A new device uses sonic technology to help fine tune one's golf swing. NY1's Technology reporter Adam Balkin filed the following report.

The Sonic Golf System-1, which fits onto a golf club, emits tones that sound like Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. But the sounds coming from the device can actually bring harmony to one's golf game.

Using sound to improves one's swing has been a long-time project of Robert Grober, a Yale University professor of applied physics.

"This is just a hobby gone out of control," says Grober. "I've been putting sensors on golf clubs in my lab for fun for many, many years. The goal - make me a better golfer, that's always been the goal. We have electronics that go in the club, they mount in the grip, which keeps it just about where the handle is and it measures how fast the club is moving."

The sound measures the evenness and speed of the club's movement.

"So the question then becomes how to get that to golfer in a way that's meaningful and our solution was to turn it into something you can hear - a sound, a sound space," continues Grober. "Lots of orchestrated sound, which is low-pitched and soft as the club is moving slowly and the faster the club moves, the higher the sound. The higher the pitch and louder the sound we let your ear, which is a wonderful signal processor to figure out what's going on. So it really is data, just in a format that doesn't intimidate that people find intuitive."

Players want to strive for their club to give off a nice, even tempo. Developers say golfers can eventually figure out which sound goes with their own particular swing.

"You listen to good players, they pretty much have the same tempo and pretty comparable rhythm," says Grober. "It's fast at the bottom, they generate good speed to begin with, gets quiet at the transition and then has good speed at the end. And if you just get most golfers to swing with tempo, that's pretty close to that."

The device leads to a self-learning experiment, with golfers hitting golf balls while listening to the sound of their swing.

"You can watch how the golf ball flies, that sound made it fly well and this sound made it fly horrible, so you can move away from what sounds horrible and towards what sounds good," says Grober.

Interested golfers can find an instructor who has such a device or buy one for around $400.

Grober says he wants to expand the concept to help athletes improve their batting and tennis serving skills.