Golf FAQ

Driver, iron and wedge swings are split into setup / address, takeaway, lead-arm parallel, top of backswing, transition, downswing, impact zone, release and finish. A pitch or chip uses the same sequence without the release phase.

The putting stroke has its own four phases — setup, backstroke, impact and follow-through — and a separate putting read covering tempo, stroke length, path arc, face and setup. See how to film putting.

Every full swing, including a pitch or chip, also opens Swing Studio with the P1–P10 position rail while its video is on the device you are using. Putting does not, because a putt has no P-positions.

Down the line means the phone behind your hands, looking along the target line. From there the swing plane is seen edge-on, so a club-correct reference line can be drawn through your hands at address and a plane can be fitted to the clubhead positions you mark. Face-on, the plane is barely visible, so no plane is fitted and the reference line is not drawn.

Face-on means the phone directly in front of you, around chest height if propped. The guided recorder suggests it for wedges and chips, where tempo and low-point control are what you are working on.

For a driver, stand far enough back that the clubhead never leaves the frame at the top or the finish — it travels well outside your body line. Tripod, light and distance basics that apply to every sport are in recording, and the two views are explained in the glossary: down-the-line and face-on.

Keep the whole putter head and the ball in frame, include the first few feet of roll, and lay down an alignment stick or a visible target line if you can.

Know what the putting read does not do: the ball and its roll are not tracked, and face angle and loft are inferred from the stroke rather than measured. Treat them as tendencies. Tempo and stroke length read well from almost any angle, so they are your steadiest numbers from one clip to the next.

Automatic clubhead tracking is not reliable enough yet for golf, so by default the trace in Visual Proof follows your hands, which the body tracking did see. To trace the clubhead itself, open the video, choose Mark clubhead and tap the head on a few clear frames through the swing. Your marks become the trace; stretches where you could not see the head stay as gaps and are never filled in.

Club path — in-to-out, out-to-in, or a number of degrees — needs to know where your target line is and how the club moved toward and away from the lens. One camera knows neither, so a sweep across the screen is never treated as a path, and no path direction is shown or coached from video. A launch monitor measures it; imported numbers keep the device as their source.

Either way the trace shows positions in the image only — not a target-relative path, an attack angle or a verified moment of contact. Swing plane is a third read, the tilt of the motion, fitted only to clubhead positions that were actually seen (see swing plane). The shaft is not tracked at all.

• Over-the-top: the downswing plane sits clearly steeper than the backswing plane.
• Under plane: the downswing drops clearly shallower, underneath the way the club went back.
• Mismatched planes: the way down does not retrace the way back.
• Matched plane: a strength to keep, not change.
• A very steep or very flat backswing on its own.

Separately, down the line, a reference line is drawn through your hands at address at the angle your club naturally swings on — flatter for a driver, steeper for a wedge. It needs no club tracking, and it is a reference for that club, not a measurement of your swing.

To get a plane read, film down the line (a rear angle also works), choose Mark clubhead on the video and tap the head on clear frames both going back and coming down — the fit needs both directions. Face-on, no plane is fitted. Marking adds the plane read to Visual Proof; it does not change your One Fix, which comes from the original analysis.

Even a clubhead seen in every frame would give only a rough speed: one camera catches the head in a handful of frames around impact and usually misses the true peak, so any video speed would read low. That is why speed is left to the device built to measure it.

For real numbers, import a session from a supported launch monitor. Club speed, ball speed, smash factor, spin and carry then arrive labelled as measured by that device.

Launch-monitor data comes in from a file export, a photo of the screen or values you type — there is no live connection. Imported golf sessions are checked for ball-flight patterns such as slice, hook, pull, push, fat and thin contact, and heel or toe strikes, and those numbers keep the device as their source.

A shot in your file is not matched to a swing in your clip, so the video never borrows the device's club path or face angle, and the device never vouches for a body read. When the two agree — say an out-to-in path in the file and an over-the-top plane fitted to your clubhead marks — you have two independent sources pointing the same way.

Supported devices include FlightScope, TrackMan, Foresight / Bushnell and SkyTrak / SkyTrak+; the full list and export steps are in data imports.

• P1 address — the last still moment before the club starts back, not simply the first frame.
• P3, P5 and P9 — lead arm horizontal going back, coming down and after the ball. These usually fall between two analysed samples, so they are shown as bracketed moments.
• P4 top — where the hands reverse.
• P7 impact — the moment of peak hand speed, given as a short window rather than an exact frame.
• P10 finish — where the motion settles.

The readings beside each position are angles on screen or multiples of your own torso length, never inches or centimetres — one uncalibrated phone camera cannot earn a physical distance. Swing Studio reads the existing analysis; your One Fix still comes from the main result.

The body read covers posture or spine-angle change, hip and shoulder rotation, pelvis sway, sequencing, head stability, tempo and finish balance; the weakest one becomes the main issue, named in plain words. Plane findings — over-the-top, dropping under plane, a downswing that does not retrace the backswing, a very steep or flat backswing — need a down-the-line (or rear) clip with the clubhead marked both going back and coming down, and they sit alongside your One Fix rather than replacing it.

Imported launch-monitor sessions are checked for slice, hook, pull, push, fat and thin contact, and heel or toe strikes. Those come from the device's numbers, not from your video.

For full swings, video does not diagnose club path direction, face angle or attack angle — those need a launch monitor. Putting has its own read; see filming putting.

• Log each club: brand, model, loft, shaft flex and typical carry. Pick a known model and its stock loft is filled in; override it if the club has been bent or fitted.
• Loft gapping sorts your clubs by loft and flags big jumps and near-duplicates.
• Carry gapping grades the distance spacing through your set.
• If you import launch-monitor sessions, clubs you have hit but not added can be offered for one-tap adding, and carries that have drifted can be updated.

Carry numbers you type in are self-reported, so the gapping is only as good as the distances you enter — log your real average, not your best. More on the Golf Bag Manager.

The golf suggestions come from what you log, not from your swing video. Typical ones:

• Stiff or extra-stiff shafts logged by a beginner or intermediate player: have your swing speed measured at a fitting, and do not change shafts on this alone.
• An unusually large carry gap between irons, hybrids or wedges: talk it through with a fitter and confirm the carries on a launch monitor before buying a club to fill it.
• A very short or very long average driver carry: ask a fitter to check your launch conditions before adjusting loft or shaft.

Deeper suggestions unlock only as you log more sessions, shots and video analyses. Each one shows its confidence and whether it rests on numbers you entered or on a pattern inferred from them.