Latest / Scene Projects Sports Network / Bill Bales on Golf Tech Evolution, AI, and the Future of Personalized Golf Experiences

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Bill Bales on Golf Tech Evolution, AI, and the Future of Personalized Golf Experiences · Scene Projects Sports Network

• 0:14
  Welcome into the Scene Project Sports Network.
• 0:17
  I am your host, Bubba Starts, and with me today is the visionary force behind Savant Golf, Bill
• 0:23
  Bales.
• 0:23
  Bill, welcome to the show.
• 0:25
  Hey, Bubba.
• 0:27
  It's good to see you again.
• 0:28
  I feel like we've been spending a lot of time together these last few days, and I am all the
• 0:33
  better for it.
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  It's been a pleasure getting to know you and and to learn about Savant Golf, which is not
• 0:40
  quite launched out there yet as we speak today.
• 0:43
  But maybe by the time people are obviously consuming this, they'll be able to find out a
• 0:48
  lot more about you, and I'm just gonna plug it right away off the top.
• 0:52
  Go to savantgolf.com.
• 0:54
  Get involved in the community.
• 0:55
  Find all the great stuff that we're gonna be talking about here today.
• 0:59
  Before we get into all that though, Bill, I really just wanna give you the floor here for a
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  few minutes and take as long as you like with with such an awesome history that you have in
• 1:08
  not just the golf world, but in software development.
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  Give us a little bit of your background, and then we'll pick up the conversation along the
• 1:15
  way.
• 1:16
  Okay.
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  Well, first first, I just have to say, I I think your project is going to be huge.
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  You know, you're radically impressive in my mind.
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  Anyway, so, you know, it's funny.
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  I was in the I was in the investment banking business, private investment banking business
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  in the late eighties.
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  My brother, was obsessed with software development from the time from literally 1976
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  when he went to private school, and he was one of those kids that hung out in the mainframe
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  room with the pizza and the Mountain Dew.
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  And he was developing a golf game that was spun off of a game I gave him that we used to play a
• 2:00
  lot called thinking man's golf.
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  Anyway, so that moves forward.
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  So I started reading the papers in the eighties about microcomputer software.
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  And I went to my brother, kind of the latter part of the eighties, and I and I I said, you
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  know, I've been reading all about this software stuff and all the growth.
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  I said, you do that.
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  Why why don't we do that?
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  And he said, sure.
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  And I said, well, I have one question.
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  What is software?
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  And it sorta went from there.
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  We started a company called Friendly Software, and we we made a number of consumer products,
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  including a financial product with Charles j Gibbons at the time was the most checked out
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  financial book literally in US libraries.
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  And we did we developed a radical visual, math skills game with a media company in Korea.
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  We developed interfaces for peep for other companies.
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  We developed the first graphical interface for Taro's irrigation system, but we focused on our
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  golf simulation game, which became over the years, it's it's I I'm pretty sure it's the
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  most distributed computer golf game in all of its iterations in history.
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  But it started out as ultimate challenge golf, then it became Greg Norman ultimate challenge
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  golf, then, Microsoft golf, and, then other forms after that.
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  But, we I started, a Balkoff in February, '2.
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  And, we were lucky enough to connect with a company in South Africa called EDH, which is
• 3:42
  today known as FlightScope.
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  And they were the originators of Phaser A radar for tracking golf balls and golf clubs.
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  And so we my team, which was pretty sizable and talented and for a small dev company code of
• 3:59
  sort of codeveloped.
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  I mean, it was really Henry Johnson and and FlightScope's IP, but our team worked, over two
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  years with them, you know, in bringing that technology forward for indoor golf.
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  And it became quite disruptive in starting in 2003, January 2003, in that at the time, there
• 4:26
  there really weren't any simulator products that had the accuracy to do club fitting,
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  teaching, legitimate club testing, that sort of thing.
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  Of course, the that was that was really at the when at the sort of the front end of the
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  explosion of that sucking sound of off course golf retailers pulling business from Green
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  Grass, which is somewhat sad.
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  You know, but they didn't have ranges.
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  Most of them, there were a few.
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  But, you know, you go to the pro shop and there's a range out there.
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  You can test clubs, take a lesson.
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  So they needed, you know, places to do that.
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  And, the Balkoff simulators, you know, when it came out because it's actually pretty much was
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  the only game in town for teaching, fitting, and that sort of thing with the off course.
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  You know, we we launched with you know, got a PGA Tour Superstore in the business, the the
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  their cofounder who put together all their technology at the founding partner for
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  superstore is Eric Kobelinski.
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  He now runs all of our business development as an example.
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  But people started you know, other technologists started catching up.
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  They saw they saw it, and then, of course, simulators started getting pretty popular in
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  the February.
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  It's at least exponentially higher today, and we just kept plowing away.
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  You know?
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  That radar that we developed with FlightScope later became TrackMan.
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  And but I got dug in, founded a vision company with a brilliant machine vision guy in Ann
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  Arbor who was sort of the epicenter of the cradle of machine vision, high speed
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  photography, whatever you wanna call it.
