Nike Golf 360 allows golfers to track, share game digitally

• By Rex Hoggard
• May 23, 2012 8:49 AM ET

FORT WORTH, Texas – On Tuesday night at the company’s Oven facility, Nike Golf unveiled Nike Golf 360, an interactive application for computers, tablets and smartphones that pools the company’s resources in a social media format.

At the core of NG360, which is available free at the App Store for iPhone and iPad users, is a video capture element that will allow golfers to interact with Nike Golf’s team of certified instructors and fitness experts.

“I’m lucky to live on St. Simons Island (Ga.) and have my swing coach (Mike Taylor) and trainer (Randy Myers) so close to me,” said Lucas Glover, a Nike Golf staff player who participated in Tuesday’s announcement. “I can go to the range and we can work out what I need to work on with my swing and my body.”

NG360 is designed to give other golfers access to the same personalized instruction via the “My Swing” and “My Body” portions of the application. Combined with its Swoosh Staff of swing coaches, Nike Golf and the Gray Institute have created the Functional Performance System, which combines golf specific workouts and functional training that players can individualize with NG360.

When asked why it took Nike, an athlete-based company that has been in the golf business since 2002, so long to embrace an instruction/fitness initiative, Myers pointed out how relatively new the combined science is to golf.

“Functional training is big today and it can be traced directly back to golf,” Myers said. “In the 1990s when we first started, there was no model and we had to get it right. In this instance Nike Golf wanted to make sure it was right.”

The application also includes a “My Game” section that allows golfers to track their performance and set goals and a “My Gear” section that will match Nike Golf products with players.