MyTurn
by JIM DUCIBELLA
T
he next time someone sees you
struggling on the practice range
and says something faux com-
forting about it being a simple
sport and not rocket science, you might
tell them about the three former NASA
Langley workers who are in the process
of revolutionizing the way people work
on their game.
It’s called FeedbacK, and it’s the brain-
child of Shawn McDonald, founder and
president of the Hampton-based compa-
ny. Joining her at the top of the leadership
team are Jeff Brandt, chief
technology officer, and Roz
McCreery, head of product
development. All of them cut
their teeth during extensive
experience at NASA Langley.
T he Fe e d b ac K c onc ept
will eventually be expand-
ed to include many different
sports. But for the moment,
their emphasis is golf, and the
artificial intelligence-pow-
ered FeedbacK vCoach.
FeedbacK’s vCoach tech-
nology can help you improve
your golf swing by automati-
cally videoing your swing and
then giving you coaching to
improve. The team is devel-
oping the solution to be used
at traditional driving ranges,
with golf simulators and as a
mobile app.
v Coach is powered by
the latest artificial intelli-
gence technology. The algorithms are
trained by director of instruction Jamie
Conners, a 25-year PGA professional
who has been affiliated with ESPN and
Golf Digest schools.
This all began pretty much the way
you’d expect, with a frustrated McDon-
ald standing on a driving range in 2012,
flailing at balls, practicing but not improv-
ing and having no idea how to rectify
that situation.
72
“I happened to have taken my phone out
of my pocket and put in on the ground,”
McDonald recalled. “I told myself, ‘You
know, this thing can see, hear and talk.
W hy ca n’t it give me instr uction? ’ I
became fascinated with this idea of how
to develop a product that gives people
instruction.”
Research showed that while there were
products that offered data, the data didn’t
translate into something that would be
useful to correct or improve a person’s
swing. She and her partners went on a
FeedbacK's vCoach technology videos your swing and
provides instant analysis to help you improve.
mission to see how to use video to give
actionable FeedbacK.
That process started in 2014 with the
release of FeedbacK Collect, a product
they sold by word of mouth but enabled
them to collect swings by the thousands.
That led to the creation of teaching
parameters, which led to the creation of
an algorithm that would offer the user
the same advice as Conners, the PGA pro,
would give.
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | J A N UA R Y / F E B R UA R Y 2 0 2 0
If you are wondering why it took from
her initial visit to the range in 2012 to
now to get the comprehensive version of
FeedbacK off the ground, there’s a simple
explanation.
“In many ways, we needed the availabil-
ity of the technology to catch up with my
vision,” she explained. “In 2012, we were
on iPhone 4 and computer-vision learning
was in its infancy. We needed tools to be
developed that we ended up applying to
improve the coaching. That happened in
2016-17.”
That’s when they upgrad-
ed their mobile app to include
coaching. Even then they knew
they needed more videos in
order to provide the highest per-
centage of accurate FeedbacK
possible and McDonald emailed
a major player in the golf and
entertainment industry.
McDonald emailed her idea
to the chief technology offi-
cer one morning in May 2018
and had a response—a positive
response—that afternoon.
They’ve been in talks ever since,
and McDonald is highly opti-
mistic about the direction those
talks are heading. In addition,
she’s been able to sell the con-
cept to about a dozen investors,
all but one of them Virginians.
“It’s all very exciting,” she
said.
For a ll of the hard work
and endless hours that went
into the creation of FeedbacK’s vCoach,
there’s a delightful sidebar of serendipity
attached to McDonald’s story.
In 1989, McDonald’s mother presented
her with a set of golf clubs, her first ever.
“What do I do with these?” she remem-
bered asking.
“Learn how to play golf,” her mom replied.
McDonald obviously took her mother at
her word, in a way neither ever could have
imagined.
vsga.org
Improving your game?
There’s an app for that