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  And and in 2006, we started developing a vision system, which we launched January 2008 at the
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  golf show.
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  And, it was another big disruptive leap in accuracy.
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  Now radar has, you know, with a lot of inference and research has come on quite a bit
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  over time.
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  Of course, now you see that Trackman has implemented a camera for spin because radar
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  can't basically, incapable of measuring spin axis.
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  So they they've implemented the camera, kudos to them.
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  They've done an amazing job.
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  And, you know, there's another company I have to call out as being brilliant.
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  It's called Winters Engineering.
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  They they they've been the the landmark developer of golf tracking technology all the
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  way back to the very beginnings of full swing, developed their their initial system, and
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  they're now owned by Foresight.
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  And Foresight is has done some amazing things with machine vision and golf ball and club
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  tracking.
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  And Winters is you know, they that's a great engineering team that they have there.
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  But, anyway, you know, moving forward, our vision technology actually is now is now used
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  in a number of other brands, and it actually is the best selling premium indoor golf simulator
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  technology in the world collectively among all the brands.
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  So it even outsells last five years golfs on in in Korea.
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  So I'm, you know, I'm proud of I'm proud of the fact that I fostered those kinds of things.
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  We were the first to implement force plates.
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  We developed a a more sort of intuitive and user friendly for the pros video analysis
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  system.
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  We we spent a fortune on screen research and had, you know, really brought forth the first
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  seamless and quiet screens and simulators.
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  It used to be like bombs going off, in in a simulator, you know, all that stuff.
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  And, I stepped out, got into baseball, believe it or not, with my second vision company.
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  It's called Yacker Tech.
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  And it's it's not the best selling, but it's quite prevalent in baseball and, the most
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  respected IP for measuring, for instance, pitch data.
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  You know?
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  And, actually, MLB pitching at, you know, when I started Yacker Tech was as big of industry as
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  golf simulators in The US.
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  And, and then I, ultimately, 2021, I I I basically sold sold out of Yacker Tech and
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  started a company called Clarity, which is now morphed into Savant Golf.
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  But I started research in 2021, with a researcher, in, The UK working with a actually,
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  literally a former employee of mine who had, you know, would had ascended to chief science
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  officer for Huawei for imaging in Europe and then the founding director of the Digital
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  Environment Research Institute in London, member of the a fellow of the Turing Institute,
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  like, really, like, 990009%, you know, achiever in in in the areas of vision and and artificial
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  intelligence, deep learning.
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  And between the two of them, we filed a patent, based on, some radical radically groundbreaking
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  technology that was brought forth by a company in Paris called Prophecy.
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  It's it's called, neuromorphic, imaging.
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  Neuromorphic refers to, basically working like the brain and the the human brain and the human
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  eye, which is what Alan Turing initially started out to try to figure out in the
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  forties.
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  You know, CMOS computing, which is the you know, and vision digital vision, that's that's
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  the standard, and it doesn't doesn't work like a brain.
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  But neuromorphic computing, also breakthroughs in 2021, also in France, and neuromorphic
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  vision are are are changing a lot of things in the machine vision world.
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  And we we literally hid it from Prophecy's first research paper.
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  Greg Slabaugh, the director at DERI, had worked with Prophecy at Huawei.
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  And so we ended up, we had one of the first alpha cameras, and we filed a patent January
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  2023, literally eighteen months before Sony even started filing a bunch of patents, and
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  Sony co developed the the technology with prophecy.
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  So we ended up, getting, actually, published in USPTO, United States, a very broad patent that
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  had no the only, off sanctions were to remove a superfluous the.
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  And we're now we're now also approved and has been published in Canada, and we've just in EU.
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  And, it's it's gonna change things.
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  More than golf, but golf is where we're focused today.
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  And what it promises is that it's gonna just collapse the cost of body tracking, ball
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  tracking, club tracking.
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  You know, you're not gonna have to pay $20 for a launch monitor.
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  You'll be you'll be able to download an app.
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  That's basically bringing it forward.
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  Yeah.
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  Bringing golf and and the ability to be your best version of of the golfer that you want to
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  be to everyone, not just to the pros, not just to the wealthy, but really bringing all of the
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  tech and lowering the price point for everyone.
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  That's what made it so intriguing for me, to get a chance to talk to you because, a lot of
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  what you bring to the table on the tech side is what we've been trying to bring with video
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  content, bringing access to a guy like John Hughes, who is a master professional of
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  instruction, that unless you're going to see him down in Orlando at the Omni Resort, you're
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  you're not gonna be able to learn so much of what he has to offer.
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  And and that's really where the the Scene Project Sports Network as a whole, the Scratch
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  Project in particular, our our golf show and kind of vertical on that side have been about.
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  You know?
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  Yes.
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  It's nice to cover the events and to go and, have an opportunity to watch the pros do it,
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  but how do we all get a little bit better?
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  How how do we become a little bit better?
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  And then how do we build a community around that?
