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The Mustard Golf app analyzes your swing and creates personalized lesson plans from a library of drills and videos. A solid way for golfers to focus their practice. Not a perfect substitute for a real coach.
Introduction
AI is everywhere, from smarter search engines to ChatGPT. We’ve already seen AI in golf club design, and Mustard Golf is bringing it to golf instruction. This app has “trained using tens of thousands of 3D motion analyses” so it can watch a video of your swing and deliver a customized lesson plan. I tested it to see if it can compete with an in-person lesson.
Set Up & Ease of Use
Using the Mustard Golf app is as easy as filming your swing. You can record your swing directly in the app, or you can film your swing with your phone’s camera and import it.
Once your swing video is in the app, the AI spends a few minutes analyzing it. As you can see above, the app puts virtual markers on your body to get a clearer idea of how you’re moving.
After the AI has done its magic, you get a report with several scores. The app gives you an Overall Score, a Swing Path Score, and rates your body and hands in the backswing and downswing. It also lays our priorities for improvement, tells you what you do well, and then recommends an improvement plan.
Effectiveness
In the Mustard Golf app, your improvement plan starts with a video defining the issue. This is a really good first step because it eliminates a lot of the jargon and misconceptions. The instruction comes from Mark Blackburn, a top-rated instructor who is pretty good on camera.
The next step is identifying potential causes of your issue. This is a nice piece for those that want to understand the swing better. Also, all the videos are short and to the point – 90 seconds or less.
Finally, you get to the meat of the plan: the drills. These drills are explained in short videos and written descriptions. I found the drills to be solid and well-aligned with the problems. After spending some time with the drills – days or weeks – you upload a new swing to check your progress.
In my testing, Mustard Golf helped to uncover an issue in my swing that I had not been thinking about. Working on the drills helped me to address it, and I saw really nice results in a short time. To be fair, the issue and fix are things I’ve worked on in the past, so my results came more quickly than average.
While I think that the Mustard Golf app is a good way to focus your practice and build a swing that is closer toward the neutral, Platonic ideal, it is not a complete substitute for in person instruction. Nowhere in the app are you able to input your major issue – hitting it fat, slicing, etc. If you have one troublesome club, there’s not an obvious way to address it. There’s nothing here for the short game. The Mustard Golf app is good at what it does, but it has its limitations.
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Value
The Mustard Golf app is a subscription service that costs $25 per month or $150 per year (50% off). In person lessons vary wildly in cost, but you’re likely to spend at least $100/hour in my area. While Mustard is not going to give you the personal interaction and “customization” of face-to-face instruction, it is much more affordable and accessible to every golfer with a smart phone.
Longevity
As I often say about training aids, the longevity of this app is going to depend on the type of golfer you are. Theoretically, Mustard has an unlimited shelf life (pun intended). You can upload a new swing every day or every week and keep refining your mechanics. If you are on a lifelong quest for the perfect swing, sign up for the full year and get to work. For most golfers, I’d take it month by month, at least to start, to see how you feel about your progress.
Conclusion
It’s unlikely that there will ever be a perfect substitute for a qualified human coach helping you with your golf game, but the Mustard Golf app is an impressive first step in that direction. If you’re looking to improve your swing and focus your practice rather than bouncing between random golf tips, this app is worth trying.
Visit Mustard Golf HERE
He founded Plugged In Golf in 2013 with the goal of helping all golfers play better and enjoy the game more.
Matt lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago with his wife and two daughters.
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5 Comments
Will the mustard Golf app evaluate a stack and tilt swing?
Ron,
It can evaluate any swing, but I don’t know that it will give you the feedback you’re looking for as it seems to guide users toward a move conventional swing.
-Matt
I started with a one-month subscription to Mustard Golf in September and liked the service enough that I switched to the 12-month plan. The system does a great job in evaluating hand path, swing plane, shoulder and hip rotation, early extension, losing posture, etc. Also, the instruction videos to address one’s swing faults are excellent. Finally, Mustard does a great job in responding to e-mails, usually within 24-hours. The swing faults Mustard identified in my swing were the same as a couple of top 100 instructors have identified in the past (I’m a slow learner!).
. It should be noted Mustard does not currently evaluate clubface direction (I am usually a bit open). Also, Mustard only reviews DL video and not FO, but they tell me the service may begin to take FO video later in 2025.
FYI, I updated one of Tiger’s DL swings, and Mustard rated it just a 9.3!. The system notes that Tiger’s hand path was too outside on the backswing, but all other metric’s rated a 10.
This is exactly the same as the Golf Fix app (I think from South Korea) and also analyses FO videos. It’s free to have nearly every feature and does a nice job of picking issues up. Highly recommended.
Where I live 6 lesson for $1800.00 that’s in San Jose CA.
It sure sucks living in the most expensive place in United States.
But I was born here.