New Denver company brings club-fitting to smart watches

Denver-based Groove Golf enters the club fitting space

By Jim Bebbington

A new Colorado-based golf technology startup, Groove Golf, is launching this year with what they offer as a simpler, quicker way for the average golfer to get swing data and club fitting help.

Groove Golf is founded by Mark Vedete, who moved to the Denver area in 2020 with his family and brought with him the germ of a business idea that he had been working on for more than five years.

Vedete played college golf at American University and had seen his coach work with players to try to recommend for them the right clubs. Then after getting an MBA he watched as the club-fitting revolution began to expand with services being marketed to the average player.

So he looked into the business of club fitting and tried to imagine a way to help more players benefit from it. After five years of development and iteration, Vedete this year has begun marketing Groove Golf’s club fitting system. The brand has a slogan “5 Swings. 5 Minutes” which captures their message of simplicity.

The app-based technology links with Apple Watches – and will later be available on Android devices – to measure the speeds of a player’s swing. That data is quickly converted into recommendations. The technology can be used by teaching professionals as part of their services, or adopted by players themselves to experiment.

“The uniqueness of capturing a golf swing on a piece of technology is a challenge,” Vedete said in January as he and his team were preparing to leave for the PGA Show in Orlando. “We’ve been at this for five years. That is the fruits of the labor of having really good fitters and really good professionals to test and great software engineers.”

Vedete partnered with San Diego-based software developers Treeline Interactive and Brett Juhas to write the interface and now has a local marketing team working to sign up manufacturers and teaching professionals.

The technology enters a space that is currently dominated by two other technologies: video capture technology, or else shot tracers.

Vedete believes the niche Groove Golf is carving out can help a lot of average players.

“I want people to understand this system was built for everyone,” he said. “There is a fear in club fitting today – that it’s time intensive and cost inefficient.”

At a recent event held at the Hangar Club in Denver, players would don an Apple Watch that was synched to a phone nearby and take five to 10 swings. The data was immediately available about the speed not of the ball or the shot, but of the body’s mechanics. New driver heads and shafts were assembled on the spot, and players could immediately test whether the new equipment yielded benefits.

Groove Golf said most players see an average increase of 25 yards or more on their drives from moving to the recommended drivers.

“We found a faster, less intusive way to measure a player’s swing,” said Sean Bucher, Groove Golf’s marketing director. “We are the most mobile-friendly testing system available.”

The company presented its new technology in January at the PGA Show in Orlando and is expected to roll out nationally this summer. Colorado residents can get early access to the system by contacting the company at GrooveGolf.Com

Jim Bebbington is the Director of Content at Colorado AvidGolfer and can be reached at [email protected]

Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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