Sports Gaming Feature Editorial
My Sony PlayStation Golf Lab
How a video-game driving range, PlayStation Move and an iPhone fixed my tragic golf swing on budget.
The driving range is the game of golf for me. I prefer it over a course. I put in my earbuds, select my favorite ambient music playlist, and just do my thing. The world kind of melts away and hitting the ball pure gets me to that place. Golf is sometimes personal to me in a way that running may be for others.
I had difficulty finding my swing. Many years, in fact. My muscle memory was tuned for a swing that cut across the ball, slicing it from left to right. My swing was a source of frustration. Golf lessons might fix things temporarily, but nothing felt right, or natural.
Then in one practice session alone at the range, I unlocked something in my swing and hit the ball flush. The ball jumped off my titanium-forged Titleist DCI iron with the most beautiful trajectory I had ever produced. Almost as if I was playing on PlayStation. Truthfully, all of the reps I put up in Sony PlayStation Move and Tiger Woods PGA Tour produced tangible, flush iron shots at the practice range.
Studying the Science of a Swing
I was determined to enjoy the game of golf and learn how to hit the ball better. It was Spring, 2016. My friends and I were dreaming of playing the best courses and going on trips to make it happen. This is what happens every Spring, emerging from a cold New England winter. The world is full of possibilities. Golf would be our catalyst and an excuse to travel. I would need to improve my game, period.
To get into the mindset, I popped in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 on Sony PlayStation 3. I began playing through a fictional career journey, and I enjoyed the beautiful digital replicas of real courses EA Sports crafted down at EA Tiburon Studios, Orlando, Florida. The game plays snappy and responsive to this day, the swings, smooth as sun butter, the ball flight and camera angles — pure. The game allowed me to learn about the different clubs I might want to consider when I take up golf for real in the months to follow.
I wanted to improve my virtual game, too, and so I hit the EA Sports virtual driving range to tune my (non-NFT’d) golf clubs and work on my avatar’s swing. The club tuner lab shows ball flight trajectories, visualized with a neon green tracer; and the club tuner lab provides real-time feedback for your avatar’s swing path, informing players how the golf ball is struck.
I realized what I had in front of me. This PlayStation game wasn’t just a virtual passport to explore world’s best courses and furthest corners with every swing. No, this game had evolved from its PlayStation One days to graduate to bigger things — the full range of motion of a golf swing was mapped to the dual shock Sony PlayStation controller as early as 2003. There I was, at the EA Sports driving range in my PS3 game, observing the flight path of my shots.
I determined then the game is a digital golf laboratory — featuring the most perfect golf swings that can be studied, shaped, molded, perfected. You see, Tiger Woods PGA Tour allows players full control of their avatar’s swing tempo. I can start, stop, and restart from any point in the swing. Forward and backward.
The club tuner and virtual driving range allowed me to tinker with swing mechanics, ball placement in my stance, trajectories and loft. This electronic golf game lab began to teach me about the mechanics of a golf swing. The game animates different shapes of golf ball trajectories depending on how the ball is struck. All of which would be useful in crafting my own, real-world swing.
Sony PlayStation Move Golf Lab
I was in deep with TW golf on PS3 at that time, and I hooked up my PS Move camera to see what my real swing translated to in the game. I had finished studying the mechanics of a swing and now it was time to test out what I had learned and see if I could improve my swing in my living room. TW PGA Tour The Masters Edition implemented Sony PlayStation Move (PS Move) technology. PlayStation Move was Sony’s answer to Nintendo Wii’s motion controls.
The PlayStation Move technology consists of a camera and a motion-controller that takes the shape of a wand. As with the Nintendo Wii, people run the risk of looking absolutely ridiculous using the VR inspired tool. That would not stop me from creating a setup to improve my golf game. The Sony camera tracks the wands movement and rotation in your hand. Consequently, the Move tech. can track a golfer’s swing plane and wrist rotation. It is not a revolutionary VR tool, but the Move can capture the basics of a swing and attempts to augment a 1:1 motion body to game.
I had created my own golf swing analysis lab. It was as simple as setting up the PS Move camera and clearing a space to swing freely. I placed a golf ball on the rug and began to take aim with my PS Move wand. My slice was real. It showed up in the game. Now, I had to find a way to correct it. If the PS Move could track my swing path and wrist motion, all I needed to do was find a way to copy my avatar’s best swings. I began recording my swing on iPhone from the same camera angle the game presents to us, and I studied my swing, frame by frame.
For me, the game provided some of the feedback needed to make some adjustments to my swing. The simplicity in the Move’s design worked in my favor to create a setup complimented by my iPhone’s camera to record my swing.
I came away with a few major points. When I hit the real-life driving range equipped with my PlayStation-tuned mechanics and data, I caught a few balls clean for the first time in my life. It was a breakthrough.
Sony PlayStation Move never received high grades but it improved my real swing. It gave me the game of golf. Whereas consistent golf lessons and professional video analysis could run me thousands of dollars, TW PGA Tour and PS Move allowed me to create a golf lab in my living room with games and technology I already owned. The games and technology allowed me to reverse engineer a golf swing in the game and reconstruct my tragic swing back together.
TW PGA Tour augmented a golf swing into my reality. The driving range is now my real-world TW PGA Tour club tuner, minus the neon golf ball tracers. For now.
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