Hey, Coleman, what are we going to talk about in the podcast
today? Hey, I'm Coleman and I built the
launch monitor at home so that you can too.
Welcome back to Linked by Golf, the podcast exploring the
connections and journeys of people linked by the game.
I'm your host, Ross McGuire, and this week I'm joined by Coleman
Rollins, a keen amateur golfer who has embarked on a journey to
build his own launch monitor. In this episode, we discussed
Coleman's love for golf and how this project is progressing so
far. Let's go over to Coleman.
Hey, Coleman, thanks for joining the podcast.
How you doing? Hey, good.
Ross, thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure and we're going to jump straight.
And Coleman, so you've been posted on Instagram about your
journey. Worth building a launch monitor
of your own. I'd love you to tell the Austers
at a high level how you're getting on with that and what
took you down that path. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So I, I think every couple of months as a golfer in the
community these days, we see all kinds of launch monitors coming
across our feeds. And every few months I would
think about what do I need to buy one?
I, I kind of want one. I would use it.
But every time I went through this exercise, I realized that
they're either too expensive for the really nice ones, or the
cheap ones aren't very good, or they require subscriptions to
use, which is another financial burden.
And in my experience, the software for all of them is not
very good. And myself, I'm a software
engineer and I thought, well, maybe I'll give this a try, I'll
see if I can build my own. And started posting on social
media and everyone is really into it.
Absolutely. And call me, we've jumped
straight and we've jumped straight to the part that we're
going to talk about right through the podcast.
But you've clearly got an American accent, so where are
you from and what took you into the game in the first place?
Yeah, so I grew up in the state of Minnesota, in the states in
the major city, Minneapolis, and I grew up caddying at a Country
Club there, right in Minneapolis from a from the age of 13, I
think. So I was around the game a lot
every day in the summer and working at a Country Club back
then, you know, all the members had all the new gear all the
time. And, you know, I got to know
the, the, the professionals working at the club.
I got to know the, you know, the teaching guys.
And eventually I kind of transitioned to working in the
pro shop and, you know, cleaning the golf carts and driving the
range picker around. And, you know, that job was just
amazing. It it got me on the golf course
every single day and it got me around some really good golfers
who I who I learned a lot from. Brilliant.
And how much did you play when you started the Country Club?
I guess maybe not much at the start, but how much did you play
as time went on? Yeah, not much at the start, but
as I kind of grew older and, and made my way to college, I kind
of kept my, my one day a week range cleanup job just so I
could keep my golf privileges. And I and I was playing all the
time, man, you know, 2-3 nights a week.
I was getting out and I was hitting balls every day at the
driving range there. I would.
I would just love going there by myself in the evening.
I could spend the whole day at the driving range.
So because you were working at the Country Club, you go to have
balls anytime you want to basically outside.
Yes, exactly. That's a dream job when you're
done, AJ. It is is incredible man.
And of course, the range was beautiful and the balls were
nice and it was perfect. And do you still live in the
Minnesota area or have you moved elsewhere in the states now?
So I spent about nine years living in Chicago and working
there, and then my wife and I have been in Seattle, now on the
West Coast of the States, for about four years.
And do you play a lot at the moment?
I know you're in the launch monitor so you must be hitting
some balls anyway, but do you get to play much these days?
I do, yeah. I'm playing honestly more than
ever because the season is so much longer out here.
And tomorrow morning I'm actually going to Band of Dunes
with some friends, so I'm very excited for that.
It's going to be a little chilly, a little rainy, but
that's OK. And yeah, the season is just so
long out here. It's great.
And I noticed recently, did I see you posting you played
Chambers Bay where they had I guess the US Open, right?
That was your speech, one were you playing?
Right, that's right. Yeah.
One of my good friends is a member out there and I've played
there probably a dozen times at this point and it's it's a
really special place. So what's chambers be like?
I mean, we saw it many, many years ago when Spaeth one.
What's it like to actually play when you're an amateur and and
you're a good golfer, but what's it actually like when you get
there? Yeah.
You know, it's it's one of the most incredible views that you
can get in this side of the country.
It's right on the Puget Sound. And you know, it's it's a very
interesting golf course because it's very wide open off the tee.
