Toy or sports equipment, that is the PhiGolf question here
With "PhiGolf" you can do something indoors and outdoors. Barbara knows her way around golf. I like to play. Together we try out how the little sensor performs in the living room and on the driving range.
Unfortunately, Zorro has to make way. The friendly poodle, whose black fur is already slightly greying, has made himself comfortable on his cuddly blanket in the living room and is looking at us expectantly. I can understand that. After all, I have a stick with me that looks like a ball sling for dogs. And I came to Bern to play. But not with Zorro. His owner Barbara invited me to try out "PhiGolf" together. The black stick with the blue ball at the bottom shouldn't be flying around the living room. PhiGolf is a small sensor that can be attached to any golf club to analyse your swing and, together with the shorter "Swing Stick" and the corresponding app, is also designed to provide realistic fun in the living room.
According to the description, the device is a perfect introduction to golf, but is also interesting for experts. Barbara has been playing since she was ten years old, was on the national squad as a teenager and now has a handicap of 10 (if that means as little to you as it does to me: that's still pretty good). I've had golf clubs in my hands exactly once so far and my greatest achievement is hitting the ball relatively reliably. Somehow. Beginner and expert - together we make a good test team. My good fortune that Barbara asked a question about this device in the Community.
The feedback failed to materialise. There don't seem to be many indoor golf gamers in our Community yet. But the product is exciting, which is why I wanted to take a closer look at it anyway. I got in touch with Barbara, we spoke on the phone a few times and finally visited her at home in Bern's Mattenhof neighbourhood. She can try out PhiGolf herself, I have an expert to test it with and you get two opinions in one review. Win-win-win. But first Zorro has to go into the next room. He reluctantly complies and follows his blanket as Barbara drags her into the next room.
"Does the bat have a safety loop?" asks Barbara, casting a scrutinising glance at her delicate ceiling light hanging diagonally above us. Unfortunately, no. There's not much in the PhiGolf pack. The centrepiece is about the size of a chocolate domino and weighs just under 10 grams. It is the sensor that measures movements and translates them into a virtual golf swing on the screen. It is placed on the club. To keep the lamp intact, the supplied "swing stick" is only 62 centimetres long. The handle is similar to that of a golf club. I give the replacement club to Barbara, who swings it through the air to test it out and has a positive first impression: "It feels more realistic than I would have thought." She presses an iron from her golf bag into my hand for comparison.
The apps and the damn demonstration effect
In order to use PhiGolf, you need to install one or two apps. PhiGolf (iOS/Android) and/or WGT Golf (iOS / Android). Finally, we are testing the WGT Edition here. "World Golf Tour", or WGT for short, is the most popular online golf game with over 15 million users. It features famous courses from all over the world, offers numerous online game modes and virtually unlimited ways to spend money. Clubs, balls, green fees - everything can be unlocked by earning or buying coins.
PhiGolf has teamed up with the manufacturer. You can connect the sensor to the WGT app and tee off for free at Wolf Creek. If you want to play all courses, a monthly subscription fee of two francs is due. You must take out this plan in the PhiGolf app in order to be able to play in the WGT app.
The PhiGolf app itself also offers various game and training modes, but looks old in direct comparison. Instead of realistic scenery, it offers poor graphics. Sure, the green is green and the sky is blue. But the visualisation is nowhere near as detailed. Instead, it (hopefully) offers interesting opportunities to analyse your own swing and train a little indoors in winter.
We want to test both apps and install them on Barbara's iPhone. We can send the picture to the TV via AirPlay and AppleTV. Mirroring is essential because you can't see what you're doing on the small screen. Of course, I didn't travel to Bern without trying everything out at home first. And of course, not everything works as it should. We look at loading bars, fail at registration processes and see strange error messages. Bloody demonstration effect. After twenty minutes, we still haven't hit a virtual ball. If Barbara would kindly accompany me to the door now, I would understand. "Thanks, but I'm no longer interested. Have a good journey home!"
