swing speed/tempo

[davemc1]

This thread is aimed at people who like me swing way too fast from the take off, and if you can successfully and consistently slow it down?

I personally doubt that I can, I've had lessons after lessons to no good end. I think my problem is that I feel like I'm swinging well within myself yet when I see myself on video, it's like watching it in fast forward. Also what doesn't help is being told to swing smoother, i'm not sure I know what that even means!

So, how did you do it? And does the swing you have now feel natural or are you consistently fighting it?

 

[Deleted member 15344]

http://forums.golf-monthly.co.uk/showthread.php?71476-Tempo&highlight=tempo

 

[davemc1]

Thanks Phil, it's not really what i was after. There is millions of tips flying around, I was hoping to hear from people successfully sorting it out and if it now feels natural.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Thanks Phil, it's not really what i was after. There is millions of tips flying around, I was hoping to hear from people successfully sorting it out and if it now feels natural.

For me i just tell myself to smoothly hit the ball - no trick or anything

Just talking to myself and relaxing - visualisation the ball as if it was a females nipple ( never take our eyes of them do we )

Being relaxed just seems to work - swinging too fast isnt a bad thing if you have control to go with it

Try and put yourself in a happy relaxed state

 

[Maninblack4612]

Watch videos of Hogan & Tommy Armour lll, they swung/swing fast, it's natural for them. I have a slow swing with a long pause at the top. I went on a GC2 the other day & couldn't get past 88mph. Tried eliminating the pause, which resulted in me swinging faster for some reason. My swing speed immediately went up to 94mph. If it feels under control & it's your natural tempo I wouldn't fight it.

 

[duncan mackie]

Thanks Phil, it's not really what i was after. There is millions of tips flying around, I was hoping to hear from people successfully sorting it out and if it now feels natural.

you need a large mate with you at the range who just keeps repeating "still too fast" every time you hit it until you finally manage to get to a point where you are accelerating through the ball rather than going off like a gun from the start.

is it easy - nope

have I cracked it (after 35 years) - some of the time; but with any club over about a 7 iron my sub-conscious can, and will, override my rationalisation of it all and wreck the swing with counter productive effort!

generally the younger you learn (before full physical development) the more chance you have of being able to use swing dynamics over muscle effort - this applies to a huge number of sports, not just golf.

watching just about any tour pro with a long iron, or Ernie Els with any club, and you get the clear evidence that you don't need anything to be moving quickly for the club head speed to be generated.

 

[Ethan]

A lot of good players feel like they wait a bit at the top. They don't really, but it gives a cue to a slowish transition before applying the power at the ball rather than wasting the effort in the wrong part of the swing. Relief Goosen used to say that when he wanted to hit a really long one he started the downswing even more slowly than usual.

 

[duncan mackie]

A lot of good players feel like they wait a bit at the top. They don't really, but it gives a cue to a slowish transition before applying the power at the ball rather than wasting the effort in the wrong part of the swing. Relief Goosen used to say that when he wanted to hit a really long one he started the downswing even more slowly than usual.

indeed - the phrase from the old Love Bug (Herbie) films always springs to my mind....wait for it, wait for it...

 

[G1BB0]

guilty as charged Dave. I swing about 200mph (or so it feels) even when trying to slow it down.

A good tip I had was swing at say 25% then 50 then 75 then 100 then go back to 75 and try and groove the feeling. Its something I had actually forgotten until now.

It worked for a while then the whirling dirvish came back.

Its still a work in progress and a long way to go for me.

 

[JustOne]

Watch videos of Hogan & Tommy Armour lll, they swung/swing fast, it's natural for them.

Indeed. You have to find your own tempo regardless of what your 'mates' may say/think.

 

[Lump]

Best way to control a faster swing is to pause at the top before starting the downswing. (As already pointed out)

 

[the_coach]

This thread is aimed at people who like me swing way too fast from the take off, and if you can successfully and consistently slow it down?

I personally doubt that I can, I've had lessons after lessons to no good end. I think my problem is that I feel like I'm swinging well within myself yet when I see myself on video, it's like watching it in fast forward. Also what doesn't help is being told to swing smoother, i'm not sure I know what that even means!

So, how did you do it? And does the swing you have now feel natural or are you consistently fighting it?

no real easy answer to this on the one hand, yet on the other the answer is completely simple.
{certainly 'carefully monitored practice' is the only way to successfully change a bad habit - most folks don't practice well - they hit balls}

no-one swings too fast!

- folks who think they swing too fast have a sequence issue, in that their arms are moving too fast in relation to their upper body rotation & hip movement. {the sequence of transition has also often been started from the wrong end, the top, instead of from the ground up}

so simply the rest of their kinematic swing motion is out of connection in time with their arm swing - usually the cause of this is a 'hit at' instinct.
folks often think they have to swing their arms fast to create speed at impact as that's the most noticeably movement when looking at a Tour Pro's swing. but speed at impact is provided by the sequence of the feet, legs, hips, torso, chest, shoulders that each just 'pass on' energy finally through the arms then club head.
average Tour Pro's shoulders are rotating to a peak of around 10mph to get club head speed with a driver through impact circa 112/113mph.

pretty much everyone can/could rotate their shoulders at the required speed it just has to be part of the right sequence & moving on a reasonable plane through 90º.

