Tour Impact Golf May Be Music To Your Ears
Kickstarter is a wonderful website that helps entrepreneurs bring their dreams to reality with the help of other internet users. When I heard about the new campaign from Tour Impact Golf, a sound-based golf swing tempo training aide, I knew I needed to learn more straight from the source.
Simply put, the Tour Impact training aide uses a unique blend of sound and feel feedback that can help you improve your swing tempo. While still in prototype form, the 6-iron features a speaker mechanism that produces a metronome-like sound to help engrain the swing of your choice into your muscle memory. In other words, you can pick a PGA Tour pro's golf swing you want to emulate, program it into the club and start swinging away.
I recently had the chance to interview Craig DeVarney, creator of the Tour Impact training aide, to learn more about what makes his idea so special.
ChicagoDuffer: On your Kickstarter product page you mention 'standardizing' the golf swing. What has been the most challenging aspect of this goal to date? Have you found it more/less difficult when considering the difference in swing from one player to the next?
DeVarney: I had expected that once I started to study the videos of professional players that it would be a major task to sort them out. It was very labor intensive to measure 100's of videos with the precision we wanted. That was hard, however once the data was sorted the 'standard' was self evident and not difficult to define at all. It was also obvious that we would need 10 different Protracks to capture the whole spectrum of professional golfers.Your background as an engineer undoubtedly helped in building a prototype club. What was the most difficult aspect of bringing your design to life?The violence of a golf strike. The TI's most important feature is that the sound emits from the club head and therefore the golf plane. The vibration and deceleration created by the golf strike is off the charts, creating a design that has passed 1,000s of hits was a big deal.What does the average, weekend golfer need to understand in order to benefit the most from your training aid?To trust it and feel it. They should really not try, just practice any shot they want and allow themselves to absorb the tempo. Lastly, don't dial it up to a faster swing thinking they will hit it farther. Some of the longest hitters are found in the slower tempos!In your opinion, what will make an ordinary golfer buy your product instead of another training aid on the shelves?They can literally buy a club with Professional swings in it. We put the swing of your favorite pro in this club, now they can put that in their hands.