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  And and I think that's what really impressed me about the vision for Savant Golf beyond just
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  the amazing tech and and the patents and all the tech stuff that to be perfectly honest,
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  Bill, a lot of it goes right over my kinda, dimwitted head.
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  But people and knowing what it means to a guy to win a club championship and how this tech is
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  going to help, guys do that and achieve those goals, that to me was what really attracted me
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  to Savant Golf and and what makes me really excited about working together towards that
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  future.
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  You know, I I have I have two areas of thought that came out of, your lovely recap.
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  You know?
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  And you you alluded to it in what you're doing.
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  You know, this this new world that they call AI, is really about democratizing stuff for
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  people that never had access to it in one way or the other, you know, and it's a very broad
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  dynamic.
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  You know, as an example, you know, I perceive that there's at least two orders of magnitude
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  of latent market for, like, launch monitors, simulators, body tracking technology, you know,
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  that relate relative to the current installed base.
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  You know, there are people that are gonna wanna spend a $100,000 on their golf simulator.
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  Right?
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  But you're seeing, you know, you you're seeing a proliferation of YouTube videos now about,
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  you know, how to make a really good simulator for a really low price.
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  And, one the things we wanna do is is remove the cost of ball and club and body tracking.
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  And, you know, and and, really, you know, the few the future the future of analytics and golf
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  is software, not hardware.
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  Other than other than this is such a magic thing.
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  Okay?
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  It's got compute.
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  It's got cameras.
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  It's got access to the web.
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  It's got it's got speakers.
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  It can take movies.
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  It can process.
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  It's got all the FCC and CE and and Japanese daunting Japanese, electromagnetic, you know,
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  certifications.
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  And it's in everybody's pocket, and it's in 10,000,000,000 drawers.
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  Okay?
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  So, you know, why why would why would you wanna go out and buy a computer and a camera and a
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  tracking device when all you gotta do is download an app and use something that's in
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  your pocket and maybe even make it better by going and grabbing one that's in your drawer
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  and pairing it up with it.
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  You know what I'm saying?
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  So, you know, I've been a software guy all my life.
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  I got into hardware, you know, by necessity, and I always said, you know, hardware and
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  software, never the twain, you know, will will cross.
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  You know?
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  But, really, it's it's it's the future of all this is, you know, democratization and access,
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  you know, and, you know, you hear about the age of abundance.
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  You know, either the world's gonna come to an end or we're all gonna be driving Rolls Royces.
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  You know, I I'm hoping for the latter.
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  Me too.
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  I wouldn't mind the Rolls to cruise around in.
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  Yeah.
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  Why not?
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  You know, why not?
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  But but there's the other topic.
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  I lost track for a second.
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  The other topic here is, you know, how do people get better.
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  Okay?
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  And, you know, the key to it really, at the end of the day, intrinsically, you know, is
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  following the science.
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  Okay?
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  And the the world of golf doesn't entirely follow the science and really never has.
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  I mean, there's a lot of lot of good science involved, especially in club design, dimple
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  design, that sort of thing.
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  Okay?
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  But, you know, most club pro most teaching pros, most practitioners are, sorry, pretty
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  pretty intransigent about their, a way of teaching.
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  You know, I I saw I watched a video the other day of a fellow that was getting really
• 17:39
  definitively into using some, you know, a current product for body tracking.
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  And he was pointing out that you see you see this guy, well, his spine angle is one degree
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  off.
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  You know? We
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  We gotta gotta fix that.
• 17:54
  Right?
• 17:55
  Well well, the problem is the margin of error in that system is, five degrees.
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  You know?
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  So, I mean, it's you know, from a clinical perspective, it dies right with the measurement
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  system.
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  And yet on the other hand, you don't have to get into one degree or, you know, point one you
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  know, it's like you you're talking about you you go out to a instrument in range.
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  It tells you hit it you hit it 87 feet in the air.
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  So what does 87 feet mean?
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  You know, I was like, we observe ball flight.
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  Okay?
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  You're not gonna go out on a golf course and say, I wanna hit this one eighty seven feet in
• 18:31
  the air because that tree is 85 feet high.
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  You don't know how high that you just know it because you've been there.
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  Right?
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  And so, I mean, there's a lot of silliness as well.
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  But point being that so dear friend and very close partner involved in Savant Goff is JJ
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  Rivet, Jean Jacques Rivet from France.
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  He was the biomechanist for the European tour.
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  He's been in many team rooms in the Ryder Cup.
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  He's he has world you know, former world number ones as students.
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  I would think is probably his most prominent student out there today is Justin Rose, but
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  he's worked with countless top name pros and everybody else.
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  He's got three, basically, equivalent of, you know, three advanced degrees from the
• 19:22
  University of Marseille in human and sports biomechanics.
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  He's got forty five years of experience.
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  I have all of his life's work on my server.
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  It's like 200,000 vectors.
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  And, you know but JJ JJ's book is gonna be coming out in not too distant future.
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  I'm I'm encouraging to put the title on it.
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  It's all biomechanics.
