Captured Audience

GEARS can snap 8,500-plus images of a single swing in three dimensions. Information overload? Not when there’s truth in data.

- Dylan Dethier

Like any young golfer warming up for any old golf lesson, I strode onto the driving range at Rock Hill G&CC in Manorville, N.Y., to loosen up. Shaking off the rust of an 80-minute car ride from

Manhattan, I turned to a typical warmup routine, wedges to irons to driver. As I got to the longer clubs, I settled on a swing thought—slow on my takeaway, hold the follow-through—which seemed to work relatively well. Why? Hard to say, beyond the fact that it felt right. The answer to an internal question—“What feels right?”—has always been my guiding light.

But there was nothing “any old” about this lesson. After I’d begun to work up a sweat on the outdoor range, I was summoned to Rock Hill’s modest pro shop and into head pro (and GOLF Top 100 Teacher) Michael Jacobs’s not-so-modest GEARS (Golf Evaluation and Research System) studio, and the way I thought about my golf swing suddenly changed. What’s feel? What’s real? I was about to find out, in three dimensions.