SBJ Tech: Golf with Arccos, Altair and azaleas

In August, Arccos Golf closed a $20 million Series C funding round led primarily by the PGA Tour. It also featured participation from major golf manufacturers Ping, TaylorMade, Cobra Puma Golf and Topgolf Callaway Brands. With the investment, Arccos Golf became the official game tracker of the tour. 

So what has the last month been like for the company? Sal Syed, Arccos CEO and co-founder, said it gave employees an incredible reason to gather. Since the pandemic, Syed noted employees have been spread out throughout the nation. Arccos brought them all together for a weeklong realignment, Syed said, to recap not only what they’d accomplished but also share a vision of what’s next. “It was really awesome,” he told SBJ. “There's a collective realization that we've conquered something really awesome, which is getting the biggest brands in golf to get behind us.”

Arccos specializes in grip sensors that measure club data, delivering that to golfers through a mobile app. Founded in 2012, the company has approximately 750 million shots of data at its disposal. Four years ago, Arccos started working with Snowflake for data cloud storage, and Syed said that Arccos now has roughly 130 terabytes of data (for scale, NASA says the Hubble Space Telescope generates 10 terabytes of new data a year).

The capability to retain that data and have space for it, Syed said, means there are no sacrifices due to limited storage. As Arccos builds its AI language models, those models will have all the data to learn from. “The fact that we can store so much data as a startup certainly would not have been possible without the Snowflake business model and without their technology,” Syed said.

Syed said the PGA Tour partnership came from five to six years of relationship building. And while he didn’t want to overstep and share potential usage for the tech on the Tour's behalf, he did share a way that Arccos users will hopefully benefit from this venture.

In most sports, Syed mentioned, there’s no way to compare yourself to a pro athlete. But golf has a special form of catnip for the hobby golfer: the miraculous or unexpected shot that keeps them playing. That feat could be compared to the pros to enhance play and boost morale.

“A lot of times golfers actually focus on the negative, on the bad shots, and we can start reframing that experience,” Syed said. “You know you had these three amazing shots. These are better than PGA Tour averages. ... Those kinds of things are really exciting for the consumer."

Similar to Arccos, Altair has steadily become a fixture in golf. But instead of directly interacting with golfers, Altair has helped enhance the player experience for years behind the scenes. Ismail Benhayoun is the company’s senior director of engineering and account director for the golf industry. He said golf club manufacturers have used Altair’s software for more than 15 years. Altair works with Cleveland Golf, Ping and Wilson.

Altair’s engineering started in the automotive industry when it launched 38 years ago, which Benhayoun called one of the “most complex industries.” That complexity allowed Altair to grow and touch many other facets of engineering technology, such as the design of golf clubs.

To illustrate the intricacies of a golf club build, Benhayoun points out that the average car design takes roughly two years. Golf clubs can take between nine and 12 months. So while the club may look much simpler than your average vehicle, both have to account for so many variables. F1 is also using the same technology to develop faster cars. “You're designing a product that has multiple needs and multiple expectations and multiple factors around it,” Benhayoun said. “When you look at golf clubs, there is the human factor. There's the technology performance factor of things: how fast it is, feel, how beautiful does it look, etc.”

With all of that to consider, Altair’s software helps streamline the entire design process. AI-powered simulations and generative design tools (through Altair’s simulation/design platform called HyperWorks) can run prototype clubs through numerous projected test swings and cut down on production waste. They’ve also developed digital twin tech to help visualize the data.

Benhayoun has been with Altair since 2012, and in that time, he’s watched the golf club conform to include two significant elements. The first is forgiveness for the golfer, no matter their skill level. The forgiveness of the clubs now, he said, is far superior due to the massive number of digital tests a club set can go through before mass production.

The second has been resilience to the strain caused by the top-level athlete. Case in point: The average drive on the PGA Tour is 299.8 yards. Carbon shafts and club heads have been tested in Altair’s software too before they hit the market.

“We are delivering that software that allows you to do things digitally,” Benhayoun said. “Instead of testing in your (golf club manufacturing) lab, you're testing on your computer. And now instead of testing one club a day, you're testing thousands of designs a day for different players, the amateur and the professional.”

Since I had the time with two golf tech experts, I put them on the spot: I asked Syed and Benhayoun which golf event was their favorite.

Both said The Masters. I totally get it. I’ve pined for tickets since reaching adulthood. Funny enough, my uncle has worked the tournament at Augusta National Golf Club for years.

Syed has attended the event before. Benhayoun said he’s hoping to get there one day. "It's a great golf course, and we all recognize it," said Syed. "We all know that there’s been great history there. And also, to attend, it’s literally the most well-run event -- sports event, event period -- that I’ve ever been to.”

Benhayoun: “The history of the tournament, the course, the emotion that builds weeks prior, the exclusiveness for players but also for fans. And the suspense all the way through Sunday afternoon -- everything can happen in the last holes. A lot of reasons that make that tournament extra-special.”

• The Jazz launched a direct-to-consumer service, known as Jazz+, that will stream all of their non-nationally televised games this season and serve as a subscription-based complement to their free over-the-air broadcasts, reports SBJ's Tom Friend.

• Genius Sports, the exclusive data and sportsbook video partner of the NFL, created a new product, BetVision, that will allow sports fans to stream NFL games and place wagers within a betting app’s video player, reports SBJ's Joe Lemire.

• Arrowhead Stadium debuted a Zippin Walk-Up market, one of 10 rolling out in NFL stadiums this season, and according to Matt Kenny, EVP/Arrowhead operations and events, average transaction times (including the shopping) plummeted to 30 seconds total, the lowest in the stadium, while sales were 30% higher than the previous traditional grill-stand setup, notes SBJ's Bret McCormick.

• The Premier League approved tech company Infinite Athlete as the front-of-shirt sponsor for Chelsea FC, reports Lemire. Infinite Athlete is the rebranded parent company of Tempus Ex Machina after it acquired athlete health and safety engineering firm Biocore.

• ATP, Tennis Data Innovations and TennisViz are collaborating on a new performance analytics platform called Tennis IQ, reports SBJ's Rob Schaefer.

• KAGR Senior Director of Business Growth & Marketing Katie Hodel talked to SBJ’s David Broughton about how the sports industry can use data to truly drive revenue.

• SBJ this week has profiles out on our 2023 class of Game Changers -- 50 women who are leaders, entrepreneurs and decision-makers at organizations across sports. Among those working around the sports tech space are Deana Barnes (Paciolan), Robin Eletto (TMRW Sports), Monica Ellingson (IBM), Danielle Lazor (Aramark) and Meg Little (ASM Global).