By Nate McKervey June 04, 2015
So I went to the golf range last night. It was an indoor range just a few blocks from Splunk HQ called Eagle Club Indoor Golf. They are using stereoscopic camera systems that precisely capture and analyze ball flight. Checkout their place in the virtual tour below.
Naturally, I asked if I could get a copy of the raw data. After an eyebrow raise they said “Sure”. They emailed me a CSV file that looks like below:
Club, Club Head Speed, Ball Speed, Launch Angle, Azimuth, Side Spin, Back Spin, Total Spin, Descent Angle, Carry, Total Distance, Offline, Peak Height, Vert Path, Horiz Path, Face to Path, Face to Target, Lie, Loft, Horiz Impact, Vert Impact,
Driver, 109.7, 159.1, 4.3, -2.6, -1665, 1437, 2200, 7, 151.42, 236.22, -59.91, 3.80, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A,
Driver, 108.6, 157.5, 2.8, 1.5, -1403, 1989, 2435, 8, 169.24, 240.67, -40.62, 3.71, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A,
Driver, 103.2, 149.6, 7.9, 5.4, -532, 1719, 1800, 19, 226.46, 270.16, -3.12, 13.34, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A,
...
To bring the data in I simply clicked “Add Data” and selected the file.
Since the type of data is csv I set the sourcetype to CSV. This allowed Splunk to understand the meaning of the data by reading the header.
Now all the data is available to search and report on and all the fields are available on the left hand side. For example, you can see the clubs I hit and how many times. Soon you will find out why I hit the driver more than any other club.
To see my average distance by club I ran the following search:
source="golf_nate6215.CSV" | stats avg("Total Distance") as Distance by Club | sort Distance
Which produced a simple visualization:
After saving this to a dashboard I decided to create a dashboard that would allow me to analyze my results better. For the report at the top of the dashboard I wanted to be able to select any clubs, report on any metric, and overlay any other metric to better correlate. The bottom left report tells me how far left or right I missed, and as you might have gathered I have a pretty bad hook going on with my driver, hence the reason I hit it so many more times. In the bottom right you can see all of my shots. The X-axis is the distance, the Y-axis is how far left or right I missed, the color is the club I used, and the size of the bubble is the club head speed. The big green circle in the bottom right means I swung hard with the driver but didn’t go far and sliced right. AKA a “duff”. This dashboard was created entirely in the GUI, I didn’t have to touch any XML, HTML, or javascript.
Bringing in the data and building these reports took about 15 minutes including pausing to get some coffee. I’ll be sure to keep analyzing my practice sessions to measure any improvement. As you can see with my drives, I can use some help. Which is why I’ve attached my data set and the dashboard. Feel free to download and improve my dashboard, tell me what’s wrong with my swing, or share your own data!
Thanks,
Nate
Nate McKervey,
Director of Technical Product Marketing
Splunk Inc.