CaddiePlayer Developer Joins Race to Dubai Final
Francesco Molinari winner of the Race to Dubai 2018
This week I had the pleasure of joining Stephane Barras the founder of CaddiePlayer in Dubai for the final event of the European Tour. For reference, I am the lead software developer for CaddiePlayer and have worked with Stephane for many years to develop this platform into an advanced system for analyzing and evaluating opportunities for improvement in players' games.
I don't watch a lot of golf, and it's been quite a few years since I hit the links, so it was very insightful for me to spend Thursday following elite golfer Tommy Fleetwood around on Round 1of the Dubai tournament while scoring his play using the CaddiePlayer system. Stephane scored for Francesco Molinari, as the two leading players in the European Tour, faced each other at the "Earth" course at the Jumeirah Estes: the final event of the season to determine the champion.
Following the players around the course, it was interesting to see how skilled they played - even when they would make a bad shot into a sand trap or in the rough, they would recover right away with an amazing shot landing right next to the hole. At one point, Molinari flubbed a chip from the edge of the green, but followed it up with a chip shot that rolled right into the cup, saving par. Given how consistently they played, I was very surprized to do add up Tommy's score at the end of the first 9 holes to see that he was only 1 shot below par. Molinari was playing better than Tommy, but a few mental errors on short putts at holes 7 and 9 cost him at least 2 strokes that he'd fought so hard to earn through his amazing play in the first 6 holes.
As I entered the scoring data into our paper printout of the CaddiePlayer scoresheets, I got a firsthand experience of how difficult it can be to keep up with a player's progress throughout the full 18 holes of a course. There are lot of distractions, it's hot outside, and it can be difficult to calculate the exact distance from the hole. But once I got the hang of things, it became easier to anticipate where I needed to position myself to accurately record the important data.
At the end of the round, we were a bit tired, but learned a lot about how we can make some improvements to the system, and I really enjoyed seeing my first professional golf tournament. Tommy and Francesco were amazing to watch, and after the round, Tommy was nice enough to sign my CaddiePlayer scoresheet!
Tommy Fleetwood CaddiePlayer Score Card
The next day, Stephane and I sat down and entered the data into the CaddiePlayer system, where we identified a few additional improvements we will implement, and I now have a much better idea of how to make the platform easier and more convenient for Stephane and the other esteemed members of the CaddiePlayer community.
At the end, the masters 2017 Danny Willet won the tournament, but it was Molinari who captured the Race to Dubai Championship. We had a great time following the golf and seeing the pros playing at the top level of the sport. Stephane may have procured a new client, and we'll be introducing some helpful changes to the CaddiePlayer system over the next few weeks.
Cheers,
Matt Hammond - Lead Developer for CaddiePlayer.com
Matt Hammond in Dubai
Full report from the European Tour > http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2018/tournamentid=2018090/index.html
