About Hole a Day

One par 3 a day, the same hole for everyone, played with your real golf swing in front of your phone.

How a day works

Every day at midnight a new hole opens: somewhere between about 110 and 190 yards, with its own green, bunkers, trees, wind and elevation. Mondays are gentle. By Saturday you can expect a small green, a stiff breeze, and quite possibly an island. You get three balls, and the closest one to the cup is your score for the day. A hole in one beats everything.

Swinging with your body

Prop your phone up at about waist height and stand two to three meters in front of it, facing it, as if the ball were sitting between you and the camera. The page runs a pose model in your browser that follows your shoulders, hips and hands. Set up with your hands together and low, hold still until it beeps, and swing. You don't need a club, and you should keep well clear of anything you'd rather not hit.

Your swing size sets the distance. A full swing flies the club's full carry, and a three-quarter swing flies about three-quarters as far. Then it looks at how you swung:

• Tempo. Good swings take about three times as long going back as coming down. Rush the backswing and the ball tends to hook.
• Sway. If your hips slide off the ball, it tends to push and slice.
• Smoothness. A jerky downswing comes over the top and pulls.
• Arms and finish. Collapsed arms cost you strike, and quitting on the follow-through leaves the face open.

A clean swing flies straight down the line you aimed. The more faults, the further it wanders. After each shot you see a grade and the biggest thing that went wrong, and the settings panel has a swing lab with the full breakdown.

No camera?

You can also swing by touch: drag straight down on the screen to take the club back, and let go to hit. Drift sideways and the ball curves. There's an experimental mode that reads the motion of the phone itself, too.

The range

The practice range has targets at 50, 100, 150 and 200 yards and unlimited balls, so you can learn how far each swing goes before the real thing.

Your data

There are no accounts. The camera video never leaves your device: the pose model runs in your browser, and only a handful of swing measurements (angles, speeds and timings) are sent when you hit a real shot. The server keeps your shots, the name you choose for the leaderboard, and a random ID your browser makes up so it knows which three balls are yours.