Freddy Connect Dual Trace Swing Trainer

Product Details

• ASIN: B00074XLW8
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #636,581 in Sports & Outdoors (See Top 100 in Sports & Outdoors)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Training Aid for Indoors Golf Practice, January 15, 2006

By 

James Takahashi "jmtt77" (Beavertown, OR, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freddy Connect Dual Trace Swing Trainer (Misc.)

I like to leave a club, golf glove, and golf practice mat in the living room to practice a few swings when I'm passing by and the mood strikes. Although this is a handy way to work on my swing timing, the club only gives feedback on the vertical swing component (i.e., fat, thin, or the just-right swish off the top of the mat). My eyes are barely quick enough to verify whether the clubhead is passing through my imaginary ball, and definitely are not quick enough to determine whether the clubface was open, closed, or square. There have been many times I *thought* I was swinging the club well based upon my living room practice, but then played a round or hit a bucket at the range, and found I had actually been practicing a bad slice.

The Freddy Connect is the missing piece of my practice puzzle. It works sort of like a tracer bullet. Now when I swing, I see a trail of red and green that indicates whether the clubface is open, closed or square. And I get much more accurate feedback indicating whether the sweet spot of the clubhead is moving through the imaginary ball.

It took a little time to train my eyes to interpret the results, but I definitely am able to identify a lot of swings as bad that I formerly would have thought were pretty good. There are a few shortcomings, however:
1. The swing path and alignment advice is rather poor. It suggests that you strive to swing exactly on the target path with a totally square face, when in reality, many/most good golfers swing on a slightly inside-to-out path, striking the ball with a slightly closed face to draw the ball back to the target line.
2. The 1.85 ounces added to your golf club by the Freddy Connect will make you feel like you're swinging the golf club equivalent of a medicine ball. This is not necessarily a bad thing since it will force you to swing more fluidly in order to allow centrifugal force to square the clubface, but it definitely does not feel like swinging your regular club. Why they even suggest you'd want to hit balls with the Freddy Connect attached is a mystery to me... if I have an in-flight ball to provide feedback, why would I care what Freddy Connect was trying to tell me?
3. The most misleading part of the instructions and advertising is the implication that you will see overlapping green and red traces throughout the course of a good swing. I'm not even sure if it's possible to swing the club to accomplish that Freddy Connect parlor trick, but in a real golf swing, the clubface rotates from open to closed during the course of its swing -- it is only totally square near the bottom of the swing at the point of impact.

These are all problems with the documentation, not with the actual device. I am confident that the Freddy Connect will improve my indoor practice time, but I suspect that many Freddy Connects are sitting in their owners' closets for lack of a good instruction manual. I guess the silver lining is that you can probably pick up a barely used one (like I did) on eBay for $10 plus shipping.