Shot Scope helps Michigan native Sarah White realize her professional golf dreams

Shot Scope helps professional golfer Sarah White make her dreams come true

Sarah White can launch the ball outright. Her tee shots average about 300 yards during tournament play. The former Texas State University standout leads the Epson Tour within driving distance, and the rest of her play isn’t too bad either, as she continues her quest to make the LPGA Tour.

But while White, a Grand Rapids, Mich., native who started her collegiate career at Western Michigan before heading to Texas, has been around a long time, it’s the work she’s put in on the rest of her game that has started to pay off lately. Much of that recent journey took place with Shot Scope.

As an official ambassador for Shot Scope, she has been using the company’s X5 GPS watch for more than two years to track every aspect of her play, which not only tells her where she may need to improve, but just as importantly, helps her plan her strategy for attacking a course or tournament. Mechanically and physically her swing is better than most, but she will tell you what we have all known for years.

“Golf is hard,” she says.

But…

“Shotscope makes it easier.”

Shot Scope offers a wide range of award-winning products to help golfers enjoy the game more and lower their scores. Through its rangefinders, GPS watches and other devices, Shot Scope can collect and interpret data to help golfers improve their scores in a short time.

Using Shot Scope features like “My Strategy,” White and her data analyst coach, Seth Gandara, have been able to map out practice sessions and smart game plans based on data collected from more than two years of tournaments and rounds. Based in Dallas, Gandara has partnered with Shot Scope through a service he created called Method.Golf to help his players make the most of this data to improve their scores.

“The reason I like Shot Scope is that it’s a lot smaller and doesn’t require any additional technology. None of my professionals would ever agree to play on their cell phones all the time,” says Gandara, a Yale graduate with a background in venture capital who worked in strategy and growth for companies like Apple and a few AI startups before turning his talents and expertise to golf.

“And Sarah is the most compliant professional I’ve had,” he added.

It certainly helps her utilize her talents in her quest to make it to the LPGA Tour.

To get an idea of ​​White’s productive power, her average driving distance according to Shot Scope is 291 yards. That’s just below the average for men on the PGA Tour, which is about 300 yards. (White’s official average on the Epson Tour is just over 270 yards, but it only measures certain holes, not all drives. And on some of those tee shots she doesn’t hit the driver.)

Of course, we’ve all heard the saying, “Drive for show, putt for dough,” so it’s no surprise that not only has White worked hard on her putting, but that Shot Scope has revealed clues about her putting that she might not have known otherwise.

“Seeing how distance shots were obtained helped me zero in on the exact lengths I needed to work on. “It made my practice much more targeted,” says White, who lives in San Antonio and once competed in the extreme mini-golf competition “Holey Moley” on ABC Television five years ago.

The putting stats also revealed another important clue after she switched putters during a recent tournament.

“It showed me a clear difference (between the two) in strokes gained,” said White, whose older brother Brett is also a professional golfer. “And I decided to stick with the new one.”

This is just one example of how Shot Scope has helped her make informed decisions about course and equipment strategy. In another example, Shot Scope helped her get the most out of her driving skills. For example, it shows White her spread patterns over the past ten rounds, and her tendency to miss. That, in turn, helps her decide when to go big to try to take advantage of her height and when to play it safe.

“It’s helped me use my height more strategically,” she says. “I’ve won more than two shots off the tee lately just by knowing when to choose driver versus 6-wood – and being able to swing freely without hesitation.”

White, who has an Epson Tour win to her credit when she won the then-Symetra Tour’s Tribute at Arizona’s Longbow Golf Club in 2020, has been steadily moving toward her ultimate dream: playing on the LPGA Tour. In May, she qualified Monday for her first LPGA event, the LPGA Mexico Open at Mayakoba, held on the difficult El Camaleon course. She finished in a tie for second place in the qualifying match and then won second place with a birdie on the first playoff hole. She narrowly missed the cut in the LPGA event and also made the field at the LPGA ShopRite Classic in Connecticut.

Her goal remains to compete on the LPGA Tour in 2026.

White had never played the course before, but she used the Shot Scope strategy map to navigate a very difficult course in qualifying. And she planned to do the same for the tournament.

“Honestly, it’s a big part of course management for me now,” White says. “Nothing is ever perfect in a round, but when I go into a shot knowing I’ve prepared with solid data, it’s much easier to commit and trust the swing.”

Of course, Shot Scope can also help amateur golfers, both in terms of identifying weaknesses and strengths, and what strategies to use on the course. Once you’ve collected enough data, Shot Scope can act as a caddy, advising you which clubs to use on a given shot, essentially creating a plan for you on your best chances for success on each hole.

White’s advice to amateurs is to keep an eye on everything.

“Every stroke, every putt, even penalties,” she says. “The more accurate your data is, the more useful it will be. And you’ll see more improvement faster.”

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