked and directly competing with tens of millions of players around the world. This rose the level of skill and fun for players as friends could team up against random players globally to see if their game could really stack up.
As we look to the future, it’s reasonable to expect that Moore’s Law will continue to impact the golf simulator market. As the technology becomes more accessible and affordable, more golfers will have the opportunity to take advantage of the benefits of virtual golf practice and competition. Imagine the price of a Trackman dropping to $500 in the next 10 years. We have already seen a much lower level performance peer release at $599 in the Garmin Approach R10. $599 is a very reasonable price for most golfers (as the demographic tends to skew upward regarding income) and performance is only going to increase. This could create an online video game market for golf simulators, connecting players globally and democratizing the sport in unprecedented ways. Instead of only the wealthiest of kids growing up with access to a simulator to train on even a public high school could afford to buy one for a few hundred dollars introducing thousands more into the game. By connecting them all together in live time, introducing real time audio and video, and granting customizable course creation the golf simulator market will grow exponentially.
We are on the eve of the next revolution in golf, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.
mike murphy 