by The new technology was released by Wilson in January of this year.
BELOIT (WREX) – We’ve seen athletes continue to evolve their training in their respective sports as more technology becomes available, and golf is no exception. Ironworks Golf Academy in Beloit recently brought in a new AI golf club fitting system, which has both sped up and personalized the club fitting process.
Through a complex system of overhead cameras and a chip inside the club, club fitters can get an assessment from the system after just five swings.
“It gives you over 12,000 different swing points,” Club Fitter Gordie Johnson said. “It builds in the algorithm of the swing across the board. Each time someone enters more information into it, it expands that portfolio.”
In a normal club fitting process, a golfer could find themselves swinging the club a countless amount of times. Making it hard to keep the consistency needed in the swing for an accurate fit.
“It really narrows that down a little bit more,” Johnson said. “It pushes more of that doubt away.”
Analytics and AI can often have the misconception of replacing the human element — but its main purpose is to give the club fitter all the information possible before they make a final assessment.
“It’s just like anything else we use,” Johnson said. “We can use our simulators, we have technology like this. There’s been other products in the past that gets you in the ballpark. This one is a little bit better as far as cutting the numbers down and narrowing that margin of error, but ultimately it comes down to the fitter.”
The complex system has been in development with Wilson since 2002 — and it could be just the beginning of how technology can continue to change many different aspects of the sport.
“AI is blowing up all over the place,” Johnson said. “Now it’s just hit into the golf business. This gets people a better product, a better fit and helps them go out and play more. It’s kind of cool to see how the technology is really blowing up in the industry.”
