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Caught in Southie
Grab your clubs and download Greenside AI – a new app to improve your golf swing created right here in South Boston.
2024-06-20
It’s officially golfing with your coworkers and clients season.
For those of you who know how to golf, that’s great news. But for those of you who talked up a big game at the company happy hour, it might not be.
Southie resident David Hodge started playing golf in his early 20s and realized how rewarding the game was when you play well, but how terribly frustrating it was when you play poorly.
Like many golfers out there, his main problem was slicing the ball (for those who don’t know golf, that means you hit the ball and it curves away from you…sometimes into the trees.)
After watching countless YouTube and TikTok videos, hoping they would help, only to hit balls for an hour and get discouraged at the lack of improvement, he decided the trial-and-error approach wasn’t working.
So he took a private golf lesson.
Sure enough, after five swings, he was already hitting the ball differently. Despite his own success, he recognized that most beginners aren’t ready to pay a private lesson fee to better their game.
What if there was a way to make this kind of golf instruction easily accessible to anyone, anywhere?
Hodge took his background in iOS development and decided to create Greenside AI, an app that provides personalized feedback just seconds after uploading a video of your swing. The best part? You don’t need to be at a golf course to do it!
The night before the big tee time, you can still get feedback on practice swings from the comfort of your own home. And if you don’t have a club? No problem. You can upload a video of you swinging the broom that has been collecting dust in your closet.
The feedback you receive after uploading a video of your swing touches on 15 different aspects of your stance, backswing and downswing, such as your elbow positioning, hip turn or hand position.
Now you can learn your own swing, on your own and build a foundational understanding before going into a private lesson or stepping foot onto the green.
It took nine months, a lot of coffee from Tatte and a few other developers across the country to bring this idea to life. Since its launch in March, there have been over 1,000 Greenside AI users looking to improve their game, with many more signing up each week in Boston and around the nation.
“The overwhelming response was, “I didn’t know this was possible!” and that it’s incredible to get so much feedback from a short swing video,” Hodge said. “But the reality is, swing videos contain a ton of data that our algorithms can use to understand and interpret what they are doing in their swing.”
And no, there isn’t a secret room of instructors taking turns watching these videos and providing tips and tricks. It’s technology!
But, as the app grows, Hodge wants to make it clear that this isn’t meant to replace golf instructors and their professional opinion. If anything, it’s an added tool they can use one day!
“This is not supposed to be a robot coach meant to take over the world – the value of human instruction is unquestionably important,” Hodge said. “This is all about making high-quality instruction more accessible, providing golf intelligence tools to players and instructors alike.”
In order to do just that, Hodge welcomes any and all feedback. He wants to hear it as his team tries to make the golf experience nothing but satisfactory for all.
There are updates to the app being pushed out weekly and for now, the app is free for all to use. In the coming months, there will also be an advanced paid tier.
In the time it took for you to read this article, Greenside AI could have given you all the pointers you need to be the best golfer at the office!
So, grab your clubs or go find that dusty old broom or Swiffer (here’s to hoping you have at least one of the two), step away from all breakable objects and record your swing. It’s time to get out of the trees and in the zone.
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