Welcome to Golf Tech Wonderland: Inside the Mind-Bending World of Foresight Sports

Precision. Ease of use. Durability.

That’s how the Foresight Sports team summed up their approach for me ahead of my visit to their San Diego headquarters.

OK, I thought. That all makes sense. Having used their golf launch monitors, I could agree rather easily that they’d hit those marks without ever having thought about them in that summary fashion.

But, man, I really had no idea just how obsessively committed this company is to those foundational principles.

I knew the Foresight products were precise and accurate. But I had no idea they had dozens of engineers in house studying every minute detail to achieve that precision.

I knew they were innovative. But I never knew they had innovations just to test their innovations!

I knew from firsthand experience just how simple their golf launch monitors were to operate. But I didn’t appreciate the lengths they go to to achieve that ease of use.

And, oh yes, I knew their products were durable. But I didn’t realize that some of their retailers are complaining that their devices last so long that they don’t allow for enough follow-up sales.

In other words, for all that I did know, until I visited Foresight Sports in-person, I didn’t know jack!

Well, now I’ve been there. And let me tell you, the experience was a bit like when Charlie visited Willy Wonka’s mysterious chocolate factory.

Except this was non-fiction. Everything I saw at Foresight Sports is the real-life workings of an industry leader. And for a golf tech junkie, well, this place is un-freaking-believable!

Let me share just a tiny bit of what I discovered.

A Peek Behind the Foresight Sports Curtain 

Arriving at the Foresight Sports headquarters, I was immediately struck by what a clean, modern, professional operation this is.

Let’s face it: A lot of these golf technology companies aren’t much more than a couple dudes in a garage.

This ain’t that. The Foresight facility is a large, multi-story building with an eye-catching all-glass exterior.

When you go inside, everything is well-organized and presentable. Nicely-furnished and decorated. For a company that’s not in the business of hosting the public, they have a very well-put-together, classy look that, honestly, is confidence-inspiring.

After you go from the spacious first-floor lobby up a spiral staircase to the second floor, you’re immediately met by a wall-sized mural featuring a visual representation of the Foresight Sports evolution.

And this is where it hits you: Foresight Sports is the OG of this whole accurate golf launch monitor craze that’s dominated the industry these past few years.

All these Johnny-come-latelies, including both new brands and established companies, that have now thrown their hats into the ring to capitalize on the skyrocketing demand for accurate, easy-to-use, durable golf launch monitors and simulators are all chasing Foresight Sports. This is the company that essentially lit the match that started this wildfire.

The Ones Who Started It All: Game Changers 

It all started in 2006 when a group of engineers developed a one-camera photometric golf launch monitor called the G1. Nike licensed it, but the reach never extended too far into the everyday consumer market.

Then, in 2008, the same team put together a dual-camera launch monitor called the G100. Its ability to capture accurate ball flight performance was significantly improved and it was the first launch monitor to include Foresight’s patented screen technology, meaning users could get their shot data in an all-in-one system.

In 2010, the GC2 became Foresight’s first true consumer launch monitor. As a two-camera photometric unit, this was the product that really catapulted Foresight Sports’ meteoric growth, becoming the industry’s best-selling indoor/outdoor capable device within its first three years on the market.

And did you catch the “GC” moniker? It stands for “Game Changer” and references how the GC2 was usable both indoors and outdoors. I’d say they nailed the name! 

From there, Foresight Sports just kept on changing the game.

“That’s kind of what we’ve always done at Foresight Sports,” Chris Watters, Director of Sales, told me. “As soon as we came out with the GC2, we’ve always said, ‘OK, what’s the next thing that we can help the consumer with? What’s the next thing that we can change the industry with?’ We just continue to come up with new innovations and products. That’s one thing with Foresight, we’re not just going to rest on our laurels.”

That next thing was club data. The G1, G100, and GC2 only read ball data.

Enter Padu Merlotti, Chief Technology Officer and one of the real engineering masterminds behind Foresight’s ongoing innovations.

Merlotti was charged with devising a way to add club-data reading to the GC2. Oh, and he was asked to do it before the fast-approaching PGA Show in Orlando.

After weeks of nearly around-the-clock work, Merlotti delivered the HMT (Head Measurement Technology) system, a second two-camera device that measured what the club path and face were doing at impact. The HMT attached to the GC2 to deliver the first-ever four-camera system that combined to produce both ball and club data.

Merlotti remembers the pressure of delivering this breakthrough invention. He was literally still working on it on the flight to Orlando.

