The first three parts of the Connected Golfer focused on how golfers can get more information about shots they hit during practice sessions and on the course when they play. Now, the fourth installment concentrates on how a growing number of services and technologies let players and teaching professionals communicate, share videos and work together even if they are thousands of miles apart.
In the early 2000s, Ted Sheftic, one of the most highly-regarded teaching professionals in Pennsylvania, pushed an over-sized cart next to his lesson area at Hanover Country Club in Abbottstown, Pennsylvania. It held a VHS cassette player hooked up to a small television. The cart also held a tripod and a video camera that Sheftic used to videotape his students’ swings. On sunny days, he balanced an umbrella above the screen to reduce glare.
After their lessons, Sheftic gave his students a tape of their lesson to take home and review, which was among the reasons why his lesson calendar was always packed.
Fast forward about 15 years, and shift 300 miles Northeast, and you would often see Suzy Whaley on the back of the range at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut. On most summer afternoons, when she was not on the road fulfilling her duties as the president of the PGA of America, she was busy teaching. It’s where you would have found me too in 2017, taking a lesson from Whaley once or twice a month, as we tried to straighten my slice and build some consistency with my irons.
After about 30 minutes of hitting balls and doing drills, she would invariably hold up an iPad and stand about 10 feet behind me as I made a swing, then show me the video clip.
“Your takeaway is getting so much better, David,” she said one afternoon while her fingers danced on the touchscreen. She drew lines on the video to show my spine angle, the shaft angle at address and the club’s face angle as I made my backswing. “Look at that. A month ago, you were nowhere close to this halfway to the top.”
Writer David Dusek captures his swing on camera.
A few days after each lesson, and with a few taps on my iPhone, I would watch those swings again on the range and review the drills Whaley wanted me to work on before our next session. We were about 30 miles apart, but class was still in session.
Once a novelty, now the norm
Sheftic was ahead of his time and using the technology of the day. Remember, the first iPhone was not released until the summer of 2007. Today, for golfers who are willing to invest in lessons and the instructors who teach them, capturing video of a golf swing, analyzing it and sharing it is simple.
On a recent episode of Barstool’s Fore Play podcast, Butch Harmon explained that several big-name PGA Tour players often send him videos of their swing and ask him for options.
“(Webb Simpson) sent me a film the other day and said, ‘I can feel the club is back inside again,'” Harmon said. “I said, ‘No, you’re too narrow. That’s why you’re in your own way.'”
Harmon does not go to Tour events every week anymore, but thanks to technology, he doesn’t have to travel to stay in touch with players who want his advice.
“With these things, it’s easy,” he said, holding up his mobile phone. “(Pros) can film their swing at any place in the world, and they can send me a film of it and I can pick up the phone or just text them right back.”
Beyond the simple camera that comes built into phones and tablets, several services and apps now allow players and coaches to take virtual lessons to the next level.
There’s an app for that
For instance, V1 Sports has been among the leaders in the software that allows golf instructors to capture video, review it and mark it up with lines, circles and other drawings while adding voiceovers to the clips. Instructors can then send the clips to their students using a V1 smartphone app. Students can review the lessons and drills, save them and refer to them any time. They can also capture video clips and send them to their coach using V1.
V1 virtual lesson technology
V1 has also recently developed an online golf academy that allows players to select an instructor then send up to eight swings for personalized evaluation and coaching advice.
The Rapsodo Mobile Launch Monitor links to a golfer’s smartphone using Bluetooth, then records a video of a golfer’s swing and adds a shot-tracer graphic. It also adds information like carry distance, apex, and ball speed to the top of the clip, which golfers can then share (along with the overlaid launch monitor data) with their instructors. Using Rapsodo’s Coach Connect feature to critique the swing, instructors can make comments, recommend drills based on what they see and more. Golfers can even buy virtual lessons with pros they have never met in person using Rapsodo.
Savvy instructors made great use of technologies like this during the summer and fall of 2020 when people flocked to golf courses and the sport boomed, but many people wanted to avoid close contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. Powered by smartphone cameras and other devices, virtual golf lessons proved to be a viable, effective way for golfers to improve.
One of the less obvious benefits of virtual golf lessons is when it is time to work with a custom fitter and get new equipment, golfers can show the fitter their most-recent lessons, and the drills they are working on should give fitters a better understanding of the player.
With today’s technology, a Connected Golfer isn’t limited to instructors who are close by, geographically. For instructors, technology is providing better ways to stay in touch with students and monitor their progress. And for fitters, it has never been easier to understand exactly what a player and coach are working on and build equipment that will help them produce better results.
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