The golf arena is loaded with high-tech training aids and swing-tweaking gadgets, but MySwing Golf and its full-body, real-time 3D motion capture system really stands out. The product grew out of the movie industry, specifically the motion capture process that’s part of just about every sci-fi and adventure flick and TV show these days.
The product’s creator, Peter Gauthier, is an engineer who created the wireless, instant-feedback technology that revolutionized the film industry via popular shows like “Game of Thrones,” many animated films and video games. “We adapted it to sports and golf as our first entry because golf is a hard motion to capture,” Gauthier told golfgearweek-ly.com. “It’s a product for golf coaches … players are consistently blown away when they see how 3D motion capture helps them improve dramatically. The downswing is faster than the blink of an eye, and players and coaches can now see it from any angle in slow motion.”
With fast set-up, pros spend more time teaching and have the ability to instruct multiple students simultaneous-ly. The MySwing Trainer can set to any angle, tilt or rotation and operate with two or five sensors capturing specific movement with the pelvis and ribcage, left arm, and right arm. “The goal with MySwing Trainer is to provide teaching pros with a rapid ROI and a system that pays for itself in a short time frame through player self-training,” said Curt Wieden, MySwing’s director of marketing. “Students will enjoy the challenge of achieving specific training goals and will experience faster improvement through repetition of correct motions. Pros can set the system to specific ranges to train anyone from the weekend warrior to the tour professional.” Added Chase Cooper, director of prod-uct development, “everything you see takes about 10 minutes to suit up and calibrate, we match the movement live. Nobody does what we can do. We can record, analyze, compare golf swings, overhead squads, putting, dynamic mo-tion, anything you want to measure. We can use up to 17 sensors for full body, or as few as two sensors. That’s basically above and below every major joint. The technology is fascinating. Every time we suit someone up, they smile.”
After capturing a player’s swing, a teacher can compare it to PGA Tour play-ers — or to someone who “plays like you do, find where the worst problems are, work on it and train it,” Cooper added. “We have biofeedback. It’s just our sen-sors and computer; everything uploads to our online database. If both player and coach have YouTube accounts, we send the video to both places. It’s quick and easy to set up.”
Gauthier expects MySwing to show up at many more teaching stations in the near future, and says its usefulness goes beyond just recording and working on a player’s moves. “You need to seek teachers with our product. Our coaches use this to screen players to find what they can and cannot do physically. Most professional golfers are injured at some time, and amateurs over 45 years old and with a handicap between 1-9 are injured the most. Technology and smart coaches make sure instruction isn’t hurt-ing a player by assessing potential injury by screening. Ben Hogan [who played some of his best golf after a life-threat-ening car accident] was a thoughtful, intelligent man who wanted every edge possible in his game. I believe he’d be one of our biggest fans.”
$999 | www.myswing.com
