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The number that caught my attention during an AVA Golf demo was not a score or a clubhead speed. It was 21 yards, followed by 43.
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Aron Schüler, AVA Golf’s director of engineering, had opened his own account and pulled up a comparison of practice and on-course shots. His dispersion during a practice session was 21 yards. On the course, it widened to 43.
That difference is where a large part of golf instruction gets lost. A launch monitor can describe a shot struck from a mat with no consequence attached. A round-tracking app can record where the ball finished while missing the swing, lie and decision that sent it there. A coach usually receives pieces, often on different platforms, then asks the player to reconstruct the rest from memory.
AVA Golf, a ParOne company that began onboarding golfers this summer, is trying to put those pieces on the same screen. The subscription platform imports performance information from rounds, simulators and launch monitors, applies strokes-gained analysis and identifies three areas for the player to address. It then matches those priorities with short instructional videos from its coaching library.
Golf has no shortage of devices that can collect another number. AVA is attempting something coaches have needed for years: putting those measurements together before deciding what deserves attention.
What Schüler’s 8-Iron Kept Showing Him
Schüler ran the demonstration through his own account. He has played on and off for three years and wants to reach a single-digit handicap next year. The data came with the misses still in it.
Schüler pointed to the 8-iron data. When the 7-iron felt like too much, he often dropped down a club. Then the 8-iron came up short. In AVA, those shots were sitting together instead of being remembered as separate misses.
“If you just look at the round, it will tell you a much different story than the launch monitor itself,” Schüler said.
It should. Golfers hit practice balls from repeated lies, usually without a scorecard changing after each swing. On the course they change targets, react to trouble, misjudge wind, rush alignment and hit from turf that does not forgive a heavy strike the way a mat can. The two sets of data are not rivals. Together, they can expose whether a problem belongs to the motion, the club choice, the player’s routine or the decisions surrounding the shot.
The platform’s diagnosis is also less mysterious than the term “golf intelligence system” may suggest. Schüler said AVA currently has 147 defined rules beneath its recommendation engine. Strokes-gained information supplies one input. Launch-monitor measurements can confirm or sharpen the diagnosis, although the system can operate without them. Rules trigger when a pattern crosses a threshold, and the issues are ranked by severity.
The platform’s focus on limiting recommendations to three areas of improvement is one of its smarter choices. Golfers already have unlimited access to disconnected swing tips. Show a player 15 shortcomings and he will often sample 15 fixes. Show him three and he at least has a workable practice list.
A Bad Putting Story May Begin 80 Yards Away
During the conversation, JR Charles, ParOne’s founder and CEO, described a college player who believed putting was her biggest weakness. Her numbers told a different story. She was an above-average putter, he said, but was beginning too many first putts from long range because of her approach play.
That mistake is common. Golfers remember the missed putt because it ended the hole. They are less likely to blame the wedge that left them 25 feet away.
I have seen the same issue with one of my teenage players. We did need to address face control and a recurring left miss with the putter, but his larger scoring leak appeared in his wedge yardages. He was performing better from roughly 125 to 130 yards than from 50 to 80. Once we found that hole and worked on it, his recent scoring average moved from about 72 to 68.5 over a three-week stretch.
Data did not coach him. It stopped both of us from spending all our time on the part of the game that felt guilty.
“All these tools are great separately,” I told Charles and Schüler. “But they don’t give you the big picture together.”
AVA’s visualizations are built for that correction. A player can examine approach dispersion by club, directional misses, lag-putt finishes and a history of how the same hole has been played over time. A chart is useful only if it changes the next practice session, however. The company’s harder task is turning recognition into sustained work.
Charles put it in product terms: “How fast do we get a user to that ‘aha’ moment?”
For a coach, the better question comes a week later: Did the player do anything with it?
- 1
Bring the records togetherRounds, simulator sessions, practice sessions and supported launch-monitor data enter the same player account.
- 2
Test the patternsStrokes-gained results supply one input. When launch measurements are available, AVA can use them to sharpen what the scoring data suggests.
- 3
Rank what is costing the playerThe engine assigns severity after a pattern crosses one of its defined thresholds.
- 4
Limit the assignmentAVA presents three priorities and pairs them with instruction from its coaching-video library.
The Coaching Platform Golf Has Been Missing
AVA gave me an advance look at a coaching workspace the company was preparing for beta testing. A coach can open a student’s rounds, practice sessions and strokes-gained trends, then annotate a chart, hole or individual shot. Voice notes and markings from a review are bundled into a lesson so the student can follow the coach’s thinking in sequence. Messaging and scheduling are being brought into the same workspace.
The concept addresses an ordinary but costly part of coaching. A player may take one lesson, play several rounds and hit hundreds of balls before returning. Unless the player sends video or the coach goes hunting through separate accounts, the next lesson starts with a vague question: How has it been going?
AVA wants that answer waiting before the student arrives. It plans to offer coach accounts without charge while golfers pay $25 per month after a 14-day trial. The player product is live; the coach tools I saw were still described during the Sept. 9 demonstration as nearing beta.
For years, I have moved among CoachNow, Sportsbox AI, SwingU and other tools to understand what my players do away from a lesson. Each serves a purpose, but none shows me the entire player without some manual assembly. AVA is the first platform I have seen that seriously attempts to do that work before the next conversation begins.
If the coach tools perform with real students the way they did during the demonstration, this could be a genuine game changer, particularly in remote coaching. A connected view would shift time from collecting the player’s story to understanding it.
One meaningful piece remains unfinished. Coaches do not all teach the same way, and software should not quietly outrank the person responsible for the player. Charles said a coach can steer a student away from a suggested video through a note, but AVA has not yet built the creator program that would place the coach’s own library into the recommendation system. He described that as an eight- to 12-month goal, not a current feature.
I would want that piece before placing AVA at the center of a coaching program. Its annotations already give the coach a direct way to respond. Adding each instructor’s material would keep the platform’s recommendation from competing with the coaching plan.
I plan to test the coach beta with my own remote students when it is ready. I do not need another dashboard. I want one shared record of what a player did, what we decided to change and whether the work survived the next round.
That is where AVA Golf could change the job. The golfer’s Saturday round, Tuesday practice and next conversation with the coach would no longer arrive as three separate stories.
PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.
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This story was originally published September 11, 2026 at 10:10 AM.