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  And, I I know I'm going all along, but I I'll just get get you right to the punch line.
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  You know, learning learning the swing is not about the club, the ball, or the ball flight.
• 20:00
  K?
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  You know, we a launch monitor just just films the crime scene.
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  It's about it's entirely biomechanics.
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  Now there's nothing wrong with that that data, and it can be useful in a way.
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  But at the core, it's entirely biomechanics, and every human is a snowflake.
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  And so every human, you know, their biomechanics analysis and and what's optimal
• 20:24
  for them and their bodies and what they're willing to do with their bodies, not what they
• 20:29
  can do with their bodies, is is the key to to to to to making the best swing.
• 20:35
  The the the measurement, ball flight, club ball interaction, you know, 11.3 degrees launch
• 20:44
  angles if anybody cared, that's just validation at the end.
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  Okay?
• 20:50
  That's like you made the cake, and now let's taste it.
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  Alright?
• 20:54
  And and the interesting thing about it is and and and the science a 100% validates us.
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  You know, we've done massive research with humans and with a I mean, the best humans in
• 21:05
  the world focused on these very topics, you know, and, you know, as well as ever more
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  brilliant AI to validate it.
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  But a a golf club fitting has nothing to do with launch data.
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  Has nothing to do with plotting of your shots or ball flight.
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  It's a 100% biomechanics.
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  The body is the engine.
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  You know, the the club is the tool, and the and the and the ball you know, I I have this sort
• 21:42
  of lame analogy to quantum mechanics, which, you know, like, the AI, you know, when he puts
• 21:51
  on the pure quantum mechanics hat, you know, cries foul.
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  You know?
• 21:56
  But, you know, basically, the brain you know, there's no brain in quantum mechanics, by the
• 22:01
  way.
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  It's just it's just all happens, you know, unless you believe in the quantum god.
• 22:05
  Okay?
• 22:06
  But, you know, that's an that's another discussion.
• 22:08
  So but, really, it all starts with photons, whether it's thermal vibration or actual just
• 22:15
  photons colliding with electrons, and they disrupt this called d decoherence.
• 22:20
  And then that disruption literally kicks out photons the other side.
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  Okay?
• 22:26
  So the reality is that my my analogy is in golf.
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  The body the body is that decoherence.
• 22:34
  And or excuse me.
• 22:35
  The body is that electron and the decoherence, which is the effect of that interaction,
• 22:43
  between the, you know, the photon and the electron, that's that's the swing.
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  And the photon coming out, that's just the ball flying.
• 22:53
  You know?
• 22:53
  It's it's it's an outcome.
• 22:56
  It's it's not it's not a cause.
• 22:58
  You know?
• 22:59
  I mean and and, obviously, you wanna get fit to the right club.
• 23:02
  Okay?
• 23:02
  And you don't wanna put the ball in the right place in your stance.
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  That's more important than anybody other than JJ realizes.
• 23:10
  And but at the end of the day, it it it the body is the machine that makes it happen, And
• 23:16
  this is not done in club fitting.
• 23:19
  I mean, there's certainly people do biomechanics analysis, but, you know, you go
• 23:23
  all the big fancy club plate.
• 23:24
  You know, all they're doing is plotting shots and putting another club in your hand and try
• 23:28
  you know, this you know, there there's infinite permutations of of of ball head and and club
• 23:35
  and then, you know, and then the spec of the shaft, you know, how many wraps on the grip.
• 23:39
  You know, it's like it goes on forever, but it all starts with the body.
• 23:43
  The body will tell you everything.
• 23:45
  So this is again, you asked that's a really long anal answer to sort of to to your
• 23:52
  question, how do people get better?
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  Starting point is to use ground truth science.
• 23:58
  Yeah.
• 23:58
  The body is one zero one if we're breaking it down like a college PhD.
• 24:03
  Right?
• 24:03
  The club fitting and stuff may be down in your third or fourth year.
• 24:07
  There's so much that has to take place before that stuff even becomes relevant and actually
• 24:13
  makes you better that if you don't fix the early and you don't set the foundation with the
• 24:18
  biomechanics, you're never going to truly improve.
• 24:21
  You may have better days.
• 24:23
  You may have better swings, but you're not going to incrementally improve as a golfer day
• 24:28
  over day.
• 24:29
  Well, you know, and, obviously, there's more to that.
• 24:32
  I mean, you know, you you have just something as simple as course management.
• 24:37
  And, know, once you have the right ball and the right club and you've got your body working the
• 24:41
  way you want and you get a good night's sleep and, you know, then then you have you have
• 24:46
  matters of what I call cognitive clutter.
• 24:49
  You know?
• 24:51
  I'll come back to that in a second.
• 24:53
  But, you know, we talk about biomechanics, but biometrics are are also critical.
• 24:58
  You know?
• 24:59
  What what Ben Hogan said, you know, the most important six inches in golf is between your
• 25:03
  ears.
• 25:04
  But it's more than course management, and, you know, it's more than controlling your thoughts.