And so you can get, it can trick you into think you're playing
really well because you're hitting a lot of fairways, but
the greens and the, and the slopes around the greens are
really, really tricky. And oftentimes your score will
rely on whether or not you got the right bounce One Direction
or the other. Because there's a lot to learn
about the complexes of the greens and and how they work.
It's really, it's a great golf course.
And is there any other courses in the Seattle area that you
tend to play quite a bit at the moment?
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, there's, I would say
most of the good courses that I like are South of the city.
There's another one right in the shadow of Mount Rainier called
the Home Course that I really like.
And I'm still trying to network my way to get to some of the
other really nicer clubs like Sahali Country Club, which is
where they had the the Women's PGA Championship last year.
There's a lot of, really. Good ones, I think one in the
PGA Championship there many years ago.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, wow.
And then in terms of access to the courses, I guess a lot of
sort of country clubs and stuff. But do you have here in the UK,
we've got this notion of having like open competitions where you
can go and play a course and it's they're just green fee and
sort of just green fee. And anyone from any club in the
area or anywhere actually with a handicap of a certain level can,
can join that competition and play.
Is that something you get in the States and and the Washington
area? You know, not as much as I would
like. That sounds really great.
But you know, unfortunately my tournament opportunities are
only only a couple every summer, right?
There's the state amateur and the state mid amateur.
OK. And then I, I also sometimes
play some tournaments in on a smaller scale, but but I wish we
had that. Yeah.
And do you ever do like member guests and stuff like that?
Do you get access to those kind of?
I don't yet have a good member friend to tap in for that, but
soon, hopefully soon. Yeah.
And it's just as interesting to hear the difference between the
UK and the USI mean, the US is very Country Club centric.
I know there's still a reasonable number of public
courses. We're very lucky in the UK.
There's there's of course many I guess hard to get into golf
clubs and expensive to get into golf clubs, but there's still
especially I would say in Scotland and and the wider parts
of the UK will be from the London air.
There's a lot of courses you can just rock up and play, and
membership isn't that expensive and you know it's not a massive
barrier in the game. That's really great.
That's really. Great.
Yeah, well, you get you over here for the game.
That's one thing we can work on. That's right.
Please do. So then we got you on here to
talk about launch monitors and just before we started the Podgy
that your famous tagline. So you basically you wanted to
build a launch monitor so other people can as well and I can
open source basis. But often all you talked just to
the start about the idea, the concept, but where do you begin?
How does it actually start? What do you start with and
what's the first thing you are the first things you need to do
when you want to build your own launch monitor.
Yeah, that's a great question. So to start with, there's two
main categories of launch monitors.
There's ones that are based on radar and there's ones that are
based on camera. And I initially chose radar
because for one, it's cheaper, the equipment required is
cheaper, and two, it's a little bit quicker to get going.
At least that's what I thought. I've learned a lot since then.
But that was kind of where I started was OK, I need to figure
out how to how to work a radar. And by chance, one of my oldest
friends from college is a PhD radar guy.
Yeah. And so he has been a huge
resource for me, very helpful in learning the technology and
figuring this out. So I ran the idea by him.
He was super into it. He was really excited about the
idea. But I win.
And is he a golfer? Just to ask, is he someone who
plays golf? Unfortunately not, right, But
he's he, he's now he said he wants to try and publish a paper
on this technology of radar launch monitor.
So that's pretty cool. Yeah.
So, yeah, man, I, you know, I chose radar.
I ran the idea by him and I I went to my favorite AI
companion, Claude, and I said I need to run a radar.
I'm thinking about this and that, like, what parts do I
need? And then I started going.
So what parts do you need Things.
What do you attach the radar to and what does that look like?
Yeah. So the radar the our our
computer, our brain of the device is a Raspberry Pi, which
for the listeners who might not know is just a small computer.
And it's great. It's small and compact, but the
computing power of it is limited.
Yeah. So there are some limitations
with the Raspberry Pi, but that's where I started and
there's a huge ecosystem of Raspberry Pi technology and
components that are available for really cheap price.
So that was the choice that made sense.
Right. And then once you've got it I
guess hooked up to a Raspberry Pi, where'd it go from there?
What? What can?
Are you actually just putting that radar down at a driving
engine, hitting some box and seeing what actually comes up on
the screen? What does that work?
Yeah, you just turn it on and see what you get.
