AI golf swing analysis: how it actually works

Filming your swing on your phone has become second nature. The hard part is what comes next: you watch it back, decide it "looks a bit off", and have no idea what to do about it. Without a trained eye, a swing video is raw information, not a diagnosis.

That's exactly the job of AI swing analysis: turning a few seconds of video into measurable data, and then into things you can actually work on. Here's what really happens between the upload and the report.

Step 1: from video to skeleton

The first building block is pose detection. A computer vision model reads every frame of your video and places joint markers on it: shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles, head. Frame by frame, those points form a skeleton that tracks your movement.

From that point on, the AI is no longer working with pixels but with geometry — angles, distances, rotational speeds. That shift in representation is what makes everything else possible.

Step 2: splitting the swing into phases

A swing isn't one uniform motion, it's a sequence. The algorithm identifies the key moments:

• Address — setup, alignment, posture
• Backswing — up to the top
• Transition — the change of direction, a critical moment where a lot is decided
• Downswing — acceleration into the ball
• Impact — the few milliseconds that determine ball flight
• Finish — balance at the end of the motion

This automatic segmentation matters more than it sounds. Saying "your wrists break down" is meaningless without saying when. The same angle can be correct at address and a problem at impact.

Step 3: what actually gets measured

Once the phases are mapped, the analysis produces concrete metrics:

Tempo. The ratio between backswing duration and downswing duration. The benchmark observed among tour professionals sits around 3 to 1 — three times as long going back as coming down. A rushed backswing is an extremely common amateur fault, and one of the easiest things to fix once you see it as a number.

Swing plane. The path of the club through space, and how consistent it stays between backswing and downswing.

Rotation and transfer. Shoulder and hip rotation, the sequencing between upper and lower body, and how your centre of mass moves.

Ball flight. When the ball is visible in frame, its trajectory is reconstructed — launch, curvature, general direction.

Step 4: fault detection

This is where measurement becomes useful. The analysis compares your data against known technical patterns and flags characteristic deviations: loss of posture, lateral sway, early wrist release, poor downswing sequencing, off-balance finish. Each detected fault is tied to a specific moment in the swing, and the whole produces an overall score.

The score itself isn't the interesting part — it's a tracking reference. What matters is the prioritised list: out of five detected faults, one is usually causing the rest.

Filming it properly: the part that changes everything

This is the most underestimated step. An analysis is only as good as the video behind it. A few simple rules:

Pick your angle. Two standard views, and they don't show the same things:

• Face-on (facing you, perpendicular to your target line): best for tempo, weight transfer, posture, balance
• Down-the-line (behind you, along the target line): best for swing plane, alignment, club position

If you only film one view, start with face-on — it's the easier one to read.

Put the phone at hand height, not on the ground and not at eye level. A camera that's too low distorts angles and skews the reading.

Step back far enough that your whole body and the club stay in frame from start to finish, follow-through included. A swing cropped at the top of the backswing is the single most common mistake.

Shoot in slow motion if your phone supports it (120 or 240 frames per second). More frames mean more accurate pose detection, especially around impact where everything happens fast.

Mind the light. Backlighting, harsh shadows or low light noticeably degrade detection. Diffuse light and an uncluttered background give the best results.

What you get at the end

On FlyAway, once your video is uploaded the analysis runs as a live stream — you watch it progress rather than staring at a frozen screen. What comes back:

• An overall score and the list of detected faults, located within the swing
• An optional annotated video with the skeleton overlaid: you literally see what the AI saw
• A coaching report that doesn't just list symptoms but traces them back to likely root causes, with an action plan
• Training videos matched to the faults you actually have, rather than a generic playlist
• The history of your analyses, so you can compare over time — which is where it gets genuinely useful

The honest limitations

AI video analysis works on two-dimensional geometry. It sees what is happening very well, and why you're doing it far less well. A loss of posture might come from a mobility restriction, a poor grip, or simply a wrong intention — three causes calling for three different fixes, which a coach identifies in thirty seconds of watching you hit balls.

So the most effective use isn't replacing a coach; it's making each lesson pay off more. Turning up with data, a history and a specific question beats turning up with "I slice, help me".

And between lessons, it's a simple way to check that what you think you're doing matches what you're actually doing. That's usually the most useful discovery of all.

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Try AI swing analysis with a video from your next range session. For longer-term work, the AI coach builds a training plan from your analyses and your scorecards.