Product Review: Golf Fix App

Can Artificial Intelligence be your new golf coach?
With the Golf Fix App on your smartphone, maybe it can be.

You would have to be living under a rock to not know that Artificial Intelligence (“A.I.”) has been all the rage lately.  The most recent star has been ChatGPT, which has begun to scratch the surface of how A.I. could change how we search for information and answers to questions.  It was only a matter of time before someone was smart enough to use the power of A.I. to analyze the golf swing. 

Imagine a world where you can simply record your swing using your phone; then, A.I. tells you why you’re bad at golf, in under 30 seconds.  In this world, not only can A.I. point out the flaws in your swing, but it can teach you how to correct them with instructional videos which are tailored to the specific issue you’re facing.  The Golf Fix app is a first attempt at making this scenario a reality.  Golf Fix doesn’t achieve this goal entirely, but for an application that is free and still in development, Golf Fix is already the best golf swing app I have used to date.  The ease of use and utility that the Golf Fix app provides is quite impressive.  Golf Fix marks the end of the line for many golf swing apps of the past.

How It Works

It is pretty easy to get started with the Golf Fix app.  Golf Fix gives you the option of getting an analysis of your swing from two perspectives.  The first is a down-the-line perspective achieved by placing the camera behind the golfer almost in line with the back right heel, if you’re a right-handed player. In my testing, I found it important to get the camera in the correct position because if the camera is not in the right place, it can lead to incorrect feedback on the swing.  The second is a face-on perspective, which is done by placing the camera in front of you. 

One of the coolest features of this app is the ability to import clips of swings you record of yourself during a round to see what you did or didn’t do well.  Any 20 second or shorter clip can be uploaded into the app for feedback.  If you’ve ever hit a great shot on camera, or one that you wish had never been recorded, you can now simply upload the clip into Golf Fix, and it will give you a breakdown of what happened, good or bad.

How Accurate is the Feedback?   

Before downloading Golf Fix, I really had my doubts on the quality of feedback that you could get from an app.  However, after using Golf Fix for some time, I was very impressed with the feedback I got.  One of the things I struggle with in my golf swing is “firing my hips” too quickly.  On my bad days, this fault results in early extension at impact creating inconsistency.  Golf Fix was able to quickly identify this issue in my swing.

I took the time to record swings of some of the common faults of amateur golfers such as club head inside on the takeaway, bad weight transfer, coming over the top on the downswing, or standing up at impact, and Golf Fix correctly pointed out the error every time.  It is worth noting that this app is giving feedback based on fundamentals of a solid golf swing.  There are countless examples of professional golfers, some of which are the best players in the world, that do things that Golf Fix would point out as incorrect.  With that being said, depending on your experience and skill level, the feedback should be taken in stride because your swing should be natural to you.  However, for people who are looking to develop or work on fundamentals, Golf Fix provides excellent feedback.

Tools to Help You Improve

Analyzing the swing is only half the battle, but what does Golf Fix do to actually help you get better? Well, based on the fault it finds in your swing, Golf Fix currently has two main ways of helping you improve.  First, and currently the better option, is Golf Fix will provide YouTube videos on the issue you’re having.  For those who don’t know, YouTube is loaded with golf content from people all over the golf industry and Golf Fix will suggest videos for you to watch that often provide drills to help fix your swing fault.  I think this is a great starting spot; however, in its present state, Golf Fix only recommends one or two videos.  This is something I’m sure will be improved over time, but it is simple to take the feedback from Golf Fix and get on YouTube yourself and search whatever issue you are facing.  You will likely find hours of videos on the subject, which is more than enough to get anyone started.

The second way Golf Fix provides instruction, and the far more interesting one in my opinion, is a side-by-side of your swing next to a professional.  Currently, this is limited to just one “model pro golfer” so how applicable it is to you will vary widely.  I believe this is one of the areas that Golf Fix can improve drastically moving forward.  If Golf Fix can figure out a way, with the power of A.I., to generate side-by-side comparisons of your swing with professional golfers who have similar swings, this could be truly groundbreaking.  It could create a platform where instead of everyone trying to swing like Tiger, you could see your swing next to professionals with similar tendencies, age, flexibility, and body type which could help create the best version of what you do well.  Excited to see where this goes in the future. There are amazing possibilities.

