The Idea

I think it is worth a paragraph to talk about why I came up with the original idea for this product.  Like many golfers, I generally like to just play the game without spending a lot of time practicing.  However, I do occasionally get really fired up and want to put in some real practice to take my game up a level.  My frustration (and I'm not alone here) is that it is really hard to improve without someone else watching your swing as you practice.  The best way to improve is to spend time with a professional instructor  I can't say enough about my own coach, Bob Haines.  I wish I could afford to spend more time with him than I do.  I tried using video, but it is hard to get the camera set up perfectly and it takes a while to switch between hitting balls and analyzing the video.  Most mirrors are difficult to use too because you have to turn your head away from the ball to watch the mirror.  So anyway, it's just hard for the average golfer to develop a precise swing plane.  Before dreaming up the Swing Gauge, I actually started out trying to write a tongue-in-cheek book about how hard it is to learn golf.  I was organizing my notes from ten years of trying to improve my game when I realized that most of my struggles came down to the following problem.  There is no way to practice with a full view of the swing plane without having to turn my head away from the ball.  It was then that I realized that there might be a simple engineering solution to this problem.  Let's just say that the book project is on hold for a while.

Here's a picture of the first prototype.