 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Infoversity coming to you from Syracuse University school information studies. My name is Zachary Schuster. I'm the director of admissions here at the iSchool. I've been in this position about a year and a half, but I've worked at Syracuse for about 12 years total. By and by far and large, the iSchool is the coolest place to be here as both an employee and a student at Syracuse. And today I'm really excited to welcome our guest Michael Hutchinson. Michael earned his master's degree in information management, along with a CAS and data science from the iSchool. And he's currently serving as the senior director of data science at Arcos. Arcos is a company that specializes in on-course tracking systems for golf. They are recognized as the top choice for tracking golf performance while playing on the course and are endorsed as the official game tracker of the PGA Tour. Arcos aims to revolutionize the golfing experience by integrating automatic shot tracking with artificial intelligence and stroke gain analytics. Michael's lifelong passion for golf analytics has turned into a very fulfilling career dedicated to his area of expertise. So welcome, Michael. Thanks so much for having me, Zach. I'm excited to talk with you today. Yeah, and as we've talked earlier before the call, we're just about to start golf season here in the Syracuse area. A lot of snow in Syracuse, of course. And in California, where you're calling from today, you can golf all year round, but we're certainly excited about the golf season. And we're also really excited about data science here, of course, at the iSchool and Syracuse University as well. Lots of people talk about turning those passions in life into a career. You're a really great example of how that's possible. Can you tell us a little bit about when you realized you had a knack for data science and how you could realize you could pair that knack for data science with your love of golf? Yeah. So it's definitely been a very nonlinear path. My undergraduate degree was actually in creative writing. And I didn't start getting into data science until around 2012 when actually it was Fantasy Basketball that kind of brought me into it. I was working in politics as well. So I came to the iSchool, I got my MS in Information Management, CAS in Data Science, entered the tech industry after that and kind of built skill sets as an IC and manager as well and started off working in digital marketing and then digital audio streaming at a company called TuneIn. From there, I went to Amazon Games, Prime Gaming, and then Amazon Game Studios. And my motivation in those areas was always more, these are interesting problems, but I wasn't a big gamer that industries were never, I guess, really my passion area. It was more, I like to solve business problems and things like that. And about that same time as I was kind of beginning a pandemic along with a lot of other people, I started picking up golf again after about a 20-year hiatus. And Arcos was actually one of the first improvement products that I bought as I started to get back into the game and see all the advances that had come about in the previous 20 years. And my obsession with golf really grew, I think will be a common theme here is I tend to, when I get interested in something, I really like to dive deep and take it as far as I can. So I was able to bring my handicap down from a 10 to a scratch over a few years and started making connections on Twitter and other places as well, just getting into the conversation around golf and analytics. And yeah, it just still happened that part of some of those connections ended up opening a door for me at Arcos where I'm able to work on, you know, bridge this passion that I have along with the professional areas that I'm most interested in. And so, yeah, it's just kind of a perfect fit, you know, there's not really a, I guess, one size fits all path to get where, you know, you're able to kind of bridge that passion other than you kind of build skill sets along the way and hope that the right opportunity comes up. But yeah, I feel like I'm exactly where I should be right now. No, that's great. It's so interesting to because we often talk about non traditional tech students at the iSchool coming into a master's degree and you're just a really perfect example of that. And also I might definitely take some tips on how to improve my own golf technology. Can you explain how the technology works with your product and how it can benefit golfers. Yeah, sure. So Arcos is a game tracking or shot tracking system in general. So you take it with you on the course right now we have sensors that kind of screw into the back of your clubs. You pair those with your phone. We have, you know, all the mapping data for, you know, pretty much every course in the world. You go out and it'll identify where you hit each of your your shots from. And then, you know, golf is kind of in an interesting place where I think for a long time it was hindered by lack of, you know, analytics, the traditional stats that you would get for golf didn't really correlate very well with score or ability and a guy named Mark Brody invented strokes gained, which is a way of kind of normalizing the, you know, how much value is there to to a golf shot. And, you know, with that, there came this opportunity to really go deep into, you know, tracking people's games and this is, you know, anybody that's on the tour right now is using strokes