Hi all,
I’ve been using my Approach R50 heavily for structured range practice and exporting the session CSVs from the Garmin Golf app to do my own analysis. A few things I’ve run into that I think would make the R50 significantly more useful — a mix of what looks like a bug and some feature requests.
1. Target distance isn’t exported for range sessions (looks like a bug)
When I set a target for a range session, the target never makes it into the exported CSV. The export has the columns for it — in my locale they’re Målcarry (target carry) and Mål för totalt avstånd (target total distance) — but they’re empty on every single shot, even in sessions where I definitely had a target set.
I checked two full sessions:
• Driver session, 20 shots — target columns empty on all 20
• 8-iron session, 30 shots — target columns empty on all 30
Since the columns already exist in the export schema, it feels like the value just isn’t being written. It’d be great to have this fixed so the target I practiced to is actually recorded.
2. Can’t set a target on standard range sessions at all
Related to the above: as far as I can tell, you can only attach a target in certain modes, not on a plain/standard range session. I’d love to be able to set a target distance on any range session so I can practice to a number and have it scored/recorded. Even if #1 is fixed, it doesn’t help if I can’t set the target in the first place.
3. On-course practice doesn’t export
Shots I hit in on-course / practice-round contexts don’t come out in the CSV export at all. I’d really like these included in the export like range shots are — it’s some of the most valuable data (real targets, real lies) and right now it’s stuck on the device/app.
4. Feature request: record the surface
Two surface fields would make on-course and range data far richer:
• Surface the shot was hit from (tee / fairway / rough / bunker / mat, etc.)
• Surface the ball came to rest / landed on (green / fairway / rough / etc.)
This is exactly the kind of context that turns raw launch data into strokes-gained-style insight, and the R50 already knows a lot about the shot — capturing lie/landing surface (even as a manual tag) would be a big step up.
For context, I’m building my own analytics on top of the exports, so anything that makes the CSV more complete directly helps. Happy to share sample files or more detail if it’s useful.
Thanks!