'As Much Use As A Chocolate Teapot' - Golf Twitter Unimpressed With Sky Sports Strike Meter

Golf is always looking for new ways of showcasing technology with the new addition being the launch of Strike Meter at The 150th Open Championship. Designed to demonstrate how well the ball has been struck off the tee, it has caused somewhat of a divide, with many players and fans still unsure about the technology.

Firstly, what is Strike Meter? Well, the TopTracer camera picks up the tee shot and evaluates the quality of it immediately upon impact by incorporating many different launch factors. This goes into an algorithm which then predicts Strokes Gained. Scores for Strike Meter are ranked between 0 and 100, with 60 being average. The higher the number, the better the strike.

There are two factors which combine to give you that score, with power and accuracy giving you the total number. Power consists of ball speed and launch spin, while the accuracy is the launch angle and launch spin. 

Got it? Well, we sort of have, but it is still a bit confusing with fellow professional, Eddie Pepperell, tweeting: "If Rory bombing a driver 310 through the air, into the wind, only reaches “80 on the strike meter”… I’m calling b******t on the “strike meter”.

Other have also had their say, with some taking to Twitter to voice their views. One person stated: "Yeah, although it makes sense on paper, I don’t see the Strike Meter sticking around if I’m honest."

More comments followed, with one user asking if "the ‘strike meter’ is the worst addition to golf coverage in recent times?" and another pleading with Sky Sports to "please ditch the strikemeter," adding "it is as much use as a chocolate teapot."

Perks of winning The Open Championship

Although the addition of the Strike Meter hasn't been to everyone's taste, you can see some of the tweets below, the coverage of The 150th Open Championship by Sky Sports has, by and large, been very good, with a lot of shots being shown with in-depth analysis.

However, one thing that we haven't seen much of are the LIV Golf players like Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood. Coverage of these players has increased on Saturday, however, on Friday, we barely saw anything of them. 

Aside from Dustin Johnson, who is inside the top-5, there has not been much of them on television, despite the fact that DeChambeau was one of the biggest talking points going into the tournament as speculation grew about how he would deal with the St Andrews layout.