As Yogi Berra may have said, 90 per cent of golf is half mental. And even the pros sometimes get balled up in bad habits.

Wes Pajunen, one of Calgary’s gurus of golf technology, couldn’t help but laugh while recalling one teaching pro who said he’d pay any money if someone could fix his swing

Step 1: Capture and dissect the pro’s swing, right on his home course, by means of the remarkable Swing Solutions Golf Video Analyzer (GVA) 500, a muscular portable laptop system which combines the latest from Silicon Valley with the best of Old St. Andrews.

Step 2: A stop-time analysis, complete with John Madden-style telestrater jottings of setup, swing and follow-through.

Dave Olecko, Business Edge
Wes Pajunen displays the portable equipment that captures the entire swing, then replays it frame by frame for analysis.

On-The-Spot Diagnosis: The guy’s once-compact backswing had strayed off course, creating a loop the size of Craig “The Walrus” Stadler’s waistline.

Prescription: About 20 corrective swings while wearing another cool gizmo, the SwingJacket, which forces the golfer to realign the plane of his swing. Like the Glow Owl — a fluorescent ball, ideal for a post-sundown skins game — it’s also marketed by Pajunen’s Caddyshak Golf.

Result: “The guy was impressed. He walked over and handed me his VISA card,” Pajunen said, still laughing.

Some guys have all the luck. A DeVry grad, Pajunen is one of the founders of Burntsand, a pioneer specialist in helping its corporate clients get comfortable — and fully enabled — within the world of e-commerce.

But whenever he gets the chance, Pajunen flees his keyboard and bolts out to Cottonwood, where he’s whittled down his handicap to a highly respectable six.

Two years ago, Pajunen was able to synthesize his two passions — The Game and computer technology — in the corporate endeavour he calls CaddyShak Golf (www.caddyshak.com).

“I was fascinated with the fact that golfers weren’t quite as quick on the uptake, as far as the Internet was concerned,” he said.

Pajunen began marketing inventory via the Net, with a weakness for products which promise to give duffers a fighting chance at one of the planet’s most challenging — frustrating? — pursuits.

He distributed the SwingJacket, developed in Calgary, plus that glow-in-the-gloaming golf ball. Then there’s the C-Groove putter, with concentric circles lathed into the club face.

But Pajunen thinks he hit the jackpot last fall, when he grabbed the Canadian distributorship for Swing Solutions of Sunnyvale, Calif.

Pajunen believes the GVA 500 is the most advanced teaching tool to hit the market. And, at $15,000 per unit, it’s not exactly a stocking stuffer for dad.

But 14 Canadian golf courses and schools have bought the machines since September, including Calgary’s Country Hills and Elks clubs, as well as Predator Ridge, near Vernon, B.C.

It’s also featured exclusively on Academy Live, seen on the Golf Channel, which is an equity investor in Swing Solutions.

At about 50 pounds a kit, the GVA is easily portable. And the software was designed with golf pros, not computer wizards, in mind.

A digital camera, tucked within the heavy-duty stand, captures images of the pupil’s swing. The images are then loaded onto the laptop screen. It’s a cinch to read, even in direct sunlight.

“You can also load archived examples of your swing into the system, so the pro can compare what may have changed,” Pajunen said.

The stop-frame zeros in on eight key steps of the swing: setup, takeway, to the top, top, weight-transfer, ball impact, follow-through and finish.

It measures factors such as club speed, tempo, ball speed and ball angle. All the data is packed into an eight-page “booklet,” detailing each step.

Onscreen, the pro can use the telestrater feature to circle problem spots and jot observations.

“The subject receives an immediate e-mail, alerting him or her that a new booklet has been uploaded to the Web portal (swingsolutions.com), for the golfer to access as needed,” at home, the office or via a laptap while travelling.

And if your thirst for new toys is unquenchable, Pajunen has more good news.

It’s a mini-system, now available, called the Personal Golf Centre, at $2,995 US — one camera and user-friendly PC you can set up in your garage or office.

Purchasers can video their own swing and send it off, via the Net, to a Swing Solution analyst, or even the Golf Channel for a pro’s evaluation.

Then, there’s not much else to do but sit back . . . and wait for the bad news.