Would appreciate any recommendations for an inexpensive camera to record and study golf swings, thanks.

I don't have a direct answer for your question, but hopefully I can give you some info on what to look for. Get a camcorder with the highest frames/second you can find. Most camcorders do 30 fps and some can do 60 fps. With the speed of a golf swing, 60 fps may not allow you to frame by frame advance to see the club at impact.

Take a look at something like this (Sanyo Xacti HD1010). It says it can do 300 frames per second. I'm sure there are others. Look at the shutter speed setting for the camcorder, the higher the better.

Google search slow motion camcorders. or shutter speed camcorder to get tons more info.