You are 125 yards from the green. What club are you going to hit? Based on experience, you might pull out a 9 iron. But do you truly know your yardage throughout all the clubs you own and take to the course? Let’s talk about bag mapping today.
Bag Mapping One Club at a Time
I first learned of bag mapping when I was playing on my SkyTrak launch monitor. You have it in your head that each golf club should have about a 10 yard difference between one and the next. So you tell yourself that you hit your 8 iron 135 yards so your 7 iron must go 145 yards and on and on. But is that the average distance you get with your 7 iron? Without bag mapping, you may remember certain distances you hit certain clubs but are they consistent? And that is exactly what I found out. More than that I found out about my inconsistency when striking the golf ball.
GSPro Beta Bag Mapping
So just the other day, GSPro released a beta version which has bag mapping. It allows you to put the specific clubs in your bag (ie a 4 hybrid instead of 4 iron) but it is set up with default yardages. To get into the bag mapping with GSPro beta, simply click on Settings in the upper right hand corner once you are logged in. Let me back up a bit. I currently use the Bushnell Launch Pro as a launch monitor. As of this time, BLP does have an open api that works with GSPro. GSPro is $250 per year at the time of this writing. The original SkyTrak also lets you use GSPro with that same yearly fee. Having said that, other launch monitors may work with GSPro. As of the time of this writing, SkyTrak+ does not work with GSPro.
GSPro
If you are not familiar with GSPro, it is an excellent golf simulator allowing you to play approximately 400 courses as of today. The number of courses are increasing each week. It is not TGC2019 with its 100,000+ courses which may include a number local golf courses but time, sweat, and continuing development are going into making sure GSPro is a top notch product. This latest beta release is just another example.
If you are just a little bit competitive, I recommend joining the Simulator Golf Tour. It is $60 for a yearly membership but well worth it.
Ok. On back to bag mapping with GSPro. Once you’ve opened it up, this is what the default looks like. Ummm errrr yeah, I’m not anywhere close to 300 yards for a driver or the other distances for that matter and I don’t have some of the clubs which are shown in this screenshot.
I’m not positive if I added my name or if was originally setup by default without a name. I have to think I added my name, just like you can see where you can Add Player below. You can also see that I changed some clubs by using the dropdown arrows. Yes, I need to add another wedge to my repertoire. What I decided to do is to set all the clubs at zero for the yardages. This way, in my line of thinking is that whatever numbers that would be displayed would come from whatever shots I took. Oh, my understanding is that you hit 5 shots per club and are able to delete the last shot if something looks a little cattywampus. I may have deleted a couple of shots. I uhhhh probably should have deleted a couple more.
So once you click on Start Bag Mapping, this is how it looks. All ready to hit your lob wedge with it showing 1 out of 5 shots. After the 5 shots, you will move on to the next less lofty club. Hit a terrible shot and delete it but don’t try to game the software. Meaning if you do hit a bad shot and it is part of your normal shot making capabilities, leave that shot in there. I did delete a couple of shots.
What I like about bag mapping is it gives a true representation of how you hit each club. If there is too much of a gap between clubs, hopefully we/you/I can do something to rectify that. I decided from the get-go that I wasn’t going to swing out of my pants. No 100%. So if you’ve seen me hitting an 8 iron 160 yards or maybe I’ve taken a picture of a 255 yard drive, it was when I really went after it. I would rather have an intended swing but leave something left in the tank. What I found is that after getting through about 8 clubs with not much rest between shots, I was getting worn out.
So Pro Tip: Take your time when going through bag mapping. Here are my results. Notice anything a little bizarre? I’ll start out with my gap wedge. I typically hit that a little over 100 yards. So I think I must not have deleted an errant shot. Just a guess. But look at the 3 wood on down through the 5 hybrid. Not a heck of a lot of difference in distance. Sure, I’ve hit the green from 200 yards away with my 3 wood from the fairway. Yes, I was worn out by this time after hitting shot after shot with little to no rest between shots. Here comes the excuses, huh? The reality is that you hit 5 shots per club. This is an average of those 5 shots.
I have a 60 degree wedge and the next club is my 50 degree lob wedge followed by a 45 degree gap wedge. Really think I need a 54 degree wedge. My 4 and 5 hybrids are clone clubs. But then the 3 hybrid is what I purchased from a fitting maybe 10 years ago and it has a draw bias. I no longer need a draw bias. The 3 wood is from that same fitting and the clubs were top of the line when purchased.
Do I Like the Bag Mapping Feature?
So bottom line. What do I think of the bag mapping feature with GSPro beta? I think it is absolutely fantastic. Part of me wonders if maybe you should hit 10 shots per club… but then I realize I would be exhausted before I ever finished. Now ever hear of the phrase, “you don’t know what you don’t know”? Well, I wish the bag mapping feature had the ability to tell you ball speed, clubhead speed, backspin, etc… maybe it does but this is one of these things I don’t know. Either way, I got my results. Amy I happy with my results? Well no. I see a definite gapping issue with my longer clubs. So it has me thinking. But… I’m not going to take these results as a one and done. So with rain coming tomorrow, I’ll be back in my golf cave and give this a go one more time.
And this is the P.S. version. Similar numbers. Not all the same but I knew I typically hit my gap wedge about 95 yards and that held true on this go-round. Once again, I can definitely see issues with the lack of gapping between the 4 thru 6 hybrids. Time for a fitting.
