I want to give you a little background to how Swingbot began and how it morphed into Swingbot Pro. It took 10 years and a whole lotta work.
Here is the story.
In 1998, I was an Assistant Teaching Professional in Palm Desert, California. I just passed my PAT and was teaching lessons professionally for the first time in my life.
My students were spending their vacations at the resort where I worked. They would head down from the hotel to get a short lesson and while I was teaching I noticed something:
Most golfers, and I do stress most golfers, all seemed to have the same issues with their swing.
It was in that moment, that I decided to create a system that could analyze my students automatically to detect these common issues. After all, I was baking in the sun watching poor weight shift or reverse pivots all day every day, and felt the need to dream a bit.
Swingbot is Born
In 1998, the options for recording a golf swing were were not great. VHS and its wonderful video tracking was not ideal to get decent slow motion or frame by frame images. Sure, you could watch the tape and pick up a thing or two, but suffice to say the technology was just not ready.
Enter 2008. I attended the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. I had changed careers and became a Software Engineer (longer story). I stood in the 5th row at the conference as Steve Jobs spoke about the iPhone.
The iPhone was the technology I needed to set the wheels in motion.
In 2009 I took all my savings, took a year off from work, and decided to figure out how to accomplish my task I had dreamed about in the desert 13 years ago. I set off to analyze video motion automatically which turns out was no easy task. How do I transcode the video into a universal format? How do I deal with the way the user was holding the camera when they recorded? How in the world do I detect body points in a golf swing? Firstly, how woudl I detect there is a golfer in the video at all?
Two years later, after many challenges, rewrites, and literal tears, I was able to record, upload, and analyze a golf swing video automatically. I uploaded my software creation to the iTunes store and looked back at my day at the Apple conference and was now a part of the paradigm shift that changed the way golfer’s recorded their swings. Little did I know I was pioneering the way golfer’s got a golf lesson.
I called it Swingbot, automated golf swing analysis software.
Lessons Learned
I was super excited that my dream was now reality. I was automatically analyzing swings from around the world. From Peru to the UK, all the way to Japan, golfer’s of all ages were uploading their golf swing videos and receiving their analysis, all while I slept. Literally.
Every morning I would wake up and check to see how many lessons I had given that night. What a surreal feeling to be helping golfers around the world with something I had created.
Now between the launch of Swingbot and today (roughly 10 years), I received a lot of attention from huge golf corporations, apps, investors, PGA Teaching Professionals (the guys that teach the guys on tour), and many more.
Some of them have duplicated (or tried) to duplicate Swingbot, and trying to claim they were the first. Flattery I suppose, but very, very frustrating.
All that aside, my creation inadvertently had hurt a group of people unintentionally.
Golf Instructors.
Yes, that’s right, I had created software that was "stealing food off their tables". I hadn’t thought of this scenario, and now that I realized this was happening, there was only one solution:
I needed to make it possible for golf instructors use Swingbot as a tool in their toolkit
I decided to embark on a project called Swingbot Pro. I wanted the instructor to create their own lesson programs that could analyze the golfer’s video. These Lesson Programs as I am calling them, would consist of things like weight shift, shoulder turn, etc, anything the instructor wanted.
Swingbot Pro would allow golf instructors to analyze golf swing videos while they slept just like I was doing with Swingbot. Everybody wins!
Swingbot Pro is Born
Enter 2020. Pandemic time. Social distancing. It was time to make Swingbot Pro a reality.
I worked steadily creating a service that could be controlled by the golf instructor.
They could login to a website dashboard, create new lesson programs, view completed swing videos, manage their students and more.
The instructors could integrate the ability to upload a golf swing right into their own existing website.
They could display the resulting analysis on their website as well. If they really wanted to dig deep they could use the resulting analysis data for creating an entirely new way to display the results! It would be up to the golf instructor.
Well it is November 5, 2020, and swingbotpro.com is now in beta.
Another dream is now reality, and this time golf instructors can play.
I am now inviting golf instructors to join me on Swingbot Pro.
