A Golfer’s Swing Thoughts: Exploring Design Support for Reflection in Embodied Experience

Performing a golf swing is a complex sensorimotor skill. HCI research on golf has focused on support for golfers to optimize bodily performances of movements in the swing in controlled environments such as driving ranges, practice greens, or simulators. Our study turns attention to golfers’ reflective “swing thoughts” — heuristics that they use to guide their swing — to explore design support for playing rounds on actual golf courses. Based on an autoethnography of the first author’s experience of using 12 swing thoughts over 14 nine-hole rounds, we identify three reflective processes and six challenges with selecting and modifying swing thoughts on the course. We then lay out possibilities for collecting and integrating data about swing thoughts with on- and off-course feedback. Our findings open up a novel approach to HCI research on sports, and embodied experience more generally, to leverage in situ reflection.