Setting up for the show, Merlotti was confident but the unit had not actually been tested with any live golf shots. Next thing he knows, Foresight co-founder Jon Watters has invited a group at the opening of the show to the Foresight booth to see this new creation.

That group included the Golf Channel, which was broadcasting live on television as Merlotti nervously readied the demo. As the prototype still had a lag of about 4 seconds between when the shot was hit and when the readout appeared, Merolotti watched along with everyone else for the first-ever shot test results.

“It was the longest 4 seconds of my life,” he said. “But it worked!”

Before then, radar was the only practical means of reading club data.

“And if you really wanted accurate information with a high-speed camera system, you had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Chris Watters said. “This was the first portable system where we were basically putting the industry on its head. That was one of the biggest disruptors to the industry.”

Talk about a game changer!

The next step was to take the clunky, kind of Frankensteined GC2/HMT unit and package it in a way that was more user friendly, portable, and salable. That, of course, became the GCQuad in 2016, which continues as Foresight’s flagship product and the one that took them to an entirely different level.

“I think we really started to skyrocket when Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, and Rory McIlroy started using the GCQuad at every event,” Watters said. “That’s when the floodgates started opening.”

Even now, with new competitors popping up annually, the GCQuad is still the go-to for more top-level players than any other golf launch monitor.

“The higher the strength of the field, the greater our percentage of use is,” Ethan Ganot, Foresight’s Marketing Director, told me. “So when you get to the playoff events, we’re at like 70 percent of the field.”

And here’s something you might not realize: Foresight doesn’t give these golf launch monitors away, even to the biggest names in the game. How’s that for a legitimate product endorsement?

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

The GCQuad certainly solidified Foresight’s spot at the top of the golf launch monitor market. For the best players, instructors, and clubfitters, Foresight represented the pinnacle.

But the Quad’s $15,999 retail price was a bit steep for your everyday golfer. So, Merlotti and team dove back into the think tank and emerged in 2021 with the Foresight Sports GC3. Once again, the entire industry took notice as the three-camera GC3, for a starting price of $5,999, became the first sub-$10,000 golf launch monitor capable of delivering accurate ball and club data.

Meanwhile, before the GC3, the Foresight team pioneered the overhead golf launch monitor product class, introducing the $20,0000 GCHawk in 2018. Using the same technology that’s in the GCQuad, the Hawk’s overhead mount allowed for a dedicated indoor setup where both righties and lefties could play not just golf but also soccer without having to move a floor-standing device. 

In 2023, Foresight released the Falcon, another overhead launch monitor but one that’s considerably smaller than the Hawk and yet features an even larger hitting area. And at $15,000, it’s also $5,000 less than the Hawk.

Finally, Foresight’s latest and greatest: The QuadMAX, which debuted at the 2024 PGA Show. It’s a GCQuad and then some. A lot of some. The QuadMAX adds features and functionality like on-device session capture, customizable data tiles on a touchscreen display, and swing speed training, all in a device that weighs less but includes a longer battery life than the GCQuad.

“It’s not going to stop there,” Watters said of the impressive array of Foresight products. “We’ve got more stuff in the pipeline.”

Vertical Integration: Controlling the Technology Stack In-House

Walking through Foresight’s multiple production rooms is a next-level experience. It’s truly impressive.

I’ve been sworn to secrecy (contractually, that is), so I can’t give away exactly how they do everything that they do. But let me just say that these people are borderline lunatics when it comes to redundancies for ensuring quality.

Like, seriously. They’ve literally developed new technologies just to test the innovations and accuracy in their products.

Every time I turned a corner, I found more of what amounted to the most intensive quality control I’ve ever witnessed. Swing robots, test benches, environmental condition simulations, freezers, ovens, on and on it went.

These people don’t play. You’d think they were making military-grade equipment for the government.

Every single golf launch monitor—every one—goes through this intensive days-long testing process to confirm that it meets the Foresight standard. You know, the “precise, easy-to-use, durable” mantra.

They’ve obsessed over every detail.

For example, things like how the camera lenses are positioned and fixed in the golf launch monitors are extremely intentional. They know, because they’ve tested it (believe me, they’ve tested it), that over time, heat and cold will compromise a lens housing made of plastic, like what you’ll find in competitor products. And if that lens moves even a tenth of a millimeter, the way it interacts with the sensors will be altered and pinpoint precision will suffer.

“Accuracy is not just accuracy when it leaves the building,” Merlotti stressed to me. “It’s also about accuracy months and years after the product is out in the field.”

Another example is the proprietary isolation material they’ve identified that surrounds the chassis of the QuadMAX. It makes it so that even if the device took a direct shot from something like a golf ball, while the outside of the unit would shake, the guts would stay stable and continue to accurately report data.

