Here, four coaches who use Clippd with their players share what they think, how they’re using it and where it’s having the biggest impact.

Meet the coaches: Richard Sheridan is Director of Instruction at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. Robert Linville is the founder of the Precision Golf School in Greensboro, North Carolina. Stephen Arnold is a three-time SWC Coach of the Year working in the North Florida PGA Section. Dominic Reed has recently joined the team at The Hills Country Club in Austin, Texas.

What To Work On – what’s the verdict?

Richard Sheridan: I'm using What To Work On to identify which areas I need to focus on with individual clients. That's been very, very useful. It's saving a lot of time.

‍Robert Linville: What To Work On is the game-changer for me. It's in line with what I've done myself for a lot of years, except I was doing Excel spreadsheets. It helps because I can go, 'Yeah, this is in line with what I see'. 

Dominic Reed: I trust it 100%. There is no anecdotal part of it, right. It’s all based on the data, it’s shot-driven. It’s about understanding that if you improve these parts of your game, you'll get better. There is no in between.

Stephen Arnold: For a lot of players, What To Work On clarifies what their real opportunity is. If I can improve in this area, I can start to see lower scores. That clarification is very, very helpful, both for me and them.

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How do you use What To Work On with your players?

Dominic Reed: I've got a junior who hits the ball great off the tee, hits his irons decently, but he struggles with that mid-range wedge shot. By understanding where his ranges are, what distances and shots he struggles with around those distances, we can build practice plans around those things. We get a little bit more of a focus. 

Robert Linville: Elite players have a pretty good idea of what they need to do in their golf games, especially if you're staying in touch with them. If I have players coming in for sessions, I'll look at the data and know what we're working on. I want to see if it matches  – what I feel versus the real.

Stephen Arnold: I tell my students, we're going to track results and see if they’re getting better or worse. I'm going to see what's working and what's not. For me, the best part of Clippd is just watching the trends. If we're working on your driver and your Player Quality off the tee is going in the right direction, what we're doing is working. It’s having those baseline points: ‘This is what I was working on and it went this way. Okay, cool.'  

This is how you get better. This is how you start to shave shots every single round off your game

‍Richard Sheridan: Players are walking in the door and I already know what we're going to work on because I've seen how they are performing on the course.

Dominic Reed: When we started using Clippd, it was very eye-opening for my junior player to understand what areas of the game he could really improve upon. His idea was, "I just got to hit the ball better." He hits it pretty good already. It's about where he can score better. Being able to say what you need to work on – without any sort of anecdotal evidence but with actual, hardcore data, that’s the biggest thing. This is how you get better. This is how you start to shave shots every single round off your game. As a coach, it’s being able to understand how to get a player to buy into the process. 

Robert Linville: However much time you allot to practice, that's 100% of your time. You can't do more than 100%. How are you going to use that time? How are you going to invest it? It’s about breaking up practice into the different facets, making practice meaningful and purposeful.We’re talking about deliberate practice, which is what I believe in. That's huge. It's student based-learning but it's evidence-based coaching. That’s got to be better.

Has What To Work On highlighted anything that’s surprised you?

Richard Sheridan: It highlighted my short game was letting me down when I actually thought it was okay. And it is not necessarily my technique but my thought process and shot selection. It's about improving the way I think on the golf course.

Dominic Reed: I had a pretty blanket perspective that I needed to get better off the tee. I also felt like I needed to get better on the greens. But what's been very enlightening is I'm actually a very, very solid putter. I'm 102 on putting, which blew me away. The fact that I was a 71 for around the greens was just like a punch in the gut, though. I was like, "Man, I really thought I was getting better.” 

Richard Sheridan: Sometimes it’s made me change my course of action a little bit. We fix the issue and then in the next few rounds l’Il see if the stuff we've done in the lesson is improving them. It's really, really useful. It’s saving so much time.

What do you look at first: Importance, Opportunity or Trend?

Stephen Arnold: The opportunity levels in each area show where you can gain the most in your round. That's what we want to spend our time focusing on. It gets the point across that they can pick up a lot of value in a particular area. It definitely helps. 

Robert Linville: Importance is the one I tend to go to. It makes sense to the players. What I like is the concept of when you play well, you do certain things well. And when you don't do them well, you don't score well. 

Stephen Arnold: When you start getting down into the better player area, you’re trying to gain tenths of a shot, half a shot, quarter shot in different areas across the board. For those guys, I thought it would be really helpful to see where they can get their value, where their opportunity is. 

More on our coaches

Richard Sheridan heads a team of coaches at The Olympic Club's OC Golf Performance Center. He began his career in England and has gone on to work for Butch Harmon in Dubai, the Links Trust in St Andrews, as well as coaching the Chinese national team.

Robert Linville’s Precision Golf School offers developmental programs for all standards of golfer. A longtime advocate of collecting data, he uses TrackMan, FlightScope and Sportsbox. Robert has coached a Division I college team and numerous college and LPGA players. Most of his personal coaching is now done with tournament players.

Stephen Arnold divides his time between teaching and tournament golf, working with clients that range from aspiring tour pros to seniors. Stephen is Trackman, TPI, KMotion and SAM Puttlab certified and works out of the Florida Golf Performance Center and Longboat Key Club.

Dominic Reed ran his own simulator-based teaching business and trained with Scott Cowx, the notable Canadian golf teacher, before joining The Hills Country Club in Austin, Texas. He is TPI certified and makes skill development a cornerstone of his coaching philosophy. His instructional videos on Instagram are well worth a look. @dominicreedgolf.