So what's fascinating and what I've learned about radars is
that every, every single thing that the radar detects has a
very unique shape in the data, right?
And so you can imagine the signals coming back from the
radar as kind of waves. And the nature of the radar I'm
I'm using is called the Doppler radar.
Yeah. And so it sends out radar waves
and they bounce back off of things and then we can see like
the strength of how they bounce back and the frequency and
etcetera. And that never stops.
It's all it's caught once it's switched on, it's constant.
There's radar being sent permanently, effectively out of
that device. Yes, exactly.
And the the phenomenon of Doppler radars, you know when a
when a ambulance or a police car drives by you and their sirens
are on and, and the sound kind of changes pitch when it goes by
you. Yeah.
You know, it's like, you know, that's that the, the, the
physics involved in that is called the Doppler shift.
And depending on how much that shift changes, we can calculate
how fast that thing is going. Right.
So that's the, that's what this whole radar launch monitor is
based off of. And if you saw just for people
listening, if you put down a, let's say a Doppler radar and
I'm going to say you're pointing it down a driving range, does
the dog parade go out like a kind of scatter gun or does it
go out like a sniper rifle? If you want, Is it go on a
straight line or does it go on a dispersion?
How does it? How does it slip the radar out?
Yeah, great question. It's kind of a cone.
Right. And depending on your radar and
how strong it is, my radar in particular, probably about 6
feet, 6 to 10 feet is the effective range of it.
Wow. And there's certainly a lot of
trial and error of like where, where do I need to position it,
excuse me to get the right. View Wow.
So stage 1, as you've got a raspy pie, you've connected a
Doppler radar to it, when I should have asked, what's the
screen? How do you see the screen?
Or did you just plug into another computer at the start or
what did that would be? Yeah, the screen is connected to
the Raspberry Pi. Right.
And they make lots of screens for Raspberry Pi's.
It's a. It's a real common thing.
So you've got like, your homemade dopplerator on the site
of Raspberry Pi in a screen, which are just like effectively
stuck together for one, a better word in layman's terms, Yeah.
And you're then hat and golf balls on the page to see what's
happening. Yeah.
So initially I I started with a Doppler radar that was about as
big as a postage stamp. It was very small.
Wow. And I quickly discovered that
that was not nearly enough for what I needed.
And so after some more research, I landed on a commercially
available radar that's probably, you know, about this big now,
probably as big as maybe a, a greeting card or something like
that. Yeah, or even like Watch iPhone
or something. Is that that?
Kind of stuff. Exactly, exactly.
And it's, it's a little more expensive, but it's much more
powerful and much more customizable and kind of
configurable. Right.
And that was a really great choice because I've also
established a relationship with the company who makes it because
they've, they've gotten wind of this project and, and having
some trouble figuring it out. So they're they're helping me.
Well, that's really close. They're actually giving you
feedback on your questions you've got and that's shoes that
you're heading against or just features you want to try and put
in place. That's really cool.
Fantastic. So then you've got you're on the
range. What are you then seeing in the
data and on the screen? What kind of things are?
And I'm going to maybe just cover analogy for people that
wouldn't, and I wouldn't look at our radar screen, but I can
imagine what this is. Is it almost like just
background noise? If you're in a restaurant, for
example, there's just always this constant water of noise in
the background. And then if you were trying to
identify, say, my voice versus your voice, you then need to do
some kind of filtration to figure out the thing that you're
looking for. Is that how it works?
Exactly, that's exactly right. You know, I mentioned earlier
that every everything that you want to see with the radar has a
very unique shape in the data and it's our job to find that
shape amongst the noise. OK.
And that's part of what my my radar friend Jerry shout out,
Jerry, that's part of what he's been teaching me about is OK.
So we we turn on the radar and we and we gather a bunch of
data, not swinging, not doing anything.
And so this is our noise kind of baseline.
OK. And that just looks like a.
If you were to plot it on a graph, it's just like a band.
Kind of. And then when then you turn it
off, OK, turn it back on and then step in front of the radar
and take some swings. And you can see in the data we
capture that the band goes, goes, goes.
And then you can kind of see where I stood in front of it.
And then you can see a huge spike when we make a swing.
Right, because it's detected in faster motion or just to fight
to this motion? Faster motion, exactly.
