Ross is off the grid this week, so Colin holds the high handicap fort alone and brings in a guest who sits at the other end of the spectrum: Coleman Rollins, better known online as Coleman Golfs. Coleman is a near scratch software engineer who got so fed up with launch monitor prices that he did the only reasonable thing and built his own, an open source unit called OpenFlight. The two quickly discover a shared origin story of being used as moving targets on a driving range as kids, which sets the tone nicely.

From there it becomes part golfing journey, part tech masterclass. Coleman talks through almost ten years of caddying and what it taught him about reading greens, course management and the classic amateur sin of not playing within your means. He covers the grip change that wrecked his game for a full year, the coach who finally rebuilt his swing, and then the good stuff: why a Trackman costs the price of a small car (it uses the same phased array radar that tracks missiles), how his three radar Doppler setup works, and why his whole rig comes in at around five hundred dollars. There is also a very enjoyable detour into reverse engineering commercial monitors from their publicly filed photos, which earned Coleman a distinctly unfriendly Instagram message from one red and white branded manufacturer.

The back half turns practical. Coleman explains which numbers actually move the needle for an improving golfer, how handing data to a coach (human or AI) has helped him, and how dialling in his wedge distances on a Trackman paid off at his biggest tournament of the year just the day before. A quickfire round closes things out with some genuinely useful takes: the metric golfers underrate, the one they hopelessly overrate, a twenty quid putting hack borrowed from woodworking, and the golf marketing trick that makes him want to throw his phone. Colin, to his credit, resists buying a launch monitor on the spot. Just.

Episode Highlights

🟢 The "playing within your means" lesson Coleman picked up caddying for everyone from Tuesday ladies' tournaments to single digit men, and why even near scratch players get this wrong

🟢 Why a thirty thousand pound Trackman is arguably fair value: a plain English explanation of phased array radar versus the Doppler tech in cheaper units like the Garmin R10

🟢 Coleman's Trackman wedge session the week of his state amateur qualifier, and how knowing his exact 50 to 120 yard numbers gave him a dozen confident shots on the day

🟢 The quickfire round: vertical launch angle being underrated, swing speed being wildly overrated, and a twenty dollar woodworking laser that doubles as a putting trainer the golf brands would sell you for a hundred quid

Gear & Resources Mentioned

🟢 Coleman Rollins, the guest, on Instagram and TikTok as @colemangolfs

🟢 OpenFlight, Coleman's open source launch monitor, on GitHub at https://github.com/jewbetcha/openflight

🟢 OpenFlight project site and cloud (FlightWeb) at https://openflight.dev

🟢 Open Tracer, Coleman's free shot tracer web app for swing videos, on GitHub at https://github.com/jewbetcha/opentrace (Colin mentioned a hosted "try it" page too, worth confirming the exact link before publishing)

Chapter List

00:00 Welcome, no Ross this week, meet Coleman and OpenFlight

00:56 Growing up in the game: caddying for almost ten years

03:57 What caddying really teaches you about golf

06:05 The biggest mistake amateurs make: not playing within your means

07:31 The grip change that broke his game, and finally getting a coach

11:18 Why he built his own launch monitor

13:13 The metrics that actually matter

16:24 What separates a thirty thousand pound Trackman from the rest

20:08 Inside OpenFlight: three radars and a Raspberry Pi

22:13 The parts list and building one yourself

25:56 Reverse engineering the competition (and an angry DM)

30:55 Keeping it open source and affordable

34:40 Using your data with a coach, and AI as a caddie

37:59 What's next: a DIY rangefinder

38:46 Open Tracer: free shot tracing for swing videos

40:29 The OpenFlight Discord community

42:01 Quickfire round: metrics, gadgets and marketing gripes

47:15 Where to find Coleman and everything he's building