game and they pay attention to it. So religiously and what our product allows people to do is, you know, you can now get similar statistics as anybody that's, you know, at the elite top level of the game. And then at the end of the day we end up aggregating all of those statistics we break it down into, you know, easily digestible charts and graphics and show you where, you know, the kind of best bang for what it's going to be in terms of what to work on. So it was really critical to me in my improvement. I pay very close attention to it. And, you know, I think we see anybody that comes onto the platform we see a pretty big decrease in their index as they, you know, start entering rounds and learn how to spend their time more effectively. Very cool. Yeah, I remember when the strokes gained and price into shampoo a couple of years ago, I think it was in the US open just off the tee and his length is just really cool to see kind of in real time. Definitely cool as an amateur golfer to be able to utilize some of that same data and to improve your own game. We've talked a lot about generative AI over the past couple of years, really since this explosion. But how is how is generative AI impacted your work? And are there things you can do now that maybe weren't possible just a few years ago? Yeah, I mean, I think like anybody in this space, I'm super interested in generative AI. And, you know, if you're not paying attention to it as a company or as a professional in this field, you're really missing out. When I actually first started consulting for Arcos, one of the first things they had me do was come to the company during their annual onsite and give a presentation on large language models. The goal of that presentation was really twofold. It was, you know, how can we use this internally to improve our processes? You know, whether that's generating marketing ideas or helping with develop code and, you know, things like that, but also how can we think about leveraging the technology for our users? So on the day to day side, I'm not ashamed to admit at all that I use chat GPT and no clod quite a bit in helping to code. You know, it's really a pretty integral part of my workflow now. There's just things that you do where it's nice to have a little helper, you know, I'll use co-pilot as well to generate a lot of that. But when it comes to, you know, customers, we're obviously exploring how we can take data and more effectively communicate insights and analysis or even provide kind of personalized guidance at scale. And so, you know, without going into too much detail, very much in the R&D phase, but as we've looked at taking user stats and kind of supplementing that with knowledge from the top coaches and people in the world, we're seeing a really kind of encouraging, you know, I guess, mix there as we kind of look into, hey, how can we leverage this technology? Obviously, you know, paying for coaching is quite expensive. And, you know, is there a way that we can provide kind of more actionable, here's what you should work on based on the data that we're getting in the stats and comparison across, you know, all of our user base. So like I said, very much in the R&D phase, I think there's probably a lot more applications that we haven't even begun to dig into. But yeah, over the next five to, you know, even sooner than that, I would say over the next, you know, three to five years, it's going to be really interesting to see how it expands in this space of kind of coaching and guidance and, you know, the role of experts in that I think is an interesting topic as well. Yeah, I think that data is just super, super cool. And it's really critical for your own golf game. I know that after a round I often focus on the bad shots that I hit, you know, forgetting about how I scrambled on a terrible tee shot to make a par somewhere in between. So collecting all of that data and being able to look at it after your round can certainly be super helpful. And hopefully down the road, maybe the product can predict when my wild slice will come back into play before it happens. Totally. I think, you know, that that's certainly something that we've looked into is, you know, you're hitting a, you know, back to your tee shot and we see that, you know, there's out of bounds on the right, you know, can we adjust that person's aim line or their target to help them avoid that. And so I think that there's, there's tons of things that we can do there and just kind of getting started now, exploring all the possibilities. Very cool. So Michael kind of piggybacking off of that, like how, how does your company, how does Arcos condense all of that data that you collect really into the best most actionable insights while you're on the course. Yeah, it's a really good question. When I think about that, I kind of think about like the D I K W pyramid was one of the first things I learned at the high school, which was the data information knowledge and wisdom. And so at Arcos, you can think of the data as like just the raw events that we collect. We collect a ton of data, as you can imagine throughout your round, it's not just, you know, a shot was hit here or a shot was hit there, but we see you walking we see if you're writing in a car, we know what the wind is doing the temperature, all of those kind of things and you can imagine the size of that data. You know, when you're looking at any single round, you know, over the course of four hours, everything that that we're collecting. But