• 25:08
  It's it's it it you know, and and here's a major punch line, and this is something that
• 25:13
  I've never heard talked about.
• 25:15
  I mean, you hear in golf, you hear about a thing like flow.
• 25:18
  Okay?
• 25:18
  Get in the flow.
• 25:19
  Daniel Goldman was with his emotional intelligence, yeah, that was sort of the
• 25:26
  beginning of all of that.
• 25:27
  But no question, you know, you get in the flow where, you know, thing a Bryson talk you know,
• 25:33
  he used to put the EEG on, try to get into an train himself to get into an alpha state, you
• 25:38
  know, which, you know, sort of is endemic to flow.
• 25:43
  But the point is that the big the thing the thing that's really at the science is at the
• 25:47
  core of it is called preflex.
• 25:49
  Preflex preflex has to do with moving as much of of this clutter to the subconscious.
• 25:57
  Because the subconscious, when trained properly first of all, it never chokes.
• 26:03
  And and it it always makes the right decision, and it makes it instantly.
• 26:07
  The problem is nobody's ever figured out how to train the subconscious mind.
• 26:11
  And so, this is another amazing partner of ours, doctor Jonathan Page, who's devoted his
• 26:18
  he's a neuroscientist, but he's devoted his life to preflex, to training the human brain.
• 26:23
  He's worked with fighter pilots, with, you know, military people in dangerous situations,
• 26:32
  with with law enforcement, like detecting a pipe bomb or, you know, reacting to situations.
• 26:40
  You know?
• 26:40
  Like, there's, like, 14 things you have to multiprocess, like, radically fast in a in a
• 26:45
  fighter jet.
• 26:46
  You know, I worked very closely with Homeland Security, which with whom I also worked for a
• 26:52
  number of years in their law enforcement driver training.
• 26:56
  You know, there's over 90 federal law enforcement agencies, and they all drive.
• 27:00
  You know, most of them we don't know about, but they they all go through training.
• 27:05
  And and a a brilliant guy named Mark Lachelle ran that program.
• 27:09
  He's also a partner.
• 27:10
  And, you know, basically, worked off of existing science and, you know, developed these
• 27:18
  training systems and simulators.
• 27:20
  We also make in another age, we made driving simulators.
• 27:24
  And and, basically, you know, you're you're you're a law enforcement officer.
• 27:31
  There's a live shooting somewhere.
• 27:33
  Dispatch calls you.
• 27:35
  You have to tell them where you are.
• 27:36
  You have to keep track.
• 27:37
  You have to communicate with the other officers going to the scene.
• 27:40
  You have to navigate yourself rapidly through traffic, kids, you know, schools, fog, you
• 27:49
  know, semi trucks in your way, people on bicycles, on and on and on.
• 27:55
  You know?
• 27:55
  And then when you get to the crime scene, you have to strategically plan and then, you know,
• 28:00
  and then sort out your tactics so somebody doesn't get hurt, so you don't get shot, so
• 28:05
  that you can take out the guy.
• 28:07
  You know?
• 28:08
  And, you know, you you know, it it's it's a nightmare of of multiprocessing or you know?
• 28:13
  But nobody can.
• 28:15
  So the more you can move that to the subconscious, you know, and have the
• 28:20
  subconscious do that, that that that moves you toward what I call cognitive calm.
• 28:26
  And on a golf course, you know, I mean, think about Ed Sneed in the masters or Chocahoka in
• 28:33
  the tenth in the playoff, you know, in the masters, the 18 inch putt, Doug Sanders, 18
• 28:40
  inches putt to win the British oak.
• 28:42
  You know?
• 28:42
  I mean, that's cognitive clutter.
• 28:45
  You know?
• 28:45
  If if they if they were to advance their pre flex skills, they they'd be major champions.
• 28:50
  And that's what John is working on for us is to bring pre flex to golf.
• 28:57
  I probably got off on a crazy tangent
• 28:59
  too.
• 28:59
  I love it.
• 29:00
  Well and it's something that and I'll I'll shout out my friend John Hughes again in his
• 29:05
  book of instant golf improvement, a a little shameless plug for him there, that he covers a
• 29:10
  lot of this.
• 29:11
  It's like so much of it isn't going to help you.
• 29:13
  A lot of what you're missing is there.
• 29:16
  And the reason he wrote his book was for the reason, as a trainer and as a, you know, a a
• 29:21
  golf professional, a master of instruction, right, that he sees this.
• 29:25
  He sees guys coming in all the time that, they come in with a cluttered mind, and you expect
• 29:31
  to be better at this one thing that takes every bit of your brain and body power in every
• 29:37
  single moment for every shot to do.
• 29:39
  If you are thinking about anything else, you're never going to be successful in this game, and
• 29:44
  it's something that doesn't get talked about enough in this.
