72 GOLF.COM / S e p t ember 2019An easy way for
Rory McIlroy to
track sleep and
recovery pat-
terns while mon-
itoring athletic
improvement?
There’s a strap
for that.person’s body in peak physical condition.
It also offers an accurate snapshot
and recovery plan based on how the body
is responding to things that occur off
the field or course, like travel, stress
and work.
Whoop is already approved for use in
Major League Baseball and is currently
being employed by teams in the National
Basketball Association and National
Football League to track recovery. Now,
Tour players are starting to find there’s
a benefit to wearing the strap as well.
Given the number of hours guys like
McIlroy and Stallings log on the course
and in the gym—not to mention the
stress and travel involved—recovery is
a critical piece of the equation to ensure
they aren’t running on fumes with the
tournament on the line. For Stallings,
the strap helps him work out smarter
and get the most out of his body without
overreaching during practice and training.
“I’ve been using it for a couple of years
now, and honestly, it has helped me a
ton,” said Stallings, who shed 50 pounds
in the past year after completely altering
his exercise routine and diet. “Basically,
it helps track your movement, your heart
rate, your sleep. It’s good for workouts,
but it’s even better when you’re trying
to figure out recovery.”
Whoop was only available to elite
athletes initially, but in recent years, the
company has opened up its technology
to the public with a $30 monthly
subscription fee (strap included). The
latest 3.0 version offers five-day battery
life and the ability to share live data with
trainers, coaches and friends.
As for McIlroy’s acclimation to the
strap: He’s doing just fine. One week
after he started using Whoop at
Muirfield Village, he found the winner’s
circle in Canada. Whoop won’t make you
a better golfer, but it very well could
make you a smarter golfer.
GOLF/Technology 2019
Like any young golfer warming up for
any old golf lesson, I strode onto the driving range
at Rock Hill G&CC in Manorville, N.Y., to loosen up.
Shaking off the rust of an 80-minute car ride from
Manhattan, I turned to a typical warmup routine, wedges to
irons to driver. As I got to the longer clubs, I settled on a swing
thought—slow on my takeaway, hold the follow-through—which
seemed to work relatively well. Why? Hard to say, beyond the
fact that it felt right. The answer to an internal question—“What
feels right?”—has always been my guiding light.
But there was nothing “any old” about this lesson. After I’d
begun to work up a sweat on the outdoor range, I was summoned
to Rock Hill’s modest pro shop and into head pro (and GOLF
Top 100 Teacher) Michael Jacobs’s not-so-modest GEARS (Golf
Evaluation and Research System) studio, and the way I thought
about my golf swing suddenly changed. What’s feel? What’s
real? I was about to find out, in three dimensions.
In the iPhone age, plenty of golfers regularly watch videos of
their swings, often in slo-mo. Pros do it, too, and make video-
based changes in near-real time. So what makes GEARS different?
Basically, there’s seeing—and then there’s seeing. Jacobs’s system
delves in the latter. A typical GEARS setup consists of eight
1.7-megapixel cameras, each firing at 360 frames per second.
Do the math and that essentially adds up to just shy of 9,000
images of every single swing you take on the system.
How it works can be attributed to the magic of motion-capture,
which gathers input from some two dozen sensors placed around
my body, the sort you’ve seen on Steph Curry getting tracked for
NBA 2K19 graphics, or actor Andy Serkis playing Gollum in Lord
of the Rings. Director of GEARS Sports Michael Neff attests that
it’s the most accurate system on the planet. Tough to argue.Fitness