if we just presented that to the user that's not going to be very helpful, right. And so as it kind of moves up. You get into the state of like information from data we start adding structure to to that and we get to okay now here a shot was taken here. Had this wind into it or we're start combining it. And then you get into knowledge and I think knowledge is kind of where that's when we start getting to like the dashboarding level or the aggregated insights where we're taking that that, you know, kind of that kind of loose bag of facts of, you know, here's here's the sequence of events and what you did. And we're, you know, creating the calculations obviously for strokes gain but now we're providing a layer on top of that that says, here's your, your strokes gain from 150 to 175 yards. You know, this was the area that you lost the most strokes in throughout your round. So maybe a place for for you to focus and then I think that bridging between knowledge and wisdom and I know that there's a lot of debate within the kind of academic circles that discuss this but you know, I think that's the where we get into. How do we make that even more actionable for somebody and how do we present only the bits that are relevant to them. And I think that that's one area where generative AI is really promising because it can distill those kind of salient facts and bits of information down into, you know, when paired with kind of expert guidance. Here's where you should focus the majority of your time so it's actually taking, you know, that that dashboard which is already, you know, taking a lot of information and aggregating it and figuring out what are the two to three things that I should take away with, you know, at the end of at the end of that round. And so, yeah, I think like, you know, is any company that is a data product and I do think of Arcos as in many ways a data product, figuring out the right amount of information and guidance to provide somebody is, you know, really critical and more to come on that for sure. But, you know, it's a really good question and I think anybody that's a data professional is spending a lot of time thinking about how to go from that kind of raw inputs into something that's really holds value for people. Yeah, so I know I've used a lot of different like golf tech over the years whether it's an iPhone app of utilize a Garmin watch a lot in my golf play. But I think one of the biggest points is like making sure that with all this data you have a really good user experience. So the product is intuitive and accessible because you don't want people to just see all the data right and then just get scared or not utilize the product anymore. So can you share any insight how you guys take this tech and make it kind of digestible for someone while they're playing golf or after their round. Yeah. I mean, again, like really good question there. And it's a, you know, there's many debates between, you know, people that are on the product side or on the engineering side about exactly, you know, what the trade offs are, you know, I tend to be a more analytical person. So I want a lot of data. I want those dashboards I'm going to go through and, you know, have all of that. But a lot of people don't want that they want information provided in a couple of bullet points. And so, you know, I think it's a balance at the company where, you know, we have really good product people and smart, you know, leaders at the company who think quite a bit about that. And we have, you know, as a, it's by far the company that I've worked at where we've, we dog food our own product, you know, more than any place else that I've been. And in doing that, I think we get a lot of a range of perspectives on what's going to be helpful and how to, you know, as I've said, distill that information down into the most salient bits. You know, I think that there's probably a, there's a potential for some bifurcation there where we, you know, for the analytical person that wants to see all of this more broken down at a really granular level. There may be one experience. And for the person that really just wants a high level recap, here's what you did well, here's what you should work on, you know, how to provide that. And whether that's we're communicating that through, you know, a visualization that shows, you know, right now we kind of highlight and green the things that you did really well and in red the things that you didn't do quite so well, which is intuitive to most people, but you know, some people really struggle with charts and, you know, do better if they get that information verbally. So again, like another area where generative AI and large language models really has the potential to shape what we're looking at as a product and how we're communicating insights to people. Yeah, very cool. So you mentioned, as we first started the podcast today, that you brought yourself from like a double digit handicap, you know, down to a low single digit handicap. Was there anything that you learned in using some of these products that like surprised you like as you're going through this journey and improving your golf game? Yeah, I think there were definitely parts that that surprised me. Like I said, I, you know, before any of this was even in the horizon as something that I might pursue. I was an Arcos user. And I think when I played in high school and I was I was a decent player in high school but not great by any stretch of the imagination. We just didn't