Innovation path · Labs origin
ConceptIs It Good? — Pro Shop
Golf has always been competitive. It only recently got slow.
“Let’s not let pace of play issues create ‘integrity of the game’ issues.”
This is an early build exploring whether a fast, objective "gimme" check could someday live in the camera of smart sunglasses — worn, not held. Today it's a phone-camera prototype we're testing off the green, not a tool for settling putts mid-round.
A fun, credible estimate — not a laser rangefinder, and still a Concept-stage prototype, not something we're putting in golfers' hands on the green. Read the FAQ first →
Today: any phone's camera, tested off the green. The long-term vision (pun intended) is a lens you're already wearing — smart sunglasses doing the same math, hands-free.
Problem & solution
Pace of play has quietly become the norm-setter for how golf feels. Pros routinely take up to a minute over a single shot, and younger golfers watching them absorb that as the standard. Meanwhile on the green, nobody continuous-putts anymore — mark, wait, putt, mark, wait. Golfers already improvise a fix: giving the last putt. That's a fine courtesy in match play. In medal play it's a scoring decision, not a courtesy — and when everyone's eyeballing a different radius, especially in a hurry or on a bogey-or-worse putt where the gimme gets generous, "faster" quietly starts to mean "less consistent."
Is It Good? is an exploration of what an objective, glance-fast gimme check could look like — first as a phone-camera prototype, and (we think) eventually built into the camera of smart sunglasses, so a golfer never has to break stride or pull out a device. It's not something we're asking anyone to use standing over a putt today — see "The story" below for what we're actually doing at Oct 7 instead.
How it works
No login, no setup — just a camera. This is how the phone-camera prototype works today; it's not the Oct 7 tournament's actual gimme process (see "The story" below).
Aim
Stand so the ball sits between you and the cup, phone held at a comfortable angle. A live gauge tells you when the angle's good.
Capture
One tap freezes the frame — nothing is saved to your photos or uploaded anywhere.
Mark
Tap the ball's center, drag a caliper onto the cup's rim. Two touches, done.
Call
GOOD or NOT GOOD for a gimme, or a Closest-to-the-Pin distance — either way, in a few seconds.
The story
Golf has always been competitive. It only recently got slow. If you're a golfer, you know pace of play matters — rhythm matters. The round is most fun when you never wait and never get pushed. What if that was the standard again?
Two things are driving the slowdown. First: professional golfers can take up to a minute over a single shot (see @calebdecker's post on this), and the golfers coming up watching them treat that pace as normal, not exceptional. Second: we never continuous-putt anymore — we putt, mark our ball, and the next player waits, every single time, on every single green.
And yet everyone already has a workaround: we give the last putt. In match play, that's exactly right — the format is built for it. In medal play, a "gimme" is a scoring decision wearing a courtesy's clothes, and when it's late, or the putt's for bogey or worse, the radius everyone's using tends to get a lot more generous — informally, inconsistently, under time pressure.
Settling that arbitrarily isn't good for the game — but neither is pulling out a phone on the green. Golf should stay a game you play with your head up, not your thumbs. So near-term, the fix isn't a camera at all: every golfer at the Oct 7 tournament gets a simple printed ruler that defines the gimme range, handed out before anyone steps to a green. Measure it, then either pick it up or putt it out — same speed as giving the putt, no eyeballing, no device.
Is It Good? is the exploration running alongside that: could the same objective check someday happen without even a ruler in hand — a glance through a camera already built into a pair of smart sunglasses, worn while riding a cart or walking the fairway between holes, doing the trigonometry a golfer never has to think about? This alpha, a phone-camera prototype, is how we're testing that math today — off the green, not a tournament tool, not something we're handing anyone mid-round.
About the model
Being straightforward about where this stands today.
No AR, no LiDAR, no depth sensor. The ball's minimum diameter (42.67mm) and the cup's regulation diameter (108mm) are fixed real-world constants — combined with the phone's tilt angle at the moment of capture and where the ball and cup land in the photo, that's enough trigonometry to estimate real distance from a single frame. The camera height you enter (measured once, from the ground to the lens) scales the answer directly, and the angle guidance is tuned specifically for a Gimme Check's close, steep-angle shot. It's tuned to be simple and to stay within roughly 10% accuracy, not to be a certified instrument — every result says so.
FAQ
Does this replace the honor system?
No — it's a fast, objective second opinion, useful exactly when a gimme call is contested, rushed, or borderline. Golf stays an honor-system game; this just gives that system a consistent ruler when someone wants one.
Will this be used at the Oct 7 tournament?
No. For Oct 7, gimmes are settled the low-tech way: every golfer gets a printed ruler defining the gimme range before they putt — measure, then pick up or putt out. This app is a separate, longer-range exploration, not this tournament's actual process.
Why not just use the phone on the green, if the math already works?
Because that means pulling out a device mid-round, and that's exactly the kind of pace-of-play, heads-down friction we're trying to design out of golf, not add to it. If this idea has a future, it's built into something a golfer's already wearing — not something they have to remember to open.
Can I change the 22-inch gimme radius for my course or tournament?
Not yet — v1 uses a fixed 22-inch threshold, the common casual standard. Making that configurable per course/tournament is the natural next step (see Roadmap below), not something this version does.
Is this affiliated with @calebdecker or any tour pro?
No — public commentary on pro pace-of-play is what sparked the idea, but this is an independent Fairway Advisors tool, not something made or endorsed by anyone referenced in the story above.
Is this as accurate as a laser rangefinder?
No, and it doesn't claim to be — it targets roughly 10% accuracy and says so on every result. Fun and credible for a gimme call or a friendly Closest-to-the-Pin contest; not something to settle real money on.
Is my photo saved anywhere?
No — the captured frame lives only in your browser's memory long enough to mark it up, then it's discarded. Nothing is written to your phone's photo library and nothing is uploaded to a server.
Is this a real product Fairway Advisors sells?
No — it's a Labs R&D exploration testing the math behind a possible future feature (including a smart-glasses version), not a shipped product or something used in live play today. See labs/CLAUDE.md's maturity taxonomy for what Concept means versus a shipped product.
Roadmap
- Gimme Check measurement engine — ball/cup geometry, one photo, in a few seconds
- Tap-to-mark ball + two-handle cup caliper, with a magnifier
- Live angle guidance and range readout, tuned for a Gimme Check's steep-angle shot
- On-screen ±10% accuracy disclosure on every result
- Smart-glasses concept exploration — the long-term, hands-free vision this alpha is actually testing toward
- Configurable gimme radius per course/tournament
- On-device validation against a tape measure — the real acceptance gate before any wider use
- Possible Digital Caddy integration to log skill-award moments on course — status: TBD, not decided
Built with
Called a real gimme wrong, or want a different course's radius supported? Email caleb@fairwayadvisors.ai — every note gets read.
Speed and integrity, together
Try the live demo on your own gimme or a Closest-to-the-Pin shot, or get in touch about wiring in your own course's radius.
Open the live demo