So this the speed of the movement actually helped makes
it easier to identify there's change there.
Absolutely yes. Wow, I see.
Easier. So to give the lusters an idea
and actually where do you do your testing?
Do you do a range or do you do in like a garbage or a basement
or something? I do so I do 90% of it right
here in my office or in the garage.
Wow. And then when I feel like I'm
ready to, to test it at the range, like yesterday, I went
and did some testing. I'll bring it over there and and
hit some balls and hope everything works well enough to
gather some good data for to come back and work on it.
And when you first started, like how many balls did you need to
have just to get an indication of what was going on?
And what did your process look like to get the feedback and
stuff? You know, that's a great
question because I, as a software engineer, am very used
to making a change and being able to see if it works right
away. And since this project is both
software and hardware, I'm having a really hard time with
the hardware aspect because it takes a long time to figure out
if what you're doing actually works.
And if it doesn't, sometimes you need a new part that takes like,
you know, you got to order in the, in the mail from Amazon.
And so I, I, to answer your question, I've spent hundreds of
hours trial and error testing and for a long time I was enough
was just kind of swinging a club in front of it just to see if
that would register. But yeah, like you said, at a
certain point you really have to test it out on a true, you know,
situation where you would use it.
And, you know, that costs money. I need to go to the range and
buy some balls because I don't have a SIM set up at home or
anything. Of course, because you need you
have something to test that again.
So you've got a baseline of even the ball speed and stuff where
you've got no idea what's going on life.
Exactly. Yeah, really.
So it's a slow, it's a slow process.
What can I March in and how long have you been on this project
now, Coleman, how long have you been going with us?
Only since about the start of December.
Really. Wow.
If you've been enjoying the show, please do remember to
follow on your favorite podcast platform and share it with a
friend. Now let's get back to the pod.
And in that time, well, if you would just say you've been able
to achieve at least for the first parts that you feel are
really solid. If you look at some, if there's
some metrics you think are, you know, important for people that
would be the kind of baselines are looking for, what kind of
things you've been able to identify so far?
Yeah. I mean, I think think I've got a
good baseline of having a radar that detects speed of Golf Club
and golf ball. No doubt about that.
Right now, the current challenge is fine tuning the radar.
Right. Because there's a ton of things
that I just don't know about it and I need to learn.
And like you mentioned earlier, the project is all open source.
And so now, since people have been seeing the project and
getting excited about it, I'm hoping to have other people
contribute who are also interested in doing 1.
Yeah. And then just by to the club
head speed and the ball speed. So if you put down like APRGR or
a stock radar or see you in a top Tracer range or something, I
mean what are the numbers like just for cop head and ball speed
compared to what other reasons you're getting elsewhere?
Pretty close. Pretty close I would say.
I would say better than Top Tracer.
Wow. But not as good as Trackman.
Right, my friends that try, you know, be pleased to hear that.
That's really cool. So you've been able to get,
let's say, top trace of quality data on ball speed club head
speed yes, our Raspberry Pi and our radar you bought yourself.
That is incredible. And obviously hundreds of hours
of work. You know, I don't want to be in
play it that that the real crazy part is it meant a working test
and you've had to do it right. That's right.
And ideally, aside from dialing
in the radar, the next goal will be to generate an accurate carry
distance estimation. OK.
And for that we need spin and launch angle.
And do you get the spinning launch angle from the radar or
do you need some other way of getting the spinning launch
angle? How would that work, Coleman?
Yeah, so there's two parts to it for the launch angle.
So my I also have a small camera connected to the Raspberry Pi,
right. And so the my thought there is
to capture the ball leaving the club.
OK. And to calculate the launch
angle that way. Right.
Like with recording. Yeah.
And then when it comes to the spin, so another fascinating
thing that I learned from the manufacturers of the radar is
that when a ball is spinning in the air, it kind of wobbles a
little bit. So the the the radar waves
bouncing off of it will show this little wobble.
And so you can you can figure out the spin from that.
No way. So I'm going to use layman's
terms, but effectively the ball vibrating and that's it.
That's it. Yes, you can read that from like
5-5 feet on a ball that's been hurt to say about the 160 miles
an hour. Hopefully we're not there yet,
but hopefully. That's fascinating.
That's that's crazy. Why?
I know. That's really cool, yeah.