common during talks about this that 'the big easy' comes up, so smooth, slow .... wrong.
smooth yes, why because the sequence of the motion happens in the right order in time.
slow .... no, from the top of Els swing to impact takes 0.6 seconds..... nothing remotely slow or easy about that.
recent timed experiment, Woods from the top of the swing to impact with a full 8i swing takes exactly the same time to reach impact as Couples does.
putting Bobby Jones driver swing through a computer model revealed his shoulders rotating around 10mph his clubhead speed was 113mph.
there is usually somewhere around a 3:1 ratio in tempo (rhythm) between backswing to downswing in a good kinematic swing motion.

best drill to try to start to implement a change & is real difficult but will really show someone just what they need to focus on.

with a driver make a full correctly sequenced swing at around 20% swing effort to send the ball around 75yards -but correctly struck from center. so that's a complete full swing to balanced finish that's real slow with no hit at, the whole sequence propels the arms they don't really move independently, but are 'moved' by the motion both in the takeaway/backswing & downswing.

you have to feel through impact virtually the same speed with the arms that would send a chip with a wedge some 25/30 yards whilst being controlled by the rotation of the body.

only ways you can achieve it is if the sequence is in the correct order both through the backswing to the top, then transition starts from the ground up feet, legs, hips, torso, chest, shoulders, each move in sequence passing on energy which lastly gets to the arms sending the club through impact which then more 'taps' the ball some 75yards or so, the swing motion carries on to a fully balanced finish. if you can do that 10 times, move on to 30% same goal same 10 times success rate. the goal is through 30/40/50/60/70% to get to 80% effort successfully.

to do it right will take some weeks of that 'carefully monitored practice', cheat & miss a build up speed out & the sequence will likely break down.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Everyone has their own tempo and so being quick isn't necessarily a sin. Big fan of the tour tempo app. Four different speeds from quick (like me) to a slow Freddie Couples speed. Not the cheapest app out there but has done a lot to help me get something more consistent

 

[davemc1]

Best way to control a faster swing is to pause at the top before starting the downswing. (As already pointed out)

I had had a couple of practice swings before and this felt like it could work....

thanks very much for all the replies :thup:

Yet again special thanks to the coach for a much detailed response. I've had a few, so won't even try to delve into it until Monday (am golf and lfc dictate this!) hopefully I can pick out some nuggets.

ps well done the coach, +2 from +1 :clap:

 

[davemc1]

Everyone has their own tempo and so being quick isn't necessarily a sin. Big fan of the tour tempo app. Four different speeds from quick (like me) to a slow Freddie Couples speed. Not the cheapest app out there but has done a lot to help me get something more consistent

any insights to how this has helped mate? :thup:

 

[garyinderry]

Awesome video here of a young tiger and butch. He talks about butch making him do a pause at the top drill over and over. Loads of great stuff in this series of videos.

[video=youtube;xOecUNBV_Q0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOecUNBV_Q0[/video]

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Taken from the website

http://shop.tourtempo.eu/en/information/

It has a number of speeds and a tone to start the swing, get to the top and hit it. Not as easy in reality as it sounds and it's hard to pre-empt the tone and stick to the tempo. I find it a huge help at the range when I can get a little quick, especially when I'm trying to make swing changes and so focussed on the technical aspect and not always on the speed and tempo

 

[chrisd]

I spent months doing it

I started at the range by completely slowing the swing down and hit ball after ball swinging as slow as I could. After a while, on the course, I would take at least one or two more club, then I'd try and swing slowly to the top and start the downswing at the same speed, then I'd gradually accelerate through to strike and just beyond trying always to feel rhythmic. When I started hitting too long as my strike improved I just went back a club until I had the speed of swing I wanted with the right club in hand. It took some months but was well worth it

 

[Alex1975]

I can get quick from the top early in a round. I just think about pushing someone on a swing. The swing/person come back, you reach up and just as they start down you put your input in. I find a pause destructive as it implies doing nothing so the above feeling is better for me.

The other thing that can help is turning your club over and grip it at the head end, make a casual swing and listen for the wush. Make sure the wush sound is at impact and not before.

Your not hitting it on the way back....

 

[the_coach]

an exercise you should try, is line up an around ten foot putt, make a bunch of strokes until you nail the distance & pace of the putt so it ends up around 12" or so past if you don't hole it. holing out here isn't really part of the aim here, it's the pace, if it goes in it only counts if it's at a pace that would send it around 12"-18" past max.
when you get the putts pace do a bunch more, this time saying 1 out loud at the end of the backswing, & 2 out loud at impact. get the pace of this count fixed in your mind.

now with your pitching wedge your going to make your normal length 3/4-ish swing for a normal 'full swing distance' you would hit your PW. only difference being your going to use the exact same pace of count for this swing too, so at the end of the backswing 1 out loud, 2 out loud at impact - has to be the same pace to the count again it was for the putt.

then with an 8i do the exact same thing (don't cheat) same pace, count 1 at the end of the backswing, 2 at impact.

now tee a ball up & with the driver repeat the same again, exact same pace of count it was when you started with the 10' putt, 1 out loud at the end of the full driver backswing, 2 at impact. {with all these from putt, wedge, 8i. drive, you make a complete swing through to a fully balanced finish but the saying the 2 out loud at impact, your not curtailing the swing at impact}

am guessing on reading this you'll be a tad skeptical, but give it a real good go to get it down good so the count remains the same throughout, think the results if you do it right could well surprise you.