Established in 2012, Stamford, Connecticut-based Arccos Golf has become one of the most exciting companies in the sport, thanks to how it helps golfers of all abilities lower their scores by being able to track and analyze their shots. That way, they can make smarter on-course decisions. Decisions, by the way, that are driven by data and not a poorly grounded perception of one’s own game and abilities. And as a result, they can better understand what parts of their games they need to devote more practice.
Employing sensors that are fitted onto the tops of club grips and synced with the Arccos Golf app, the product incorporates automatic shot-tracking with artificial intelligence and strokes-gained analytics to provide what company officials say are “unparalleled insights” informed by “the richest data set in the game.” Taken together, those features offer yet another affirmation of the sage assertion Francis Bacon made more than four centuries ago in his book, “Meditationes Sacrae”: knowledge is power. Especially if you have hit an approach shot to a tucked pin in the midst of a tight match and want to be sure of how far you actually carry your 9-iron.
Arccos Golf is largely the brainchild of its CEO and co-founder, 41-year-old Salman “Sal” Syed. A native of Pakistan and the father of a 3-year-old daughter whom he and his wife, Rachel, are raising, he combined an aptitude for advanced mathematics with a love of golf to make his business a reality and then a raging success. Fast Company magazine ranks it among the World’s Most Innovative Companies. And Arccos, which is named after the inverse cosine function that is featured in the Arccos algorithm, boasts partnerships with Microsoft (for A.I. and cloud computing) as well as with Ping, TaylorMade, Srixon and Cobra (for smart clubs) and Club Champion and TXG (for smart fitting). It also is used by hundreds of thousands of golfers who appreciate how the app uses vast stores of data to show how they can go from, say, a 15 handicap to a 10, or from a 10 to a 5.
In the latest installment of the 19th Hole, Syed talks about the birth and growth of Arccos as he also reflects on his upbringing in Pakistan; his college days at Ohio Wesleyan (where he captained the men’s tennis and cricket teams) and Yale (where he earned an MBA while playing obscene amounts of golf at the university course); what it was like to be a Muslim in America during 9/11; his passion for Golden Age golf course architecture; and how his own company’s product helped him drop from a 7-handicap to a plus-2 and win the 2021 men’s championship at Tamarack Country Club in Greenwich, Connecticut.
I was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and raised in the city of Lahore. My dad was a major in the army before he left the military to go to business school. After that, he went on to start what became the largest media and internet company in Pakistan. My mother was a gynecologist, and I had one younger brother. We moved around a lot until I was 6 or 7 years old, as military families often do. Then, we settled in Lahore.
I was a mischievous child and not very interested in my studies. That displeased my mother. But in time, her disappointment made me work harder. I won some awards for my academics and was able to get into Aitchison College, which is located in Lahore and where a number of the country’s prime ministers have been educated. It takes day students and boarders and goes from first grade through high school.
I really wanted to go to university in America and was able to get a full academic scholarship to Ohio Wesleyan. I thought about going there for one year and then transferring. But I loved the school, so I stayed.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning. Only the international students came early, and the campus seemed very empty. I had never been out of Pakistan before and had never really been without my parents, so I felt very lonely. I just laid awake at night and wondered what I had done. Moments like that made me grow up a little faster because I was so on my own. Back home, I had led a very privileged life. I had never done my own laundry. I had never cooked on my own. I always had someone else doing things for me.
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