So that, you know, when it comes to that point, I think I am
going to have to get like a net or something to hit in my
backyard because I can't be spending $15 every time I go to.
I think we can manage to create social net.
Yeah, please. I'm sure we can do that, common.
The community will come together and get the garden.
That's no problem at all. If there's any any home
simulator companies that want to help me out, that'd be great.
And the things you've been doing, so just to talk people
through your Instagram, just talk the lobsters through what
you've been doing on Instagram to I guess, document the journey
and bring more people along with you.
I'd love to hear about that, Coleman.
Yeah, I think that's been a really big learning process too.
And what's really interesting, as I was just talking with my
wife this morning and people really enjoy seeing you try
something and, and fail at it, which is, which is very, which
is fascinating because half of my videos have been like, well,
I tried this and it didn't work. See you tomorrow, we'll try
something else. And I think being just really
honest about this thing that you're learning how to do and
like, come along, learn with me. And not only that, but
everything that I've learned that I've learned is free and
available for you to learn too. I think people really appreciate
that. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you've been swooping and I think the part is is
compelling. Then as you're saying that
people are more interested or maybe no more, but definitely
engagement levels when you've put a kind of failure out there,
but then they see you back the next day worthy either maybe I
failed again and I've learned something or do you know what?
I managed to crack that problem for Kelly, Yes, he's on a night
move. It becomes almost like a little
money can. A drama series is just plain on
every game. And I see money in the sense of
short form, right? It's just here's a 32nd clip
update, right? What we're getting today.
Yeah, yeah, I think you got it. It's a fascinating thing.
And yeah, I've gotten so many messages from people who are so
interested and so fascinated. What's really interesting too is
I've gotten a lot of messages of people trying to commercialize
this. Right.
And I tell them, no, that's not what this is about.
This is a community project. Yeah, because let's do the
tagline. We recorded, or should I say you
recorded that part record and you said it, but help me with
the tagline again. Hey, I'm Coleman and I've built
the launch monitor at home so you can't too.
Yeah, absolutely. That's that's brilliant.
So you're basically saying, hey, it's not necessarily anyone who
can do this, but you're trying to bring down barriers for
people to have, I guess like a good enough launch monitor in
the house. Yeah, we're not trying to take
on, you know, amazing brands. You're not trying to make an
elite level launch monitor. You're trying to give something
that people could use at home that maybe only want to spend, I
don't know, 4, five, $600.00 and get something that's really nice
and and they've done it. They'll say you're not trying to
go and to high end market yourself.
Exactly. Exactly.
And then so other than being asked on a podcast, which is
strange enough in itself, what other kind of weird and
wonderful questions have you been asked through Instagram and
other places about the journey and how it's going so far?
Yeah, yeah, I've gotten a lot of people who are very keen to
help. Oh good.
Yeah, so that's really great. Interestingly, way more people
from Instagram want to help them from TikTok.
I don't know if that's an age group thing or what, but just,
you know, I've gotten, I did AQ and a for the golf works news
site, which was very cool. I also just this morning got a
message from a sorry, an instructor on Instagram called
named Shaheen Shaheen Nakshavani, right?
And I don't know if you've heard of him before, but I've looked
up to him for a long time. He's a really good, smart guy
and great, great instructor. And he messaged me today and
said, Hey, man, I love what you're doing.
And it's like, wow, that's that's.
Cool. That's really cool.
Yeah, that's really nice. That is awesome.
Then Coleman, just following in a little bit more on the launch
monitor and and what stages you've come through.
So we cannot go to the part. You've got a screen, you've got
your Raspberry Pi, you've got your Doppler radar connected,
you've got a camera as well. How do they all fit together?
Because there's a part that you released the other day and a
video that I think would really get people excited, right?
And also not excited enough. But you've started taking stages
now and milestones that are really grabbing attention.
So talk the listeners through what that might be.
Yes. So that would be the enclosure
that puts it all together, which I'm very proud of.
And I also enlisted the help of another smart friend.
This one's name is Peter. And he, I've known him my whole
life. He's one of my best friends.
And you know, he's got all those big tools in his garage where
you can like machine parts and, and create, I don't know, cut
down steel and stuff like that. And.
Wow. And I asked him, hey, would you
be interested in helping me with this project like I need, I need
an enclosure for all my technology.
