How Apple Watch helped me hit a hole-in-one on the golf course

It's only been a couple of years since I started golfing for more than an annual outing with my brother. Most of the time, I have relied on a Garmin watch paired with golf club sensors. That has been quite useful in helping guide me with club selection as I learned more about the game of golf and my performance with my clubs.

Apple introduced its high-frequency motion API with the Apple Watch Series 8 and Watch Ultra with the watchOS 10 release in 2022, but it wasn't until a few months ago that I discovered the potential benefits of this API thanks in part to an Apple article on golfing with an Apple Watch and a discussion with an Apple PR contact.

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To take advantage of the API that Apple opened up, developers needed to create apps to use the data from the sensors. The timing of my personal discovery of the API and Golfshot's latest application features was perfect since Golfshot now provides a Swing ID on-range experience that lets you wear your Apple Watch on the driving range, or even in your backyard with plastic practice balls, to evaluate various ways to improve your shot for each club in your golf bag.

The high-frequency motion API connects to the three-axis gyroscope and the accelerometer to detect rapid changes in velocity and acceleration. The gyroscope is capable of capturing angular velocity at 4,000 degrees per second while the accelerometer has a maximum sample rate of 800 Hz. The previous sample rate was 100 Hz so providing 800 samples per second significantly increases the fine definition of movement that can be captured and analyzed.

Tap on Swing ID in the Golfshot app after you have spent time on the range or the course and then simply tap on one of your clubs to see an amazing amount of data. Golfshot provides precise metrics for your tempo, rhythm, hand speed, backswing arc, transition, wrist path, wrist rotation, and wrist close rate. Plots where you are compared to targets are shown and tapping on the information icon highlights specific guidance on how to improve these various elements in your own game.

With the support for range or swing practice, I have used Golf Shot and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 to try the different techniques provided in the guidance to change up my shot for different clubs. This is the kind of guidance people pay coaches for and the Apple Watch, along with a compatible application, can aid you if you want to try improving your game by yourself. That said, I benefited greatly with my driver thanks to guidance from lessons I took from a coach in 2022 so it's nice to have multiple options to improve an extremely complex activity.

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In the past, I sliced a large majority of my shots so I've been using the Apple Watch and Golfshot's practice mode to help straighten things out. On the third hole of an August round, I hit a perfectly straight ball with my beloved 7 iron and it traveled down the fairway landed just in front of the green, and rolled right up a slight hill and into the hole for my first ever hole-in-one. I'm sure luck had plenty to do with actually hitting it down 120-plus yards into the hole, but the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Golfshot have definitely improved the confidence I have in my golf game so I'll give some credit there too.

Apple's high-frequency motion API is valuable for golf, but other activities could benefit from the specific movements of the gyroscope and accelerometer. Racket sports, like pickleball, tennis, or badminton, may benefit from this capability when one hand is used to hold and swing the racket. I've been playing pickleball since the 80s and would love to have my Apple Watch help me with wrist and ball striking angles that can help me strike better.