• 29:47
  And it's a reason why the guys that are at the top of their game that are able to block out
• 29:51
  all of that, to block out all of the personal life and everything, to block out all the
• 29:57
  people that are there in the gallery and everyone watching and millions watching at home
• 30:02
  for, you know, a masters or an open or whatever it may be, to make that putt and, you know,
• 30:09
  watching a guy, you know, Ryan win the, the open this year where, you know, what I say is,
• 30:16
  like, eight seconds from stepping up to shot and see a shot, hit a shot.
• 30:20
  And I think there's so much that, your regular guy can learn from that exactly of don't go up
• 30:26
  there and let the thought don't give the thoughts any space to invade in that and just
• 30:31
  go out and hit.
• 30:32
  And I think that so much of what we're talking about and that you're really going in-depth in
• 30:37
  is what Savant Golf is built on and what Savant Golf is built to solve and and all of these
• 30:43
  things being available in one place and not only being available, but also being a
• 30:50
  community for golfers.
• 30:52
  And and we I I don't know if we have time.
• 30:54
  I would love for you, if you don't mind, to talk about the couch coach and what that can do
• 31:00
  for the uncle Joe's at home to to to, you know, make it more enjoyable at home to to even watch
• 31:07
  and consume the game much less playing it.
• 31:10
  Are you alright.
• 31:11
  So I'm gonna hit on two quickies and then the couch coach.
• 31:13
  So a point to be made is that, yeah, we do a massive amount of research on the science of
• 31:22
  golf, but our MO is is is much more to make the tools for the people, again, that get up in the
• 31:32
  morning and shave and only think about their aspect of, you know, golf science and learning
• 31:37
  and performance.
• 31:39
  You know?
• 31:39
  And, like, you know, I have to I have to make a really quick comment here is that one of the
• 31:45
  one of the one of the benchmarks of our program and one of our greatest areas of focus is in
• 31:52
  bringing as much of golf back to Green Grass as possible.
• 31:57
  I'm talking about fitting, teaching, doing business.
• 32:01
  And to that end, any any any any practitioner in Greengrass or independent practitioner even,
• 32:09
  you know, outside of the course, All of our all of our all of our tools for practitioners will
• 32:16
  be provided entirely for free forever.
• 32:20
  There will not be subscribe have to subscribe to anything, and, that's number one.
• 32:30
  The basically, we wanna empower the practitioners.
• 32:36
  Alright.
• 32:37
  So I'll I'll just jump to couch, coach.
• 32:39
  That's a fun thing.
• 32:41
  And and I I wanna just get a quick aside in there, before this.
• 32:45
  I want most people to understand that these practitioners that you're speaking about, for
• 32:49
  the most part, are independent contractors that may work at a course, a lot of them, not all,
• 32:55
  but that they are business owners themselves who are working on very slim margins to begin
• 33:01
  with.
• 33:02
  So anywhere that they can save a a few dollars even in subscription fees, make a massive deal
• 33:08
  to their bottom line at the end of the year, and allow them to maybe coach and to teach the
• 33:12
  game to more people.
• 33:13
  So, really, your tech and the open sourcing of it is helping to grow the game of golf in ways
• 33:20
  that maybe have never been accessible to the masses and really working through the
• 33:24
  practitioners to make that happen.
• 33:27
  Well, yeah, I mean, our whole goal is to reverse that sucking sound, you know, and bring
• 33:32
  golf back to green grass and the practitioners.
• 33:34
  You know, there's some golf pros out there that make a fortune.
• 33:37
  But for everyone making a fortune, there's about a 100 sleep in their cars.
• 33:42
  And they're not appreciated.
• 33:43
  They work extremely long hours.
• 33:46
  And it's it's you know?
• 33:47
  But they do it because of the fact that golf is their life.
• 33:50
  I mean, these are guys that have never watched haven't watched the TV network besides the golf
• 33:54
  channel since they were three years old.
• 33:57
  You know?
• 33:57
  So these are guys that that deserve a lot of love.
• 34:01
  And, again, in this age of democratization, why not?
• 34:05
  And I will touch on you know, you talked about the community in that.
• 34:08
  So part of our part of our our future plans, it'll be rolling out quite soon, we call
• 34:13
  MyGolfSavant.
• 34:15
  And MyGolfSavant, basically, anybody that's a registered user of MyGolfSavant, we basically
• 34:21
  can track the rest of their life's golf journey dynamically.
• 34:26
  Everything every, you know, everything they do with any of the technology, anything that gets
• 34:31
  analyzed, the you know, every all the scores that they wanna record them, all the trips they
• 34:35
  take, whatever it is.
• 34:37
  And it's literally you have your own, what we call narrow model, you know, in in GPT terms.
• 34:44
  Literally, you have your own AI model that follows your life, and we're developing right
• 34:51
  now a curse of self learning to not only, sort of amalgamate all of these inputs and reason
• 34:59
  with them, but actually then self learn from that.
• 35:03
  I mean, our whole our whole our whole gig is our our our our icon is an orchid with roots.
• 35:09
  You know?
• 35:10
  An orchid represents orchestration because that's AI sort of about orchestration, but the
• 35:16
  roots mean that we're building everything, you know, with the way you know, with computational
• 35:21
  intelligence from the roots up.
