Where to Place Your Phone for a Useful Swing Video at the Range

Try filming yourself at the range once and you'll notice — when you watch it back, it doesn't actually help much. Usually for two reasons.

1. The camera angle is somewhere in between, so the parts you need to see aren't visible, or the depth is off and your club path looks fake.
2. The full ball flight isn't in the frame, so you can't see the result. Impact looks fine but the ball just disappears.

Golf coaches use two standard angles when analyzing video: Down The Line (DTL) and Face On (FO). They show different things.

Down The Line (DTL) — Reading Club Path

Most analysis starts here. You see how the club comes down and exits, how your swing plane shapes — the cause of slices, hooks, and everything in between.

Setup:

• Position: directly behind the ball, along the target line
• Distance: 2–3m from the ball
• Height: about hand height (roughly waist to chest)
• Angle: level, at hand height. Don't look down at it from above.

Critical detail — don't drift to the side. When you address the ball, the camera should be in line with your hands. Even 30cm off and the club path will look completely different from reality.

Face On (FO) — Reading Weight Shift and Release

This shows balance, weight transfer, and impact position. You can see how much your head moves, whether your hands are ahead of the ball at impact — that kind of thing.

Setup:

• Position: in front of the ball, facing you (for right-handed golfers, on the target-line side)
• Distance: 2–3m
• Height: around waist
• Angle: level. Don't shoot down from above or up from below.

Universal Rules

Three things, never skip them.

1. The full ball flight must be in frame. If you only see impact but not where the ball goes, the video is half useless. Don't zoom in too tight.
2. Use a tripod. Hand-holding or balancing the phone on something always shakes. A 1m mini tripod is plenty.
3. Keep it parallel to the ground. A tilted camera makes everything look tilted when you analyze.

Common Mistakes

• Too close. Under 1m and wide-angle distortion makes the swing look weird.
• Filming yourself from the side (next to your shoulder). That's neither DTL nor FO — an in-between angle with low information value.
• Portrait mode. The full club arc gets cropped out. Landscape is the default.
• Top-down from above the mat. Depth gets compressed and everything looks wrong.

Then What — How to Actually Use the Video

100 videos sitting in your camera roll mean nothing if you never watch them back. You have to actually look for patterns — is the slice only on the 7-iron, only the driver, or everything?

This is honestly why we built Shot Trainer. The video records itself, the ball trajectory gets drawn on top, and everything is auto-sorted by club and shot type. Get the DTL setup right once and the rest is automatic.

Try it at the range. Set up, hit your normal session, and at the end you'll have one full session already organized.