have any of that kind of information, right? So I would still track my stats. I tracked my fairways per round. I tracked greens in regulation. I would track putts per round. But, you know, that information didn't really tell you where to focus your time to improve. And I think one thing that really surprised me was how weak I was relatively in approach play compared to some of the rest of my game. I thought I was a decent approach player. But as I looked at the data, I realized, well, wow, I've really got a lot to work on there. And so I would take that and I would bring it to the coach that I was working with. And we kind of came up with a plan together about, okay, here's why that's, you know, you're you're underperforming there. Here's what you can work on both from your swing and from a skill acquisition standpoint. And yeah, I think, you know, now I'm I don't get quite as many surprises, like I finish my round and I pretty much know, you know, what I did where I where I performed at or, you know, better than the benchmark and benchmarks that I compare myself to and where I have the most room for improvement. But it's great to have that validation to write, because we tend to remember, like I think you referenced this earlier, like the one or two bad really bad shots or the one or two great shots, and we kind of forget everything else that's that's in the middle. And, you know, if you're, you're not paying attention to, I think this is a kind of a trending level where you're looking at, you know, 10 rounds, trending view or something like that. You might get drawn into, you know, areas where it really doesn't make sense to, to put a bunch of time, especially if it maybe it's only a situation that you face one out of every five rounds. So I think for me, it really helps to just kind of validate that I'm on the right track, and I'm paying attention to the right things but definitely surprises in the beginning. And I think it's always just good for me now to be able to go through and be like, oh yeah, that was, you know, maybe that one really bad shot, I actually performed really well the rest of the day in that area so it's maybe not something that I need to focus on. It kind of helps to take some of the emotion out of it, I guess. Yeah, definitely. And it's interesting too, like as, as you probably utilize some of that data, you just learn a lot about your golf game and then you can almost probably fix some things on the fly a bit more than, you know, before you had that data accessible to you. Oh yeah, I'll give you an example like, and this is not a problem just for me but is for most amateur golfers is coming up short on approach shots. A lot of people just kind of play to the distance of that really great shot that they hit. Not thinking about like the, you know, a lot of the mediocre shots that they hit and so like, you know, I tend to hit a lot of approach shots short and kind of being confronted with that data. It was like, oh, I need to take more club into a lot of these greens and I'll see that in a round and one of the things we have are smart distances which are like your distance but we're also layering in information about altitude changes or, you know, whether you're hitting uphill or downhill and into wind or with the wind and we kind of normalize those distances. So you can look at that and see, yeah, you know, maybe I need to take a little bit more club into these greens. So yeah, it really helps provide that kind of information on the fly that allows you to adjust your game even during the round. Yeah, well those little bits of information add up really quickly to take a pretty bad round to a pretty decent round. Yeah, and for most people it's not far off, you know, it's it's a few adjustments here there and most golfers have a lot of low hanging fruit in their game. And I think Arco's just like really helps highlight that and helps come up with an action plan about how to address it. Yeah, so this is actually a great segue to my next question for you, Michael. Without giving away, you know, any trade secrets, can you share maybe some previews or things that might be coming out in the world of golf analytics and and then a follow up question on that? Like, what are you most excited about in the future of the industry? Yeah, gosh, there's so many things that are on the horizon that I wish I could go into but do have to be a little bit careful about giving away trade secrets. But I will say I think like, you know, one of the things that that is an ongoing type of, I guess, struggle or challenge is just the data capture and data quality. How do we make that as seamless as possible and for the widest, you know, range of golfers as we can. So, you know, right now we rely on kind of the the sensor models are there ways if, you know, the sensor gives out that we can identify that a shot was hit from somewhere using different predictive models, things like that. You know, I think that's one area where we're spending a lot of time and focus is figuring out how we can make that that experience of the data capture as seamless as possible and which then trickles down into the analysis that we do. So, you know, in the type of analysis that that I do on a day to day basis, you know, I really helps to have high quality data. And we really don't want the user to have to be going in there and editing shots and things like that. So I think that there's a few things that we're developing with the product that we'll be releasing within