CDW, Intel and HP Give Canadian Golf Development a Boost

Powerful custom-built laptop solution helpstop golf team in Canadian collegiate history and junior academy players refinetheir swings on the range and on the road

By Mike Martin

The Humber Hawks men's golf team hasdominated its Canadian collegiate rivals for more than a decade. Since 2001,the team had an impressive run, winning 10 out of 12 Canadian CollegiateAthletic Association championships. And in the last 14 years, Humber has won 12Ontario Collegiate Athletic Association (OCAA) titles, including a stretch of 9in a row. The Hawks also regularly compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA) events in the U.S. and have won multiple NCAA tournaments bothindividually and as a team.

Head Coach Nick Trichilo has overseen muchof Humber's recent success. The 2017 OCAA Coach of the Year has been in chargeof the school's program since 2011, and prior to that was a Technical Coach inHumber's golf swing lab. He also runs Pure Impact Golf academy with a mix of talentedyounger players and future college hopefuls as well as current Professionals. Thereare many factors that go into improving the golf games of his players,including fitness, nutrition and mental preparation. But one of Humber'sbiggest competitive advantages, Trichilo said, is the school's use oftechnology.

Golf has changed significantly over thelast several years, he explained. Technology is playing a big role inimproving players' games.

Humber has made significant investments inits golf program, including the multi-million dollar Humber Golf Lab, whichboasts the latest high-tech simulators and golf equipment-fitting tools toprovide an experience-driven environment for its players.

Using technology to build a better swing

For Trichilo and his Hawks golf team, aswell as the younger players, one key piece of technology is TrackMan, a devicethat uses Doppler radar to measure the flight of a golf ball and the movementof a golf club. Approximately the size of a laptop, TrackMan is set up behind agolfer and also includes a video camera so golfers can review their swings.It's often claimed as the standardfor golf professionals and is used by more than 800 PGA Tour players as well ason national golf broadcasts.

Trichilo has been using TrackMan inHumber's golf program since 2004. When he purchased his first unit, it was oneof only two in Canada. Since that time, TrackMan has become extremely popularwith golfers and is used regularly by PGA tour players. The technology is alsomaking its way into professional baseball and NFL football.

TrackMan is a huge help on the technicalside of golf coaching, Trichilo explained. It lets you see the angle ofattack how the golf club is approaching the ball club path and face angle,to the decimal point of a degree, which are all the key factors of ball flightlaws. Then you can track how the approach angle is affecting the flight of theball. That information allows us to develop more efficient swings in ourplayers.

TrackMan is able to follow a ball along itsentire carry of the flight path up to 400 yards until the ball comes to rest. Oncethe device has finished tracking a shot, it can display shot data and graphicson a connected smartphone or computer.

The solution also has a simulatorcomponent, allowing golfers to play different virtual courses or specificholes, and hone their games before stepping foot on the actual courses. Aswell, TrackMan helps golfers account for different conditions, such as wind orhigher elevations, calculating how much shorter or longer shots will carry andin which direction they will travel.

The post-shot reviewing options availableon a smartphone are more limited than those on a computer. However, accessingthe full TrackMan feature set on a computer is difficult because TrackMangenerates so many data points, including the entire 3D trajectory of a golfball's flight path.

Trichilo was only able to access the full feature set when he was using TrackMan indoors at the Humber Golf Lab, where he could connect the device to a high-end desktop computer. Outdoors at a golf range, he was only able to access a more limited data set and would have to wait until he got back to the lab to download the saved TrackMan files from the cloud and access them on his desktop machine.(

A powerful laptop solution, orchestratedby CDW

CDW Canada learned that Trichilo wasn'table to access TrackMan's full feature set on the golf range and wanted to helpCanada's premiere collegiate and junior golf programs. The IT solutionsprovider proposed a laptop solution that would give Trichilo a full-featuredTrackMan playback experience from any location.

However, Trichilo said that TrackMan doesnot support laptop playback. It had been felt in the past that a mobilecomputing solution just couldn't cope with the high compute demands of DualRadar and the multiple data points being created in split seconds. But byteaming with partners Intel and HP, and taking advantage of the huge leaps intechnology Intel has been creating with partners like them, CDW Canada believedit could source a laptop that met Trichilo's needs.

The technology we're able to pack intolaptops today is much more powerful than it was even a couple of years ago,said Daniel Reio, Director, Product and Partner Management and Marketing, CDWCanada. We were confident our solutions experts, working with HP and Intel,could specify a machine that could handle the demanding compute requirementspresented by TrackMan and help the top collegiate golf program in Canada becomeeven better.

The solution CDW Canada provided for Humberis based on a HP Zbook 17 G5, powered by an Intel Xeon E-2176M processor withIntel UHD Graphics P630, which includes 16GB DDR4 memory, Intel 512GB PCIeNVMe three-layer-cell solid state drive, 17.3-inch anti-glare LED display and aNVIDIA Quadro P5200 16GB graphics card.

Trichilo said the laptop has paid immediatedividends for the Hawks team, as well as his younger players.

When we're on the range it helps us withour analysis, he said. We can do the video analysis right there on the range.We can also use the golf course simulator when we're out on the range and shootat different targets or play different virtual golf courses. We can play asimulated hole from anywhere now.

When the Hawks travel to tournaments, theteam is able to use the laptop to get the full TrackMan experience on the road.For instance, at a tournament in Medicine Hat, Alberta, which had a much higherelevation than the courses the Hawks typically play, Trichilo was able to bringthe TrackMan and laptop to the range to see exactly how much further the golfballs were travelling. This helped his team re-calculate the distances theycould expect their shots to fly for each of their clubs and wedges.

Being able to get the full experienceeverywhere we go really helps, Trichilo said. At tournaments we can use it torefine the team's swings, check distances on their wedges or simulate differentholes. It lets us do a lot more things than we were able to do before.

Teachingthe next generation of Canadian golfers

It's apparent that this technology isenabling golf on the go way more than was previously possible and that top-levelcollege players, many of whom aspire to be professional and tour players, canbenefit. But Trichilo points out that the recent rise in Canadian golf successalso needs to be fed at the junior levels, with some players in his programswho are as young as 10 years old. By affording them the same access totechnology, they can hone parts of their game at a much younger age and of course these days the younger kids are way more in tune withthe use of technology in every aspect of their lives.

As long as they are enjoying the game, thisis a fantastic way to enhance their experience of it in a challenging but stillfun environment as well as being able to play indoors through the winter at adriving range.

And watching them, who knows maybe one ofCanada's future major winners is somewhere using this right now!