Then there’s the camera lenses themselves. When the Foresight team was designing the GCQuad, they shopped every lens possibility on the market. But what they realized was that the internal components of a standard camera lens include plastic. They decided that won’t do for the best golf launch monitor because, what happens when that lens is sitting out on the driving range in Arizona in direct sunlight? That plastic element will start to deform.

So, what did Foresight do? They designed their own proprietary lens. Because of course they did.

There’s the extensive calibration process for the accelerometers built into the Foresight launch monitors so that they self-level for utmost precision. There’s the automated lens focusing system the Foresight engineers developed. There’s the science-fiction-looking gun that can shoot 8,000 volts of electricity that allows the engineers to simulate what happens to a unit after a static shock. It just goes on and on.

“What you’re probably picking up on,” Ganot said to me, “is literally every component, every assembly and every sub-assembly is uniquely designed and tested here.”

I was picking that up alright. The deeper we went into the operations, the more mind-blowing it all became.

“We really have control of the entire technology stack,” Merlotti said. “All the mechanical, the industrial design, the electrical, but also all of the software is developed in-house, as well as everything that glues them together. That’s what gives us total control over the entire process.”

Another interesting facet regarding the continuous Foresight innovations is that when they were acquired by Vista Outdoor (now Revelyst) in 2021, they gained access to all of the resources under the Revelyst umbrella. That means even more inventive ways to design, calibrate, and test the Foresight products.

In-House Golf Simulator Software Development Too!

While Foresight Sports is most known for its photometric golf launch monitors, their suite of FSX software completes the simulator experience. And it’s one of the best, if not the overall best, sim software packages available. Nobody in the industry would argue that point.

Foresight’s software sales model is different from its competitors. Rather than charging a large subscription fee for a bundle of courses, the FSX courses are available a la carte. Each launch monitor comes with a pack of 25 less-famous courses. The courses from there range in price from $150 to $500. But once you pay for them, you own them for life. The same with the FSX software overall. It’s a one-time purchase.

The detail on these FSX course replications, especially for the higher-end premium jobs is wild. With the right projector and impact screen, the FSX Play software with a premium course like Pebble Beach, Pinehurst No. 2, St Andrews or Spyglass Hill is just sick. We’ve definitely reached the age where this stuff is realistic.

“Those premium courses really do create the opportunity for a premium experience,” Bryan Williams, Hardware Product Manager, mentioned to me. “When the U.S. Open was out at Pinehurst, I was in my sim bay at home playing right along with them. They were on the TV, and I was matching them hole for hole.”

To get these courses, George Hughes, Client Relations Coordinator, told me Foresight negotiates a licensing agreement. It tends to be a symbiotic relationship.

“We estimate that we have exposure regularly to about 150,000 people,” Hughes said when talking about Foresight users. “So there’s a really big level of exposure that you can get having your course replicated with the software. It’s a way for these courses to market themselves. It’s mutually beneficial.”

Just like with the hardware, creating these lifelike, dynamic simulated golf course experiences is a game of details. And, this being Foresight, they’re all in on details.

They send drone teams out to map these courses. By placing beacons around the course, they can send a drone up that emits a laser pulse to the beacons. That gives the FSX designers the elevation detail they need to build a 3D model.

“In terms of accuracy, it’s within 20 centimeters,” Hughes said of the insane detail of elevation, vegetation, and everything else. “You can be confident that the shot you’re seeing is the shot you’d be seeing outside.”

And the touches extend to all the little details, especially at the biggest-name courses.

“When we do a course like Pinehurst, which we released during the U.S. Open Week, we had our designers doing details like the Payne Stewart statue outside the clubhouse,” Hughes said.

They’ve even built local weather conditions into the software, so that you can play a course like Pebble Beach in conditions identical to what they are on location at that time.

What are these guys gonna dream up next?

Synergistic Partnerships Enhance the Foresight Ecosystem

Foresight Sports seems to be building a network of key and specific partners that make for a holistic customer experience.

In March, Foresight Sports’ parent company acquired PinSeeker, an app that pays out tens of thousands of dollars weekly in real cash prizes through online closest-to-the-pin tournaments.

Home users play online against each other using the same golf launch monitor and simulator software. So multiple FSX Play users, for example, from around the world can compete. And plenty of them are doing just that. The PinSeeker app seems to be on fire, growing rapidly.

I sat down at the Foresight offices with Rob Guilfoyle from PinSeeker. This is a good story that’s worth telling in more depth and on its own. Stay tuned for that additional content.