• 35:23
  You know, we're not, you know, we're not putting a wrapper on a on a on an old product,
• 35:28
  so to speak.
• 35:29
  But so, I mean, this idea that it you you know?
• 35:32
  And and and for the for the practitioner, we're tracking the practitioner's journey.
• 35:39
  We're we're we're tracking the golfer's journey individually, and we're tracking the bespoke
• 35:47
  relationship between the individual practitioner and the the student so that,
• 35:54
  literally, the student can take a virtual version of their practitioner to the range or
• 35:59
  the course or their living room or their office or even on an airplane.
• 36:03
  And, you know, actually, we have one of our patents pending.
• 36:06
  It's called virtual practitioner.
• 36:08
  So it it's all about empowering the practitioners and the players, you know, to to
• 36:15
  be able to control their own destiny and make their own decisions and get ground truth
• 36:20
  science and have everything fully coordinated.
• 36:25
  It's simply incredible.
• 36:27
  I I I feel very fortunate to, one, have ever met you, and and we have to shout out our
• 36:33
  mutual friend now, Dave Bisbee.
• 36:35
  Dave, obviously
• 36:36
  Oh, yeah.
• 36:36
  On on golf golfing with
• 36:38
  you guys.
• 36:39
  Dave Bisbee, golf's polymath.
• 36:41
  Nobody knows everything about golf the way Dave knows everything about golf.
• 36:48
  Well and we're looking forward to a future episode with him as well.
• 36:51
  But it was very important, I think, to get the, the overarching view of Savant from you first
• 36:58
  and and something that really everyone is going to be able to use regardless of whether you're
• 37:04
  you're trying to improve your game or not is the couch coach.
• 37:07
  If you are someone who, you know, is consuming golf and you wanna get a little bit of insight
• 37:13
  and and really it's built on all the tech that we talked about.
• 37:15
  It's built on the biomechanics and all of this and putting it into this thing that you can
• 37:20
  point at your at your TV while you're watching it and be able to process all of that data
• 37:27
  right from the TV and to bring that.
• 37:30
  I think that's incredibly powerful and something that I at least wanted you to touch
• 37:33
  on before we go.
• 37:34
  So tell us about the couch coach.
• 37:36
  Yeah.
• 37:36
  Okay.
• 37:37
  Yeah.
• 37:37
  You know, was just a crazy idea I had the week before the masters, and I thought, what if what
• 37:42
  if we had a what if we had a a I built a a model, you know, an AI model around the
• 37:49
  masters.
• 37:51
  And, you know, basically plugged in a lot of history about the masters and about the players
• 37:57
  involved.
• 37:58
  You know, we I actually literally hacked into masters.com live scoreboard.
• 38:04
  I don't shouldn't say that probably.
• 38:07
  And, you know, put some put some can what we call canon instructions in the in a really
• 38:14
  crude version of it to, like if somebody made a double bogey, you know, somewhere, say, ah,
• 38:18
  he's falling apart like a cheap suit, you know, which is my my late brother-in-law and, like, a
• 38:25
  a father to my to my kids that, you know, he he was very colorful.
• 38:31
  He loved golf, and he was very colorful in talking about it.
• 38:34
  You know?
• 38:34
  So I I think about the guys with their hats on backwards watching the tournament and and, you
• 38:39
  know, with the nachos and and and a couple beers and and, you know, the conversation.
• 38:44
  So I thought, well, let's have an AI guy that knows everything about players, everything
• 38:48
  about biomechanics, everything about the history, read every golf book on the planet.
• 38:53
  We haven't gotten that far yet.
• 38:55
  You know?
• 38:56
  And and, you you know, if you want if you want a biomechanical analysis about how how, you
• 39:01
  know, a a player a hit a particular sand shot, you know, or or, you know, or just analyze
• 39:08
  their face on or look for signs that they're choking.
• 39:11
  This gets the pre flex.
• 39:12
  You know, waggle change, timing, preshot routine, hips, head, shoulders, you know, that
• 39:17
  kind of thing.
• 39:19
  You know?
• 39:19
  And and and the whole idea just got expanded and expanded and expanded, and we you know,
• 39:26
  this will be coming coming for us slowly.
• 39:29
  But the whole we we tap into the TV, you know, I mean, pull the TV feed, go get a, you know,
• 39:35
  get a go get a a an old phone out of your drawer, aim it at the screen.
• 39:40
  And and all of a sudden, you got another, you know, kinda if you want a smart aleck, you
• 39:45
  know, with smart aleck commentary to join in.
• 39:49
  They know you.
• 39:50
  You know, they get to know you.
• 39:52
  Or if you just want somebody, you know, like j you want JJ to rivet analyze a guy's swing or
• 39:58
  or if you want, you know, if you wanna comment on, you know, a commentator's stupid comment
• 40:03
  about he put top signs top spin on the ball, which you can't do, you know, stuff like
• 40:08
  whatever it is.
• 40:08
  You know?
