Woody recording Pat while annoying every golfer on the course.
A few years ago, Woody Nash was playing golf with a scratch golfer, who pointed out a few basic flaws he saw in his golf swing. Woody struggled to understand what he was describing and realized how helpful it would be to record his swing, so he could go back and review it. A few weeks later, Woody told Pat O’Donnell about this experience during a round of golf, and Pat agreed that being able to record your swing would be helpful.
We set out on a mission to figure out use video analysis to improve our golf game, but realized it was only practical to record ourselves on the practice range, which we learned was not representative of our swing out on the golf course.
This is because on the practice range we typically hit 20 balls in a row with the same club from a perfect lie without any time and scoring pressure. We noticed the flaws in our swing surfaced on the course, where we had to switch clubs and hit from different lies on every shot and deal with the pressure to maintain our pace of play and make up for a double-bogey on the last hole.
We tried every way we could think of the record ourselves on the course, including using a tripod, clipping our smartphone to our bag, and even asking a friend to record us, but everything we tried was distracting to ourselves and the other golfers in our foursome.
We knew there had to be a better way, and that is how the idea for SwingShot was born...
Competitive athletes and their coaches have known video analysis is very helpful in improving sports technique. Yet, it is difficult for most athletes to record themselves unless they have someone who is willing to record them play for hours.
That is why we designed our Cyclops cameras with only one button to start and stop recording and mounted it on top of a 3’ tall shaft with a stainless steel turf spike at the bottom. This innovative design made it dead simple to pull the camera from the bag with our club, plant it in the ground as we approached our ball, and record our swing without help from anyone...and without slowing play or disturbing our focus.
Shortly after we launched, stories started coming in from other golfers who were shaving strokes off their score and enjoying the game more thanks to our cameras. Athletes in different sports began reporting that SwingShot was helping them improve as well, and we knew we had designed the perfect sports training camera.
We really hope you enjoy using SwingShot, and look forward to hearing your stories and seeing your videos as you record, review, and improve.
Sincerely,
Patrick O’Donnell & Woody Nash