It’s no surprise that some of the best and most useful golf innovations have come from people following a fierce passion to improve their own games as well as helping the legions of golfers who end up using their products.
Take Scotland-based Shot Scope, innovators of cutting-edge laser rangefinders, GPS devices, and one of the industry leaders in collecting, aggregating, and educating with amateur shot performance data. Visionary Founder and CEO David Hunter started his journey into golf entrepreneurship as an obsessed recreational player who just happened to have the vision and acumen to turn his quest for lowering his handicap into a fulfilling and far-reaching business venture.
“I started to play golf at 22 and instantly fell in love with the game. It’s frustrating, it’s demanding, it’s rewarding. I was obsessed,” Hunter explains. “I started to work on my game, but I wasn’t improving, and at that stage, I started to record every single shot on paper and pencil. My handicap went from 16 to five, so one weekend, I started to work on an idea and on three pieces of paper, thought up the idea that effectively is now Shot Scope.”
Shot Scope recently released a short documentary, sharing the story of the company’s journey to date, and the people who bring the technology – and its mission to lower golfers’ scores – to life.
The team of golfing high achievers Hunter has assembled has helped grow the brand into a global player in the game improvement space. Today, more than 300,000 golfers in 160 different countries use Shot Scope devices and the brand is a top player in their native homeland – The United Kingdom. Having built a robust network of golf professionals and retail stores selling its products, what makes Shot Scope stand out from the crowd is their understanding of the game. By offering a range of distance measuring devices to aid course management and help the golfer improve without charging any subscription fees makes the Shot Scope brand a sensible choice for golfers alike.
Scott Robertson, Shot Scope’s global head of sales, was a PGA teaching professional for more than 13 years and has brought a pragmatic and strategic frame of reference that helps grow Shot Scope’s reach and efficacy. “I coached ‘everybody,’ which was brilliant because it gave me such a broad spectrum of knowledge across the whole game of golf,” he says. “Every golfer should be using technology and Shot Scope takes what golfers are doing on the golf course without their coach present, then pulls that information back so we understand exactly what we’re doing and whether or not that’s working.”
Half of Shot Scope’s users reside in America, so Hunter and company have taken an ambitious approach to rapidly growing Shot Scope’s U.S. market share starting in 2025, with new products, advertising, and further developing its partnerships with PGA of America Golf Professionals and their facilities, as well as with large golf retail chains.
Two key players in that process are Gavin Dear, chief commercial officer, and Jennifer Saxton, marketing manager, both elite-level amateur players who apply their competitive experience to driving the business forward.
Dear is a former Walker Cup player who competed for the Great Britain & Ireland team against Team USA in the 2009 tournament at Merion Golf Club, alongside stars like Rickie Fowler and Brian Harman. Today, Dear is more focused on helping amateur golfers around the globe shoot their best scores. “Having had a journey of improvement myself within golf, I wanted to go and help others and to believe that technology could be that pathway,” Dear said.
Saxton has gone from a scratch player to a +5 handicap since joining the Shot Scope team and taking deep dives into her own shot performance analytics to inform her practice and game improvement. She is a member of Scotland’s national ladies’ team and the 2022 champion of the prestigious St Rule Trophy, played at the Old Course at St. Andrews. “I look at data day in and day out and I can see where you can improve and what golfers should be doing on the course. What we’ve seen consistently across all Shot Scope users, is that they improve by an average of 4.1 shots.”
As Shot Scope pushes to become a larger and more influential brand in the global golf space, customer interaction is an integral part of the company’s path forward. “It’s a great experience getting feedback from the users of Shot Scope technology,” Dear said. “How they see and engage with our products has been a great driver of our product development.”
Lyndsey Whitefield, head of marketing and a rapidly improving amateur player since she joined the Shot Scope team, echoes Dear’s perspective. “Our customers and community are at the heart and soul of our business,” she said. “Whether you’re elite or new to golf, Shot Scope has a product for every golfer.”
As the game plan and ambition to reach more golfers grows, Hunter is grateful for how the Shot Scope journey has gone thus far and is excited for the future.
“We started as a small company based in Edinburgh, so when I now look out and see that we are stocked in more than 160 countries worldwide that can only make you proud, and it shows the tremendous job that the team have done in building a product is truly universal,” he said. “We’re motivated to move our business forward, but we’re also motivated to help golfers. That’s why we’re here. It’s incredible to see so many people in one place that want the same thing. It’s a lovely feeling to see the team work every day to try and improve golfers worldwide.”
For more information, visit ShotScope.com.
