Sparrow - Golf

I think it’s a fair price overall. I like the training videos in the app. However it doesn’t really do what it says does. It basically compares your swing against a pro AI model. Uses like ten key check points and you basically try to hit those in every swing. The problem is you need volume to do that and it’s not super accurate. If your camera isn’t lined up perfectly with you it won’t take accurate readings. It uses A LOT of battery power. Just to analyze 5 swings it takes almost 10 mins. So you can’t use it efficiently, you have to wait for the app to analyze 5 swings at a time then find the swings that are actually worth using then try to go again, after 2/3 runs the battery life is depleted. You can’t make adjustments in the moment but going home find what your doing wrong and trying to correct. Even then it doesn’t catch swings but just movement. So for me it’s not responsive enough.

I’ve been playing for about 15 years and had really come into a sweet spot last year with my swing. Then something happened and my swing ‘broke’ and I’ve been struggling for six months trying to tune and get back into my old swing. Since then I’ve taken lessons and recorded my swing with no consistent changes and then I tried Sparrow. There were two fundamental issues with my setup that were clearly illustrated and shown as an issue. If I wasn’t so excited about my swing I’d be embarrassed about how simple the fix was. In two sessions I went from almost selling my bag to scheduling 3 tee times this week.

The app was giving me good tips that I could see immediate results, but this comes with the downsides as well. The tips the app gives are great, unfortunately they might not apply to your swing in that particular instance. I tested this by swinging normally and then swinging like a clown. My normal swing on average rated an 8.7 while the “clown” swing averaged around 7.4 . The problem is, my normal swing is very consistent (5 index, been playing 10+ years), but the app would score the same swing a 10 and a 5 on different occasions. Some of the “clown” swings were scored higher than my normal swing. What I noticed is the AI would compare your posture, shaft, and club head to pros, but it would not line up the timing correctly each swing. I would be at the top of my backswing, and the app is comparing me to a pro who is 1/3 of the way up their backswing resulting in a very low scoring swing. This timing issue results in fairly inconsistent results. That being said, this app still does provide good insights and tips for your game it’s just up to you to know when and how to apply them.