Foresight also works with Sportsbox AI to create a fully integrated experience that combines Foresight’s hardware with the Sportsbox motion capture technology that ties your data to your actual physical movements. It means that a golfer can learn not just from the numbers but can understand how different feels are associated with those data outputs.

World’s Coolest Break Room

All this amazing Foresight technology comes together for full display and use in Foresight’s expansive simulator room. There are five hitting bays and every option of Foresight Sports launch monitor available for use. Likewise, each iteration of the FSX software is available and already loaded and operating on accompanying computers.

To put it simply, it’s a badass setup.

And of course it’s a very practical space. This is where the team can test all of their finished products. It’s where the sales staff can familiarize themselves with all of the features of the hardware and software.

But beyond all that, to me, it’s the coolest break room I’ve ever seen. This place beats the hell out of a corner with a coffee maker and vending machine.

As I was hanging out there, employees wandered in and out, hitting shots in the sim bays, firing up different virtual golf courses, seeing who could pop the longest drive, working on their wedge games on different target ranges.

And, from what I could tell, Foresight has some serious sticks in its employ. It left me wondering if you had to list your handicap in the skills section of the job application.

These Guys Get It: How Foresight Sports Blends Engineering & Golf To Crush It 

As I mentioned, this is a company of golfers. From the founders on down, many of the staff of hundreds of people love the game. It makes a lot of sense, having seen it, that they make golf products that resonate as realistic with golfers.

Tim Campbell, Key and Special Account Manager, told me that he’s using his GCQuad to convert his lifelong draw into a more playable fade. When he and I had dinner, we both talked excitedly about things like golf course architecture. He’s taken like half a dozen golf trips to Scotland and Ireland. Point is, he loves what he’s selling.

Ganot told me about a previous job he had at Miller Brewing Company where one of the employee perks included an allotment of free beer every month. When I asked him how he could ever leave that kind of setup, he replied, “Because I love golf even more than beer.” They should make a T-shirt.

Williams is a former Long Drive competitor. He’s worked as an engineer in multiple industries but always pined for a gig that included golf. Now he feels like he’s found his dream job.

Chris Watters played golf collegiately and grew up helping to test the golf launch monitors his father’s company was developing.

His dad, founder Jon Watters, told a hilarious story of showing up to Torrey Pines South very under the weather after a fun night out. Assuming the day was lost, he somehow managed to start eagle birdie, 3 under after just two holes. 

It goes on from there. It’s reassuring, to me anyway, to find that Foresight isn’t just made up of really smart engineers, but also dedicated golfers with fun, real-life golf interests. There’s legitimate passion at this place. And there’s a vibe with this group that taps directly into the social side of golf.

They aren’t just moving boxes and studying profit. They’re designing the products that they themselves would want to use. And when you marry the golf launch monitor accuracy that they work so ferociously to perfect with the realism of the simulated golf courses that they work so exhaustively to replicate, it makes for the best golf simulator experience going today.

“It’s one thing to have awesome developers and engineers, but not all of them are golfers,” Merlotti said. “The product managers come up with the features. The developers make it. But then, a golfer can say, ‘Hey, this is done well, but a golfer doesn’t think like this.’ It needs to be a perfect marriage of both golf knowledge and engineering knowledge.”

That, in a nutshell, may be Foresight’s secret sauce.

Good Enough Is Not Good Enough

Throughout my entire time at Foresight Sports, whether I was visiting with top-level management, engineers, software developers, the marketing team, sales staff, QC personnel, or assembly staff, one theme emerged repeatedly: Total commitment to the highest quality.

The buy-in throughout the company was thorough and obvious. Every person seemed to be working toward the same goal of precision, ease-of-use, and durability. It came up over and over. There’s a very clear understanding of the objective.

“We don’t really worry too much about cost,” Chris Watters said. “We want to make sure the product is the best and the most reliable option. When you buy one of our devices, not only is it going to last, it’s going to be ready to use in a few seconds, and it’s going to be very, very accurate.”

Precision. Ease of use. Durability.

I thought I understood that about Foresight Sports before I visited. Now I’m completely convinced.

Stay tuned for more coverage of Marc’s visit to the Foresight Sports headquarters.

About PlayBetter Golf Reviewer Marc Sheforgen

Marc Sheforgen is a golf writer whose passion for the game far exceeds his ability to play it well. Marc covers all things golf, from product reviews and equipment recommendations to event coverage and tournament analysis. When he’s not playing, watching, or writing about golf, he enjoys traveling (often golf-related), youth sports coaching, volunteering, and record collecting.