Golf Fix also uses A.I. to provide you an overall swing score with 10 being perfect.  While this adds a “fun” element to things (getting the 10/10 always makes you feel like you won something), this is more of an overall summary.  However, as you add more swings to Golf Fix, it creates a swing log which tracks your scores, as well as what issues Golf Fix has found in the swings uploaded.  This is a great feature as it highlights consistent issues that affect your swing.  For example, using my “hip firing” problem, if I upload 10 swings where I have early extension at impact, but in two of those swings I came “over the top,” Golf Fix will prioritize my issues.  It will actually list your swing faults based on frequency and severity of the issue(s) so you can prioritize what to work on. 

Nobody has the perfect golf swing, so knowing what the core issue is and how often it happens can help you focus on improving using real data and not chasing different issues on a swing-by-swing basis. To demonstrate this feature, I recorded 10 swings trying to create a variety of issues and Golf Fix listed these for me and how often they occurred.  There is also a daily report feature. However, at my time of testing this app, I could not get the report to pull up so it is too soon tell on this feature.

Other Awesome Features

Golf Fix really is an app that provides something for everyone.  If you’re a golf nerd, this is the type of stuff that you will love.  Outside of the features discussed above, Golf Fix also breaks down the technical components of the swing with much more ease than anything else on the market.  For golfers who have ever worked on their swing with a coach or on their own, they have undoubtedly noticed that it is not as simple as just recording yourself hitting a golf ball.  A detailed analysis often requires a specialized camera and equipment, or at minimum, a third-party platform, to allow you to draw lines or measure angles and get detailed feedback on your swing. 

For example, if I wanted to know if I was coming inside on my take away, that would typically require me to record myself swinging, upload that video to an editing software, draw the plane lines on myself at address (often doing this multiple times because I cannot draw a straight line to save my life), then tediously play the video until I got to the right part to pause it and review the results.  Well those days are over, and it is all thanks to Golf Fix.  For a golf nerd, this is where this app really shines through in its present state.  Once you upload a swing, Golf Fix will break it down into sections, commonly referred to as positions.  If you want to see where you’re at the takeaway, top, or impact, it’s as simple as clicking on the desired position and Golf Fix will show you that part of your swing.  Want to overlay that with swing plane lines? Awesome, that can also be done with a simple click of a button.  Want even more detail such as spine tilt, low back tilt, and should tilt? Easy, you can also add this with a click of a button.  This is the simplest and most accurate way I have ever been able to analyze my own swing using nothing but my phone.

Golf Fix also has the ability to measure the tempo of your golf swing, both the overall tempo of your backswing and downswing, and also how much time you pause at the top.  For someone who has been working on adding more of a pause at the top of the swing, this feature is awesome. The information immediately and automatically provides how long each component of the swing is and how that impacts the overall tempo.  Golf Fix then compares your tempo to their rhythm and tempo chart, which is extremely useful for measuring success.

Final Thoughts

Golf Fix is an app that is early on in its development, but I constantly found myself feeling guilty that I was getting to use Golf Fix for free.  I was blown away by the features I was receiving from a free smartphone application, based on what has been on the market in the past.  I see no reason why Golf Fix won’t continue to improve in the future, and I know I will be keeping a close watch on Golf Fix moving forward.  Presently, Golf Fix is an app that provides something for every skill level of golfer.  If you’re just now learning golf, Golf Fix is a great tool to help you get better once you have a grasp of the basics. Golf Fix is likely to provide the most value to a high single to double digit handicap golfer that is looking to improve their game.  However, even scratch or plus handicap players can get a lot of value from analyzing their swing by doing their own analysis just using the great recording and analysis tools that come with Golf Fix.  I certainly recommend giving Golf Fix a try as it could be great tool to help you improve your game.