And he said yes, absolutely. And he built it for me and it's
really cool. Wow, that is awesome.
So he put together, did you give him a spec or did he did you
just give him kind of rough measurements?
How did they put that together then?
Yeah, so I told them I I gave them the specs for how big the
screen is and and how big the radar is and you know what the
radar needs as far as space. And I gave him full creative
control. I said, you go whatever you
think. He's the his job.
He's a, he's an engineer by trades.
I told, I told him, go ahead, man.
You, you design it. It turned out awesome.
I've got to ask a simple question, but I'm just thinking
here, how's it powered? Coleman, I forgot to ask, how is
powered tighter you get power to the unit, the screen, how do you
do that? So right now it just plugs into
the outlet. Right.
Yeah, it definitely would ideally have a battery someday.
Course, yeah. But right now I got to carry
around a big cable with me whenever I go to the traffic.
You need to get a Bay that's right next to the yeah
electrical sockets so you can get some power on.
Exactly. People walk by there.
What is this guy doing? I.
Hope you're putting down a safety cable cover.
Yeah, no tripping over this one. That's awesome.
So you're just taking a long and what if the driving range, She's
been saying if they got any feedback, are they on board?
What are they thinking about it? You know, so I've got a few
friends. I'm friends with the guys who
work at the local driving range and, and they love it.
You know, I'm there two times a week and I see them.
How's it going today, Coleman? What are you testing out like?
Well, I got this, this and this, and sometimes if it's really
slow and I'm lucky, they'll let me on the track, man.
Right. With the nice golf balls so.
That's great. Yeah.
And is the range getting any attention stresses or people in
the area, Then you'll get to know about the range and
starting to go there and asking, hey, where's Coleman tonight?
I didn't see this guy. You know, that's a good point.
They they aren't getting any attention, but I should be
giving them more attention because those guys are well.
That's awesome. So they have to put scarf.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And we'll get on the show notes as welcome and anyone we've
tagged today in the conversation, we can catch up
afterwards. We'll make sure they're all
mentioned in the show notes. It's really important to have
that as well. Then we've got effectively a
launch monitor and an enclosure. How big is the enclosure?
If you thought about if you're looking like an iPhone or a
laptop or something, what kind of size is it?
I would say it's about maybe half the size of a shoe box.
Right. It's not that big.
That's probably good actually for, I mean effectively version
one. That's incredible.
Isn't it? Yeah, that's right.
It's it's, it's just about as big as I would have expected.
And you know no, no bigger than than GC quad or you know the
Bushnell. Yeah.
Wow, that was really cool small
and then you mentioned you've got an open source project as
well, so we can get that in the show notes.
I'll get those details off you. Great.
What what stuff to come? What are the next phases and the
what are the chapters coming up? Where are we going to?
What videos we're going to see next on Instagram from you?
Yeah man, so one thing many people have asked me about is
integrating with simulator software.
Well, that would be nice if you could do that.
Wow. Yeah, Yep.
So that's something that I'm very interested in.
I don't think it'll actually be as hard as as it sounds, knock
on wood, but that's a big one, you know, figuring out the spin,
that's a big one. I would also like to start
building some software to try and gather some data about your
session, your range session. Right.
So like, store information about what you've actually done.
Yes, yes. And try to get, you know, try to
learn something, get some analysis, some insights from,
from your data. I think that would be.
That was actually one of the main reasons I started the
project is because none of the other launch monitors let you
take your data from them. Yeah.
And do something with it, you know, whatever that may be.
Put it in a spreadsheet or whatever you know.
I think it's an it's an interesting point, Coleman.
And I don't know if there's maybe a worry from potentially
the the range owners more than like Trackman or Top Tracer or
whoever. I don't think it would matter to
them actually. I think you know it, but I
wonder if there's just the concern of, well, if the person
learns enough from that whack. But in reality is you're going
to have so many hundreds of golf balls and there'd be so many
failures in there that unless you kind of really put effort
into learning what the data means and what you can do with
it, you wouldn't learn a lot. But you actually would need to
have a purpose of taking the data, right?
That's right. That's right.
I think, I think you can learn a lot from that information and I
think that's really important and that's, that's a feature
that I want. And so I, you know, I want to, I
want to add that in. That's really cool.