The woman who beats faster than her avatar
Luckily, Barbara doesn't do that. She doesn't even lose her good humour. And after the initial realisation that you need a fast internet connection for WGT and that the PhiGolf login doesn't work at first and then, for some unknown reason, does at some point, we can get started. Barbara stands on the tee. The December sun shines through the window to the left and music plays on the TV in front of us. Fortunately, we can switch off the background noise of the game. Now there is concentrated silence and we look out onto the lush green of the famous Wolf Creek Golf Club in Mesquite, Nevada.
A small overview map of the golf course, club selection, distance and wind information as well as the targeted point on the fairway are displayed. The PhiGolf sensor flashes on the swing stick. Barbara can now change the direction of aim by pressing the sensor once and turning the club slightly to the left or right. If she presses again, she returns to the stroke mode. Before every shot, the "address position" must be assumed, which is part of the routine when playing golf. In the game, you need to hold the swing stick at a slight angle and calmly point it downwards. When the go signal is given for the shot, you have five seconds to complete your swing. Barbara takes a swing and the avatar on TV does the same. Then she follows through so that the dummy racket whizzes through the living room. It goes "clack". Nothing happens on the screen at first. The woman who punches faster than her avatar. That sounds good.
With a delay of about a second, something happens on the screen. A second hiss, a second "clack", a virtual punch that the 9-axis sensor has calculated from the movement data. It is based on the maximum speed and the angle at this point in time. We want to test how close it is to reality later on the golf course.
A golf swing is a complex matter in terms of coordination. I can't miss a ball with the swing stick, but as a beginner I often touch the sensor with my forearm and irritate it significantly. Then it can't recognise the shot. That's not a problem for Barbara, her swing is clean. But she is annoyed by the first "click", which doesn't come from the TV, but from the ball head of the swing stick. "I was startled at first," she tells me later. "I thought the ball was going to come loose and fly into the TV." What I had chalked up to interesting acoustic feedback remained a disruptive factor for her.
PhiGolf does not claim to perfectly reflect the skills of advanced golfers. It is designed to encourage you to pick up a club more often indoors. Or the swing stick, with which Barbara is now approaching the first green of Wolf Creek. And when it comes to putting, things get complicated. There are still a few metres to the hole. Barbara checks the distance and takes a look at the terrain, which can be indicated by a grid and dots slowly moving along the slope. She addresses the ball, makes a small movement - and the ball shoots across the virtual green, far beyond the target.
"That would have been about a 6-metre putt," says Barbara, who also has to contend with the sensor's quirks during the following attempts. Sometimes it reacts hypersensitively, sometimes not at all. "Do you know what a 'gimmie' is?" she finally asks when the game offers this option. A "gifted" ball, where the players assume that it would be sunk on the next attempt anyway. Let's take it. And we realise that the more delicate the movement, the more unrealistic the feel of the game. On the other hand, the swing analyses that we want to look at in the PhiGolf app in the next step look interesting. Unlike WGT, this app also works offline. It's time to try out the sensor on a real golf course. We're off to Flamatt.
On the golf course
Steel sky over lush greenery. The Golf & Country Club is at least as picturesque in front of us as Wolf Creek was in the WGT app. It's just noticeably colder out here and correspondingly empty on the driving range. Enough space for us to investigate what the statistics and data collected by the small PhiGolf sensor are worth. It is quickly attached to the club of your choice. What's more complicated is that you have to place your mobile or tablet somewhere in your field of vision in order to record and evaluate your shots. To make this as comfortable as possible, I packed the Trekstor SurfTab, the largest possible tablet. Barbara is going to hit a few balls with the 15.6-inch giant on the ground and the sensor on the iron.
PhiGolf points out that hitting the ball causes vibrations that can distort the measurement result. In addition, there are other influences that mean you cannot assume that the virtual shot corresponds 1:1 to the real one: the choice of club, the resulting change in weight and the ground conditions. The sensor cannot know exactly where your ball will land. PhiGolf recommends focussing on the swing stick and treating the game as a game. Nevertheless, the results on the virtual driving range are not that far removed from reality in our case. [[image:32013179 "PhiGolf calculates reasonably realistic shot distances."]]