the next year that are pretty exciting there. And then I just kind of go off of, you know, once you've captured that data, and you're happy with the the accuracy of it. The most exciting area for me personally is thinking about coaching at scale, and how to take all of these insights that we're gathering and not just say, Okay, here's where you should aim on this whole or, you know, core strategy type stuff But also what are we learning about your game as you go and how does it compare to others that are within a similar skill level? What have we seen for the people that started where you are and have, you know, really improved? Where did they improve the most? You know, I just did an analysis of golfers who were five handicaps or above and made it to scratch. And looking at that, you know, it was pretty clear that in most cases, it's actually the approach game where they saw the greatest improvement. And I think that that kind of runs counter to a lot of the kind of old wisdom that's out there about, you know, drive for show, putt for dough and things like that. It really wasn't putting for those golfers. It was approach game and off the tee. So there's ways that I think there, you know, that we can provide guidance or coaching at scale that I think is going to really make it easier for people to improve. And I think like, you know, maybe that is not the kind of AI swing model that, you know, some of that is out there right now where companies are capturing it and building these kind of 3D models. Based on the 2D video and generating swing tips and stuff like that. Maybe that is what we look at, but maybe it's also from more of a skill acquisition standpoint. And looking at, hey, here's the, you know, the a few drills that you can work on based on what we're seeing in your game and your shot dispersion that we think would help. And so, you know, I think that AI is obviously going to continue to move in ways that we're maybe not predicting or, you know, is going to surprise us. But I think the one thing that we can be sure of is that it's going to feel more and more personal and it's going to be tuned more to who you are and your uniqueness. And I think that that's definitely, you know, part of the work that excites me the most is kind of building that future of, you know, not how we replace anybody or anything like that, but how we can augment and help people along with that journey. Because at the end of the day, like that's, that's what Arcus exists for. It's to help make people better golfers. And so to be partners with them along that, you know, and to have them give us their trust and help them get to that next level is, you know, what I'm really excited about both professionally and as a golfer who's looking to improve myself. Yeah. I mean, it sounds just like a wonderful idea because especially for like someone like myself, you know, we have a limited golf season right in Central New York. I've got two little kids. And so practice is limited. So knowing what I should practice on, whether that's approach shots or getting off the tee or something in between can just make a dramatic improvement without needing to maybe spend as much time golfing. Of course, I'd love to spend more time golfing, but sometimes that can be it. We all. Yeah. Yeah. So Michael, you really got to turn your passion into a job and combine that golf of love of golf and analytics. So has that affected your golf game, like positive or negative, not just in handicap, but like your love of the sport? Or has that like taken away from your love that you work in the industry? Yeah, really good question. I think like this is something I debated for a long time before actually moving into the golf industry. And I talked to a lot of people that that are in the industry before it and got kind of mixed results. You know, the thing that I always heard was like from teaching pros who just would play maybe once or twice a year. Just kind of like fed up with the game. And I think you see that for like, you know, a lot of different professions, like say personal trainers too. I know that that's a kind of a common theme that you hear. And as I kind of went out and talked to different people, I found like some had that experience and where they just kind of got sick of golf and some, you know, had the opposite effect on them. For me, I guess it, you know, somewhat early days, but I'm, I'm more interested in it than, than ever. And I love playing more than ever. And it's nice because now I have kind of a built in excuse, you know, if I go out to the golf course, I'm collecting feedback and trying to help myself but also, you know, understand the product better. So, you know, maybe I'm, maybe it's too early to draw that conclusion, maybe that'll change. But I think my passion is just grown because there's just so much unexplored there. Both, you know, personally and for I think golf as a whole. So yeah, I guess right now I'm feeling very lucky and fortunate that these are the types of problems that I get to work on. And also, you know, is my, my hobby and thing that I love to do. That's great. Yeah, what a good problem to have. So, you know, like my excuse to golf, I usually play with my father in law, I can tell my wife like, well, you know, just doing some, you know, bonding with your dad. It's very important, you know, so hopefully she wanted to listen to this podcast and catch on to that whole. But, you know, last question, I guess, Michael and would certainly welcome anything