How to run a range session with your phone doing the recording
Set the phone up once, hit the bucket, walk off with every swing captured and measured. A practical routine for practising with video without practising your phone.
Video is the most useful practice tool most golfers already own, and the reason it doesn’t get used is friction. Walk to the phone, tap record, walk back, hit, walk to the phone, stop, scrub, repeat. Four swings in, the phone stays in the bag.
The fix is to take the phone out of the loop. Here’s a routine that works.
Before the first ball
Choose the angle for today. Working on tempo or lateral movement? Face-on. Working on setup or early extension? Down-the-line. Don’t try to do both in one session — you’ll move the phone halfway through and the two halves won’t compare.
Set the phone up once. Portrait, at about hand height, 3–4 metres back, on something that doesn’t move. A cheap phone tripod is the best £15 you’ll spend on your golf. A bag works if the bag is on the ground and not touching the mat.
Check the framing. Take a practice swing and confirm your finish is inside the frame. If your app has a framing guide, wait for it to go green; if not, watch the first clip back before continuing.
Light. Sun behind the camera or to the side. If you’re backlit, move to a different bay or wait — a silhouette can’t be measured.
During the session
Leave the phone alone. Either use an app that detects swings on its own and saves each one, or just record continuously and split it up later. Either way, don’t walk over between shots.
Group your swings. Ten with a 7-iron, ten with a driver, ten with a wedge — and note which is which. Comparing a wedge tempo to a driver tempo is comparing different swings; keep like with like.
Don’t look at results between swings. This one is hard. The value of a session is the spread across many swings, not the score of one. Look at the numbers at the end, or between clubs at most.
Notice heat. Continuous video on a hot day will warm the phone. If it’s in direct sun, shade it with a towel or a cap.
After the last ball
Scrub, don’t scroll. Find the best-looking swing and the worst-looking one, and step through both frame by frame at the same phases. The difference is usually more obvious than any number.
Look at the spread first. If your tempo ranged from 2.2 to 3.8 across thirty swings, consistency is the thing to work on, not the average. If it was 2.9–3.1 the whole way, you’ve got something repeatable and can start changing other things.
Write one sentence. “Head moved more with driver than 7-iron; try a shorter backswing next time.” One sentence per session is enough to make the next one better than this one.
What to do with the videos
Keep the ones that mark a change — the first session after a lesson, the day a feel clicked. Delete the rest. Forty videos of the same swing aren’t a record of progress; the measurements are. If your app keeps a library and a trend line, the videos are the evidence behind it, and you don’t need all of them.
The whole routine, short
- One angle. Phone still, hand height, whole body in frame.
- Light behind the camera.
- Don’t touch the phone until the bucket’s gone.
- Group by club.
- Look at the spread, then the best and worst swing.
- One sentence for next time.
Do that twice a week and video stops being a chore and starts being the thing that tells you whether practice worked.