Golf swing tips are easier to trust when you can check them with a number instead of a feel. Start with a steady tempo, then a hip turn without a sway, a quiet head and a hand path you repeat. Striped reads each one from your iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch, after every swing.
Golf swing tips that you can check
Most golf tips ask you to feel a change. A number after each swing shows whether the change really happened.
Run through this checklist in order.
- Tempo. Keep the ratio of backswing time to downswing time steady from swing to swing.
- Hip turn. Turn your hips away from the target without sliding them sideways.
- Head. Keep your head steady while your body turns under it.
- Swing plane and hand path. Send your hands back and down on a plane you can repeat.
- Feedback. Check the number after each swing, not after the bucket.
These tips for a good golf swing work with any full-swing club. Compare your numbers only with the same club each time.
Keep a steady tempo
Tempo is your backswing time divided by your downswing time. At 3:1, the backswing takes three times as long. A steady ratio can help your contact.
Tempo works as a “biomechanical clock” that is “relatively insensitive to the length of the shot,” says Grober and Cholewicki’s preprint on golf tempo. So your ratio is a fair number to track from one club to the next.
Striped times your hands, and Apple Watch on your lead wrist finds the top where your hands reverse. The report’s Tempo card shows Tempo, Back and Down. Back and Down are each part’s time, in seconds.
Back is where golf backswing tips meet a number. If a new move changes your backswing length, Back shows it.
Across 11 irons practice sessions, the average ratio of a session ranged from 2.25 to 3.05, with a median of 2.85 (example data from 11 practice sessions). Six of those sessions landed in the app’s target band of 2.8 to 3.2.
Judge your tempo over several sessions, and the golf tempo guide has drills to steady it.
Turn your hips without a sway
A hip turn that rotates in place, rather than sliding sideways, can help you return to the same spot at impact.
Your iPhone, in your front pocket, reads your hips. The hips card draws them from above and gives three readings:
- Turn, Top: how far your hips turned at the top, in degrees.
- Turn, Impact: how open or closed your hips are at impact.
- Sway: how far your hips moved sideways, toward or away from the target.
Read Sway at the top first. A small value there means your hips turned instead of sliding.
Keep your head quiet
A steady head gives your turn a fixed point, which can help you meet the ball in the same place.
Your AirPods read your head. The head card shows how your head moves from where it was at address:
- Up-down: your head’s largest move up or down.
- Impact: how far your head rose or dipped through impact.
- Top turn: how far your head turned at the top, in degrees.
Read the values across a session. The aim is a head that moves the same small way on each swing.
Repeat your swing plane and hand path
Your hands travel back and up on a tilted plane, then return to the ball. A path that stays close to one plane and repeats can help your contact.
Striped traces your hand path from Apple Watch on your lead wrist. The report’s Path, plane & speed card gives three readings:
- Plane: how steeply your hands swing back, in degrees from level.
- Wobble: how far your hands stray from that plane.
- Change: how much steeper or flatter the downswing is than the backswing.
The golf swing path guide explains each reading in detail.
Get feedback after each swing
Feedback right after a swing ties the number to the feel of that swing. A 2021 study of sound-guided putting in novices found that auditory guidance reduced how far strokes strayed from each golfer’s own average stroke.
After each swing, you hear a soft chime, then your backswing-to-downswing ratio read out in your AirPods.
Striped’s metronome plays 3:1 paces for full swings and 2:1 for chips, pitches and putts. The free web metronome plays three tones for takeaway, top and impact.
To run one checklist session in Striped:
Put your iPhone in your front pocket, your AirPods in, and Apple Watch on your lead wrist. Profile Devices shows whether your Apple Watch is ready.
On Practice, pick Irons or Driver, and a metronome pace if you want one.
Hit balls with one club and one checklist item in mind. Listen for your ratio after each swing.
Stop from iPhone or Apple Watch, then open the session report. Read Tempo first, then the other cards.
In Progress, compare days with the same club. Each point is one club’s average for a practice day.
Golf swing tips for beginners
Start with tempo. It asks for no new positions, and Striped reads it on every swing.
Add one checklist item at a time. Stay with it until its number settles, then move to the next.
Once a change feels familiar, mix up your shots. A 2010 study of practice schedules for learning sport skills had novices practice putting. A schedule that moved from blocked to serial to random practice gave better retention-test results than blocked or random practice alone.
The driving range practice plan turns that idea into one bucket. Setup help is on the support page, and the home page shows what else Striped measures.
Sources
- Towards a Biomechanical Understanding of Tempo in the Golf Swing (Grober and Cholewicki, arXiv physics/0611291, preprint)
- Sonification of Golf Putting Gesture Reduces Swing Movement Variability in Novices (O'Brien et al., Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 2021)
- Rule 4: The Player's Equipment, Rules of Golf (R&A)
- Systematically increasing contextual interference is beneficial for learning sport skills (Porter and Magill, Journal of Sports Sciences, 2010)
- Striped: Striped times tempo at the hands. The top is where the hands reverse, read by Apple Watch on the lead wrist.
- Striped: Tempo ratio (backswing / downswing, timed at the hands by Apple Watch), mean per irons practice session. (example data from 11 practice sessions)
Cite or embed
Cite this guide: Nick. “A checklist of golf swing tips you can measure.” Striped, 5 Nov 2026. https://stripedgolfapp.com/guides/golf-swing-tips/
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The average tempo ratio of each irons practice session in Striped
<a href="https://stripedgolfapp.com/guides/golf-swing-tips/#figure-irons-session-ratios"><img src="https://stripedgolfapp.com/guides/golf-swing-tips/irons-session-ratios.svg" width="420" height="376" alt="Eleven bars, one for each irons practice session, rise and fall around a dashed 3:1 line, with more of them below it than above. A last bar marks the median session, just under the line."></a><br>Diagram: <a href="https://stripedgolfapp.com/guides/golf-swing-tips/">A checklist of golf swing tips you can measure</a>, Striped