Barbara uses a distance meter for comparison, which golfers use to help them choose their clubs. In the app, the measured distance of their shots is usually slightly lower, perhaps 10 per cent off, but it is certainly a useful guide. In this comparison with the much more expensive Skytrak Launch Monitor, which also calculates the shot distance, the PhiGolf sensor even delivers similarly good results.
The mini cube measures more than just fantasy values, but using it on the golf course is tedious. Who wants to keep waiting for the app to go before every shot? What's more, the sensor occasionally loses the Bluetooth connection during our test, even though we remain in close proximity to the tablet. "Do you want to give it a try?" asks Barbara, holding out a racket to me. My luck is that the sensor assumes that I'm hitting the ball perfectly. While we swap roles and Barbara takes photos, I hit bouncing balls across the meadow. In the app, they fly through the air with perfect form. Only a glance at the swing analysis reveals who can do it and who can't. [[image:32116330 "This is how the swing is visualised. You can view details and additional information for each aspect. Barbara's swing is round and everything is green."]] [[image:32108491 "I must have produced this egg."]]
Each stroke can be replayed as an animation in the 3D model and viewed from the desired perspective. You can also call up data on "Head Speed", "Swing Tempo", "Club Path", "Face Angle" and "Attack Angle". The speed of the club head, its position and direction of movement at the moment of impact determine whether your shot is successful. There are brief explanations of the individual values.
At first glance, you can see that green values tend to be good and red values tend to be bad. In order to interpret them in detail, Barbara also has to familiarise herself with them. "When I started playing golf, we only had video recordings at most," she says. "But I know that I have a good swing speed." The PhiGolf interprets this in a similar way, and her score is usually close to the ideal. And it certainly seems possible to benefit from the data if you collect it over a longer period of time. "It's certainly interesting to analyse this with a Pro," says Barbara. [[image:32116343 "Putting is and remains tedious."]] [[image:32108492 "So the data should be treated with caution."]]
We move on to the putting green and give the sensor a chance to redeem itself for the problems in the WGT game. Perhaps a miracle will happen and it will capture the movements on the real putter better than with the swing stick in the living room. However, it remains difficult to get the sensor to play along. Sometimes it doesn't react at all, sometimes it reacts too early by mistake and the distances given don't correspond to what Barbara plays on the perfectly manicured natural grass. She can't make her usual practice swings and always has to keep an eye on the screen. What's more, our fingers soon freeze here. It's good that we can look at the collected data again in peace and quiet at the kitchen table.
Conclusion: It's a game, but interesting for golfers
Back in the warmth, we click through the statistics and talk about our PhiGolf experience. We can't evaluate the apps in detail. With WGT, the payment model is a thorn in Barbara's side: "The graphics and the setting options are very good. But it's a shame that you have to take out a plan to be able to play on all the courses." With the visually inferior PhiGolf app, we were particularly interested in the training mode and the swing analysis. "You have to have target values, for example a certain club path that you always aim for," says Barbara about the sense and nonsense of the data collection, which offers interesting clues, at least for number crunchers.
"Is this a game or a tool for ambitious golfers?" I want to know. "I see it more as a game for someone who enjoys gadgets and numbers," is her assessment. But definitely one that is interesting for golfers. She was particularly pleasantly surprised by the swing stick: "I had imagined the club to be worse." If it weren't for the noise, the swing would feel pretty realistic. "Only the putting didn't really work at all, the sensor picked up every little twitch." Conclusion: the bigger the swing, the more fun it is. And the more players, the better. Thank you, dear Barbara!
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Michael Restin
Senior Editor
Michael.Restin@digitecgalaxus.chSimple writer, dad of two. Likes to be on the move, shimmies through everyday family life, juggles with several balls and occasionally drops something. A ball. Or a remark. Or both.
