Steve Dresser of the Steve Dresser Golf Academy at True Blue Golf Club in Pawleys Island, S.C. shows us how video analysis is used to break down a student’s swing – and how the swings of PGA Tour players are used alongside it on screen to reinforce proper swing technique.
I think of all people who come through our golf school, one of their favorite (if not their most favorite) parts of it is getting to see their swing on video. I'm back here in our little studio area, and that's the world-famous Mike Schroeder out there giving a private lesson, and we have a camera, obviously, on them right now. So when this guy takes a swing, all I have to do is hit F3 at impact and it will give us a nice little trim clip of that swing. This is obviously not a real swing here, but this is what we just saw a second ago. There's Mike helping him take it back and bring it down, you see we get a nice, clear picture, you can see the club nice and clearly.
And as we play this back, we do a voiceover analysis, speaking into the microphone. We upload the lessons to the student's locker on our website, so they have permanent access to it.
And, of course, if we want we can compare them to a Tour player. Here's Adam Scott for instance, David Toms, Aaron Baddeley, we have about 2,500 swings in our library here. We can draw graphics on the screen, whether it's circles or arrows. Of course we do a lot of swing plane lines, looking to see if the player is swinging primarily above that line or below the line – or, of course we have plenty of players who are below it on one side and above it on the other.
Video analysis is a real big part of what we do here, and seeing is believing.