deceleration in golf swing

Review: Golfzon SwingTalk Analyzes (and Fixes) Your Swing…

Hi folks, Jack here. I’m always trying to stay on top of the most current golf tech. I mean, let’s face it, with the leaps and bounds that smartphones have made in the past few years, we’re carrying around computers in our pockets that are way more powerful than what was on my desk even ten years ago.

So it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to harness that power and use it to help analyze golf swings in real time. That’s exactly what Golfzon has done with their new “SwingTalk” golf swing analyzer.

IMG_2186The SwingTalk is a neat little gadget that absolutely looks like it’s from the future–it conjures up images of “flying saucers” from back when I was a kid…if the aliens were here to help us all out with our golf games…

The whole purpose of the SwingTalk is to track the motion of your swing from start to finish, collecting data along the way, and using that data to show you exactly what your swing looked like on a given shot. It’s definitely cool–I mean, a few years back, pros could charge you hundreds of dollars to accomplish the same thing. Now you can do it yourself with something that easily fits in the palm of your hand. Isn’t technology great?!

IMG_2185As you can see, it’s about as big as a half-dollar, and only a little bit thicker–you can fit it in your pocket easily without any trouble.

More on all of the fancy swing-tracking features later. For now, let’s focus on getting it to work.

You have to charge the SwingTalk out of the package, which I did, but I purposefully left it unplugged overnight to see how well it held its charge. It worked like a charm–I had a full hour-long range session with the SwingTalk, and it still had plenty of juice left when it was done.

To track your swing, you insert the SwingTalk into the hole at the top of your grip, then screw it in until the guidelines face toward the clubhead, like this:

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One thing I should note–make sure you clean out the tops of your grips before using the SwingTalk. Dirt likes to collect and cake up there, and if you’re using a set of clubs you’ve had for a while (and don’t always properly maintain your clubs, like me!), it can take a while to get it in. Not the SwingTalk’s fault at all, but you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by just taking a few minutes to clean out all of that grime from your clubs before starting.

Once SwingTalk is attached, you’ll have to pair it with your smart phone. You probably know your phone’s bluetooth settings better than I do. I have an iPhone, so I just went into Settings –> Bluetooth, selected the SwingTalk, and the phone seamlessly installed the app for me. The app syncs with Facebook, too, so setup was incredibly easy.

After you’ve set up SwingTalk and the App, the real fun starts. Somehow, the sensors inside measure a whole host of things having to do with the movement of your swing, approach, club impact, follow-through, etc. Then, the SwingTalk gives you real-time audio feedback on your tempo and swing speed for each shot. Pretty cool, huh?

I tested this early on by taking a purposely funky, off-kilter swing to see if SwingTalk could keep up. And you know what? SwingTalk analyzed it perfectly:

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Like any red-blooded golfer, I wanted to test out the driver first. Did I mention that SwingTalk tracks the speed of your swing? I’ll admit it, I wanted to see how high I could crank up the MPHs on the big dog as soon as I saw what this little wonder could do.

First, you have to tell SwingTalk what you’re hitting. As you can see in that pic above, next to the arrow at the top left of the screen, I was hitting a sand wedge. It’s drag-and-drop to select a club–couldn’t be any easier.

Once I got it set up for my driver, I absolutely “let the big dog eat.” I wanted to test out some of the metrics that the SwingTalk crunches, and what better way to start than by testing my driver’s swing velocity? Here are a couple of my “better” swings in that regard:

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To my surprise (though in hindsight, I probably should have realized as much by the product’s name), after each swing, the SwingTalk told me what my tempo and club speed were, from the comfort of my front pocket! It was nice to not have to take out the phone each time, reset it, set up the next shot, etc. If you’re worried about bothering other folks at the range, you can turn off the sound with the push of a button.

As you can see, the SwingTalk keeps track of a lot more data than just how hard you swing. The golf geek in me was in heaven! Not only do you have this data, but the SwingTalk also keeps track of a bunch of key data points and information, all presented graphically in the swing analyzer function:

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IMG_2209IMG_2210(Maybe I was trying to “overhit” a bit, but that’s good–the SwingTalk identified that and I was able to make adjustments easily).

In fact, though I can’t show you through pictures, SwingTalk will show you an animated version of your swing, completely turnable so that you can see yourself from any angle. It’s pretty amazing–by looking at your swing’s path in 3 dimensions, you can tell whether you’re coming inside the ball too much, going too far back in your backswing, or identify and fix countless other swing flaws. There’s really no limit to what you can do with the data.

It also would be a great tool to have when I’m coaching folks on their swing–I can say “you’re too far inside the ball,” but if I plugged in a SwingTalk and let you actually see the path you’re taking to the ball, it would be all the more powerful of a teaching tool. I also think it’d be ideal for those who want to self-coach, and put all of the great tips in the newsletter and from this site to good use.

As you could see in the earlier screenshot, I used the SwingTalk with short wedges, too:

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SwingTalk still worked, though as I got away from the building into the grass tees, I noticed my cell signal was getting worse, and I had a couple of connection issues with my phone. Ideally, you’d use the SwingTalk where you had WiFi access (are you listening, golf courses…?)

Incredibly, SwingTalk also works for putting:

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Around the green is where a bunch of golfers are going to find the SwingTalk to be helpful to their game. When you choose the putter in the drop-down menu, the interface on the app changes:

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Notice that while the quantity of data available may have decreased, for putting purposes, the quality of the data you have is invaluable. The SwingTalk will animate your swing path, as well as show you how “balanced” your putting stroke is in terms of backswing and follow-through, your tempo, and face angle. In fact, take a look at the picture above–I was shocked to see that I was pulling off to the left ever so slightly on my putts. With SwingTalk, I was easily able to make a quick correction, and get my putting stroke back on track.

As you can tell, I’m a big fan of the SwingTalk. It does have a couple of areas that could use improvement: on a few of my clubs, it would skew off to one side after a swing, which meant that I had to twist it a little bit to get it working again. I’m chalking that up to that extra little bit of dirt I didn’t get out of the butt-end of the club.

Also, as I mentioned before, as my day at the range wore on, and I got further away from my network, there were a couple of connection issues between my phone and the SwingTalk. I’m sure most of these were caused by my own phone, and I’m sure the SwingTalk App will only get better as time goes on.

Overwhelmingly, the positives outweigh any potential negatives. Listed at $149.99 on Amazon, the SwingTalk is a no-brainer for the golfer who wants to analyze his or her swing on his or her own time, in any facet of the game, from driving to putting. I know I’ll use this little baby for years to come!

Go Low!

jacknew

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