TAPE-it-Golf.comTM was founded in 2008 by David Rea, an avid golfer who came to realize that Continuous Improvement concepts had never been applied to golf and that sustainable improvement would better occur with a ‘systems approach’ to the game.
With a background of over 30 years in process management, systems architecture and technology management for two Fortune 100 companies, David has implemented Total Quality concepts throughout his career. Whether called TQM, Kaizen, Deming, SPC, Six Sigma, or Process Improvement, the basic idea is to use a cycle of improvement that begins with measurement and counting, which we call Tracking. Studying your data is our Analysis step. Then by trying and correcting with Practice, you are finally led to better Execution. Combined with his love for golf, TAPE-it-Golf.comTM was born.
We’ve designed a process for golf improvement much like the process for improving the manufacturing of a car. If you were losing sales because of inconsistent quality how would you find out what is going wrong? If the only two things you knew were monthly profits and net equity, you couldn’t even begin to build a better car. In golf, that’s analogous to trying to improve your game knowing only the score(s) for recent rounds and your handicap.
Even if you measure number of cars manufactured, and count the number of cars rejected each day, you would still be lacking knowledge of the root cause of poor quality. This is the state of golf tracking software or systems today; they measure Greens in Regulation, # Ups and Downs, # putts, but don’t get to the root cause of how the results were achieved.
To really understand how to build a better car, you would need to track the variety of things happening during the assembly process. Then you could analyze why a certain area was off specification, recommend improvements, execute the new process and begin the cycle again. Virtually every company that has effectively implemented continuous improvement processes using the ‘try, test, adjust’ cycle, has dramatically improved their quality and output. Knowing how you hit each shot and the result gets to the level needed for quality analysis and improvement. For golfer’s improvement, think score and handicap!
Sounds easy, but there are obstacles in implementing such programs. One is that the measurement process itself must not interfere with the activity and it also must be simple to learn and use. Ideally, the measurement process should be built into the activity through technology, and many companies have implemented expensive process control systems simply to measure quality. Other than having a caddie or coach track all of this for you on the course (which pros have), the average golfer had no alternative, until now.
David worked through hundreds of designs before finalizing the TAPE-it-Golf.comTM innovative tracking card. The card had to meet two objectives, which are the same that any quality improvement process would use. First, it couldn’t take away from playing and enjoying the game. This was achieved through finding just the right balance of club, tendencies and results to measure and simplify the data recording to an average of 10 seconds or less per hole. This means that the golfer can collect all the information needed to analyze their game in around 3 minutes in a 4+ hour activity. Secondly, like in manufacturing, tracking the activity must be absolutely easy to use. People don’t like codes and complicated symbols. David reduced tracking to simply putting a ‘  ’ in a box. The TAPE-it-Golf.comTM innovative tracking card meets the tests of tracking each club, tendency and result in around 10 seconds per hole with no codes to memorize. Sustainable golf improvement is now possible.
While TAPE-it-Golf.comTM is definitely about golf improvement, it is not about golf instruction. David is not an instructor but believes golf professionals and instructors have lacked the tools to see how their students are really performing on the course. Using our car analogy, this would be like process experts always trying to simulate problems in the research lab (or on the practice range or practice green) and never visiting a factory! On-the-course golf professional instruction can be expensive. TAPE-it-Golf.comTM brings on-course play to the pro with never before online access to all of the students’ rounds. The innovative ‘Paint My Game’ display is automatically delivered to their desktop when the student has played five rounds. Of course, the student has access to all of this information as well for his or her own self-analysis. This is a winning combination that makes best use of time and money for everyone whether a teacher, a student or just a golf enthusiast who likes to always be looking for ways to lower their score.
With the implementation of continuous improvement practices has come goal setting and celebration of results. We all relate to the ability to set goals in areas we control and to compete against others in those areas. Thus the TAPE-it-Golf.comTM leaderboard was born! A way to really measure improvement against goals and introduce some friendly competition into the Track-Analyze-Practice-Execute improvement process. Check it out…you might find your name there one of these days!
We hope this introduction into the history and philosophy behind the founding of TAPE-it-Golf.comTM has given you a better understanding of what we are all about. We welcome you to join the TAPE-it-Golf.comTM family soon! |