else you'd like to share, but we're approaching our one of our first majors of the year. And there's another couple big tournaments coming up. Who do you, who do you see winning potentially at Augusta? Do you have any data that you would, you would be able to share of why? Augusta is so unique. And this will actually be the first year that I get to go to the tournament. And so, you know, I, I really hesitate to put out a guest there. It would be tough, though, to, to count someone like Scottie Schaeffler out right now. He's just, he's head and shoulders above the, you know, the rest of the field right now when it comes to strokes gained at least out of consistent week to week basis. Everybody, you know, a lot of golfers can have a really hot week, but he's, you know, shown for a couple of years now that he's just seems to be kind of operating at another level. And just last week he got a win. Having finally figured out, it seems his putting, which was kind of holding him back. And, you know, I think somebody like that with the skill set and the, you know, the, the kind of mental game that he's got to be able to kind of grind out on a major I think you can't count somebody like that out. I'd love to see somebody like a Rory McElroy or somebody like that, you know, who finally get a win at Augusta, but I'm not sure from the standpoint of the data that the course sets up well enough for him for me to, you know, put any money on that. But yeah, it'll be exciting. Excited to go out there and see the course in person for the first time and get a look at these guys, but maybe that Wednesday when I'm at the practice round, I'll have a better, better guess having seen them in action. I'd like to see the data and analytics on how much money you spend at the Augusta, you know, pro shop gift shop. Yeah, that will be, it'll be a lot. I don't know my wife will be with me so she'll probably rain me in a bit. But we have a five month old son so I can always say that I'm collecting stuff for him for when he grows up. Yeah, you'll have to of course get the pimento cheese sandwich and. Oh yeah. Great stuff. Yeah, already already planned in the day. Well, Michael, you know, thank you for joining us. I hope to see you on campus in the Syracuse area sometime maybe we can get out and I can use use an excuse to play golf during work you know that would always be a great excuse for me will be collecting data and analytics of course on the golf. Exactly. Totally justified. Yeah, no great for having the conversation and thanks so much for inviting me here and yeah obviously love the high school. It's such a good time. Well, I was there and I think you know for me it just really kind of set up my life as it's kind of followed from from leaving there so would love to get back and yeah definitely when I do I'll be hitting you up and we'll head out to drumlins. Is that the. That's the university course. Yep. Yep, we'll head out there and yeah get in some golf. Any advice for some aspiring students here at the high school or future alumni on how to get there kind of combine those passions and careers like is it just work hard or is it meet the right people or kind of a combination of everything. I mean, both of those I would also say kind of at a purely practical level like start doing work in the area that you want to to explore like for me I think one thing that opened the door was like I had a, you know, half a million kind of analyses or things that I had already done within that that field and you know so I came in with a good deal of knowledge because I had been studying either my own game or other games and things like that. And I think like, if you get a you know GitHub repo with, you know, some projects that you can point to that, you know, it's one thing to say you're passionate about an area it's another to demonstrate that. And I think that that tends to open up doors a lot more when you're kind of talking to other people that are interested in whatever industry or area it is, you know, the more time that you spend actually working in the problem space. The more that you know those opportunities seem to come so yeah, you know I think obviously leveraging your connections and making sure that you're up to date on kind of the latest in those areas but definitely carve out some time where you can take on some passion projects and and really kind of up your skill set so that when that opportunity does come around you've you've got to you know a foot in the door already and you're ready to go hit the ground running. Awesome. Thanks, Michael. Again, thank you on behalf of the entire high school community. Like thank you so much for joining us today. Really look forward to catching up with you again soon and seeing what our costs like comes out with and the next iteration of your product design. Yeah, absolutely. We'll take you to this is really, really great. Thanks so much for having me. And yeah, all the best to you and the high school and, you know, love to hear everything that that continues to happen and at the school and the kind of advancements that you're thinking are just really impressive so love to stay in touch and keep up to date on all of that and if there's ever anything that I can do to help or, you know, feel free to to reach out to me and same goes to anybody listening to this. That would like to get in touch with me I'm on LinkedIn obviously and happy to help in any way that I can. Awesome. Again, thanks so much and we'll catch up again soon.