• 40:09
  So that's the whole idea, and and we'll be growing it over time.
• 40:15
  So, Bill, when you were, you know, inputting this data during the masters, is it safe to say
• 40:21
  that that your data and your model knew that Rory's tee shot on '18 was going into the pine
• 40:26
  straw before he hit
• 40:27
  it?
• 40:29
  Probably not then, but but absolutely yes in the future, you know, or at least, you know,
• 40:36
  some degree of that.
• 40:38
  You know, really, it's like there's no limit with what you can do with the technology that's
• 40:43
  available today.
• 40:44
  So you just thing the about AI is, you know, you don't just get a really good AI model and
• 40:50
  push the button.
• 40:52
  You know, it's it we call it HMC, human machine collaboration.
• 40:55
  It takes two to tango and you know, when you really wanna do stuff.
• 40:59
  But that's why, you know, if you as people more and more develop what I call these artisanal
• 41:06
  force augmentation chops, what that means is that the force is is the technology, but you
• 41:13
  wanna develop the human artisanal, thinking and and functionality around that that that the AI
• 41:20
  models will never develop.
• 41:22
  You know, you don't what you don't wanna do is develop the stuff that AI is gonna come out
• 41:27
  with next year or the year after.
• 41:29
  A guy named Richard Sutton, he referred to it as the bitter lesson.
• 41:33
  You know, there's a lot of bitter lessons going on.
• 41:35
  You know, I I developed, in six months, one person, something you know, a team of 10
• 41:43
  developed, you know, for $2,000,000 in the past.
• 41:47
  So it's like but that's the bitter lesson.
• 41:49
  Right?
• 41:50
  We we all get we can get past the bitter lesson, but the idea is to design around the
• 41:56
  tools that are emerging and that exist.
• 42:00
  And by doing that, you you know, it's not just me.
• 42:03
  I mean, actually, we we really, really wanna recruit young, old, whatever, but new AI
• 42:11
  entrepreneurs that wanna build, you know, and change the golf industry this you know, from
• 42:17
  the ground up, you know, in this new world.
• 42:21
  And, you know, we we're we're gonna be really promoting for that.
• 42:25
  We we're we'll make technology available, basically run a virtual incubator.
• 42:30
  We'll we'll teach.
• 42:32
  We'll give open source or, you know, license rights to IP.
• 42:38
  We'll help commercialize.
• 42:40
  You know, we wanna foster, you know, this what will inevitably happen.
• 42:45
  I'm not and, you know, I'm not picking on anybody, but, you know, I mean, it's like in
• 42:49
  all of the industry, industry, it's gonna change so much.
• 42:51
  And there's gonna be a lot of players that we never heard of before that are gonna be
• 42:55
  dominating.
• 42:57
  Yeah.
• 42:57
  I think there's an an inevitability, for what is coming.
• 43:02
  It's just nice to be, with the team that sees that and is not afraid of it, but charges
• 43:08
  headlong into it and said if it is going to be, then why not be the force driving that and
• 43:14
  being the artisanal human inside of that model rather than someone who's merely reacting to it
• 43:21
  two years down the line.
• 43:23
  Bill, I'm absolutely blessed to know you, to have met through Dave.
• 43:28
  I'm I'm very grateful.
• 43:29
  You and your team are going to be, I think, a big part of my life moving forward over the
• 43:34
  next, hopefully, many, many years.
• 43:37
  And, I get to be a witness in many ways to all of this growth that's happening and to take
• 43:43
  some small part in it as, kind of the dummy in the room when you get together with such smart
• 43:48
  individuals as you have around you.
• 43:51
  But to be someone who can pull that human element out of it and to get that story is
• 43:56
  something that I I I truly look forward to.
• 43:58
  So, Bill, I obviously, I'm very grateful to you.
• 44:03
  I want everyone to go and check out Savant Golf at savantgolf.com.
• 44:07
  That is savantgolf.com.
• 44:11
  There's gonna be a lot of really great stuff coming from there.
• 44:14
  The the website is up.
• 44:16
  A lot of the tech and things that we talked about today.
• 44:18
  By the time some of you are listening to this, we'll already be live, you know, going out
• 44:22
  today.
• 44:23
  Maybe not there, but you're gonna get a taste of what's to come here very soon.
• 44:27
  And some really great content that we're gonna be shooting around it as well, not just
• 44:30
  interviews, but on the course and green grass content, we'll call it.
• 44:36
  Yeah.
• 44:36
  That's great.
• 44:37
  You know, it's gonna be a lot of fun, and it it really at the end of the day, this is just
• 44:40
  about making stuff.
• 44:42
  And I look forward to anything that, you know, we can help you with and work with you on, and
• 44:48
  it's been lovely, chatting.
• 44:51
  Thank you, Bill.
• 44:52
  Thank you for letting me be a part of Savant Golf, and thank you for being part of the
• 44:57
  scene.
• 44:58
  Well, Ned, thanks.
• 44:59
  I'll go to you.
• 45:00
  Thanks so much.