Well, Spikemark.
Hello, Clipd.
The cost of the NCAA waste less time moving forward from its partner in the golf course and rankings, Spikemark, announced last Monday that the partnership was in a “providing” agreement with Clippd in receiving.
How did this happen? According to Clippd CEO Piers Parnell, with the phone Sept. 1.
On the other line that day was Derek Freeman, the former UCLA coach and NCAA committee member who quietly established Spikemark a few years ago before appearing this past summer as the surprise recipient of a five-year contract that would see Spikemark replace former partner Golfstat. . The launch of Spikemark on August 31st failed miserably, and Freeman needed help.
Unlike Spikemark, Clippd had already built a solid reputation in the college golf community. Parnell and Ed Crossman founded Clippd about seven years ago before they had to shut down during the pandemic. The Clippd team built this great platform with the simple goal of helping golfers improve faster by analyzing their golf swing performance and making it easy to digest. During the 18-month beta period, Clippd recruited several college teams as guinea pigs: Wake Forest women and Georgia Tech men; the former won the 2023 NCAA women’s title while the latter finished as the 2023 national runner-up on the men’s side. These programs used Clippd’s commercials for free, and now, in about a year, more than 150 college programs are paying for the service.
“Clippd is the best golf app I’ve ever seen,” said UCF women’s coach Emily Marron, another Clippd customer. “It’s pretty cool and gives you a lot of detail.”
Parnell added: “We went from a small business with big ideas to a big business with big ideas.”
It’s about to get bigger.
When the Clippd team came in to review Spikemark’s website and software, Parnell says the challenges were “many.” There was a lot of confusion with the scoring system and a lack of data security, among other problems. Without a better explanation, it was a mess, and if Clippd is going to clean it up, it should do so pro bono.
Meanwhile, Parnell and his team can see frustration among their customers, from coaches to players to school administrators.
“If we can help college golf, it will help us,” Parnell said.
So, Clippd, sitting back, spent the next few weeks rebuilding Spikemark’s website and managing the entry of hundreds of competitive results. He soon began joining Spikemark’s regular season meet with the NCAA, GCAA and WGCA.
Finally, last Saturday and the day Spikemark was supposed to go down (they didn’t), Parnell’s phone rang again. This time it was the NCAA.
As of Monday evening, Clippd had replaced Spikemark.
“We are confident that Clippd will lead us through the technology challenges we face in 2023, and be a strong partner in the future,” said Joni Comstock, NCAA vice president. “The goal of this partnership is to provide the quality services that our student-athletes and college golf community deserve.”
Parnell added: “We want college golf to be the best it can be, and we want it to restore confidence and enthusiasm.” Right now, it’s about what needs to be delivered and how best to do it. “
Clippd’s priority is to cut the best results from 100% of the falling sports, in all three categories, men and women. After the fall ends in early November, Clippd will hand over the data to Mark Broadie to run his new role. Currently, Clippd is still working on a scoring system so that tournament organizers can post results on the Clippd website. After that, Clippd will find the manager of the game and control what is happening, although there is no definite time for this, “soon.” (Golfstat is currently hosting multiple events with other companies such as Golf Genius, BlueGolf and BirdieFire hosting several events.)
As for Spikemark, it is still unclear whether Freeman was paid money to get Clippd to take over the leadership or what happened or what happens with his contract with the NCAA. In the meantime, Clippd will continue to use the Spikemark website and current link (Spikemark.com), brand and support emails. Then, probably after this season, Clippd will start to change the look and feel of the site.
“There are good things we can do,” Parnell said.