Launch Monitor Data

An open, provenance-first database for comparing golf launch-monitor outputs and ball-flight models.

The database currently contains:

• 56 traceable sources: official vendor documentation for TrackMan (including iO), FlightScope, Foresight (including Falcon), Garmin (R10 and R50), Rapsodo, SkyTrak, Uneekor, Bushnell, Full Swing, Voice Caddie, and Square Golf; peer-reviewed studies; and hash-pinned public shot-level datasets;
• 261 source-backed vendor/field availability records across twelve vendors;
• 207 matched shots from a CC BY 4.0 TrackMan 4 versus FlightScope Mevo+ study, represented without pretending published aggregates are raw shots;
• 57 published club/metric comparisons and 114 normalized monitor-specific aggregate observations;
• catalog entries with verified SHA-256 pins for more than a dozen public shot-level datasets (TrackMan, Mevo+, Garmin R10/R50, SkyTrak, Rapsodo MLM2PRO, Square Golf, Awesome Golf, and the MIT-licensed CaddieSet corpus) that are indexed but not copied where their repositories lack a license;
• an optional data/studies/aggregate_observations.csv ingestion path for redistributable single-monitor group statistics, validated fail-closed;
• 534 published reference values in a dedicated published_references table: the TrackMan PGA and LPGA tour-averages tables (classic and 2023 vintages), amateur and handicap-group figures, Combine benchmarks, and press-published numbers for more than 25 named tour players — every row cited, confidence-graded, and kept separate from the study observations;
• deterministic CSV and SQLite builds using the canonical metric names and SI units used by UpstreamDrift's launch_monitor package.

Start Here

python -m pip install -e .
launch-monitor-data validate
launch-monitor-data build --output database
python -m pytest

The committed database artifacts are:

• database/launch_monitor_data.sqlite — normalized queryable database;
• database/study_comparisons.csv — paired published statistics;
• database/metric_observations.csv — long-form aggregate observations;
• database/upstreamdrift_aggregate_metrics.csv — UpstreamDrift-compatible metric vocabulary and canonical units;
• database/source_catalog.csv and database/vendor_fields.csv — provenance and field-availability tables.

What the Data Mean

The current redistributable comparison data are published aggregate statistics, not individual swings. aggregation_level=group_mean is a hard contract. Do not train a shot-level neural network by expanding each mean into sample_count duplicate rows.

The TrackMan 4 and Mevo+ observations are matched at the study level: both monitors observed the same retained shots. The paper excluded incomplete shots, severe mishits, and any shot for which either unit reported estimated spin.

Provenance Policy

Every observation must join to sources.source_id. Every source records a URL, access date, monitor identity, granularity, reported sample count, license or rights status, and limitations. The build fails closed when:

• a source or metric reference is unknown;
• a redistributable source lacks a license;
• required numeric or sample-count fields are invalid; or
• a vendor-field mapping lacks evidence.

reference_only means the source is useful and public but is not copied into the redistributable observation tables. Public accessibility is not treated as permission to redistribute.

UpstreamDrift Compatibility

Metric names and canonical units mirror UpstreamDrift PR #8343: speeds in metres per second, distances in metres, angles in radians, spin in radians per second, and time in seconds. See docs/UPSTREAMDRIFT_INTEGRATION.md.

Scope and Scientific Caution

This repository is an evidence substrate, not proof of which vendor is "correct." A monitor can measure some launch variables, estimate other values, and predict flight/roll under vendor-specific environmental assumptions. Cross-monitor differences can also reflect alignment, indoor geometry, ball type, metallic dots, firmware, software, normalization, and filtering.

Read docs/LIMITATIONS.md before model fitting and CONTRIBUTING.md before donating data.

The optional hash-verified workflow for the unlicensed public TrackMan corpus is documented in docs/REFERENCE_ONLY_ACQUISITION.md.

Licensing

Code is MIT licensed. Database rights and extracted data are licensed under CC BY 4.0 only where the source permits redistribution; attribution and per-source exceptions are in DATA_LICENSE.md. Trademarks belong to their respective owners. This project is not affiliated with any launch-monitor manufacturer.