Most of the time I did the same. However, on two large r&d projects where we had 15-20 motors, we did use a phase meter. I don't remember what type. On those projects, I did the control programming and programmed all the vfd's. Since I preferred an active tune, I had them all uncoupled initially anyway.
Most of my pumps were positive displacement, but I've seen centrifugals with threaded spindles where getting the rotation wrong would spin the impeller off, damaging the housing, impeller, and spindle in the process. Even before vfd's, we started those up uncoupled first.
Pete Keillor