And then in terms of like unit size, are you just going to keep
working with the same unit and refining the software aspect of
it now? Have you got designs on changing
the hardware or is it just all purely in the software and
functionality for the moment? For the moment, it's purely
software. However, I think absolutely I
would love to refine the hardware.
I would love to, you know, maybe have a version two of the of the
enclosure. Yeah, as soon as, as soon as you
know, Trackman or someone wants to come along and sponsor me,
I'll we can refine as much as we want.
Fantastic. That's really cool.
So cool. We'll jump on it.
Some quick questions, maybe not that quite, it depends how the
answers go, but just to get as towards more of your own golf.
So favorite golf course, where do you like playing the most?
Maybe that's in Seattle area, maybe it's by Coleman,
Minnesota. Who's your favorite place to go?
Yeah, tough, tough question. You know, one of my all time
favourites is the course I grew up carrying on.
It's called the Minnekotta Club. Right.
It's a Donald Ross course and. You go.
Just a. Just a perfect shape all the
time, just beautiful. But I would say nowadays it's
got to be Chambers Bay. You know, you can't beat it out
there. It's it's a legendary course.
And is it, did you say you've got a fence as a member there or
is it like a public course? It's a public course, but they
do offer memberships. Fantastic, so how much if you
were a casual visitor to Chambers Bay which has been on
U.S. Open Rd. you think you mentioned
the ladies majors as well? How much does it cost for
around? In the summertime, it's going to
be probably 250 dollars, $300. 250, yeah, I mean that's for the
I'd say for an Open Championship or major Championship venue in
the UK that's actually under the prices now that are being
charged for a lot of them. Yeah, like Saint Andrews, I
believe is in dollars probably 550 in the summer, OK.
Some other places are approaching 600.
So that's really good for, I mean, it's still expensive
obviously, but that's pretty good for a major championship
venue in the States. Yeah, yeah.
OK. That's good to know.
And then other than Augusta, what course would you still like
to play? Where do you want to get to?
Or maybe a top three? Top 3 Cypress Point is on there.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And that's, that's a tough question, man.
Augusta, of course I was. I did go to the Masters in 2014.
Nice. There you go.
I went to AI, went to a practice round, and I'll never forget
that. That was incredible.
I got the flight. Year son of the year that Rory
collapsed in the Masters. Was that 2014?
No, sorry, it wasn't PG. That was his last major, wasn't
it? That.
Yeah, rather than the Masters clubs?
Yeah. Yeah.
Well. Yeah, I got the flag here, right
in the back. From there we go.
From the from the course. I've got nothing.
Yes, Cypress Point, Augusta and I would love to play some
courses like some some deserty ones that like kind of Black
Desert in Utah. I would love to come to the UK.
That's something I've never played golf, you know, outside
of the United States. We'd love to have you.
I mean, honestly, Coleman, I've seen there's lots of groups
known in social media people can offer in to host folks, even if
it's not necessarily their membership course, but just to
play with people and countries and help them out in terms of
travel and maybe accommodation. But just advice, you know, like
folks in here that could be yourself sitting here.
I'm in the Seattle area and no chambers barely.
Well, if you want to play with me, I'll go down to you.
You're paying a green fee, They're paying a green fee.
And then they could help you coming over to the UK.
It's. I'm seeing it more commonly now.
Sure. Yeah, sounds good.
We'd. Love to have you over.
So yeah, Coleman, it's been great having you on.
I really appreciate it. We're going to keep following
your journey. And just to wrap up, what's the
handle for Instagram where people can find you?
Yeah. Thank you so much for us.
It's at Coleman Golfs. Fantastic.
Well, listen, keep up the journey.
I'm sure you get plenty of help, lots of people reaching out.
And thanks so much for coming on.
It's been great to hear from you, Koma.
Yeah, you bet. Thanks a lot, Ross.
I'd like to thank Coleman for joining me and for sharing his
Launch Monitor story. Do check the show notes for the
people who have helped Coleman along the way, and it's on
social media handles. If you enjoyed this episode,
please follow a link by Golf on your favorite podcast platform.
Leave a review and share it with someone who loves golf in
people's journeys. You can also find the show on
Instagram at Linked by G2024. For future episodes, clips and
insights, I'm Ross McGuire, thanks for listening.
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