Tempo

Hi everyone. Let's talk about tempo. We all have a tempo, pace or speed at which we conduct our daily activities, including walking, talking, eating and performing our work and school routines. If there is a change, it's usually due to anxiety, stress, too much coffee, no coffee, adrenaline etc.

Tempo in golf is VERY important! It is not number one: number one s building a sound, fundamentally strong golf swing. Following a physically proper swing, we seek coordination, balance, tempo and so on. Good tempo not only produces more accurate shots, but longer!

Usually, when watching top players swing, the picture we see, and the comments we hear, are relative to their tempo. Whether fairly quick or lethargically slow, we see the beauty, grace and athleticism that is our personal golf swing goal. There are ways to achieve a better tempo; here are a few. Make a full swing and attempt, truly and realistically, to hit the ball well short of that club's usual distance. Be careful. Cutting the swing short is not a change of tempo. You must make the same size swing you always do, but with a slower arm speed. Hit a selected club, for example a 6 iron that routinely travels 165. Hit that club to the green, but from the 150 yard marker. Again, do not shorten the swing, just slow the tempo. Shortening up on the grip, going down 2 inches and swinging the club helps us get smoother. You might get a pleasant result: a solid shot with the same distance. Even if it's a bit shorter, you've lowered your pace. You often hear good players make a comment, "I need to slow down my swing or hands". I generally do not subscribe to such comments because we need speed to cover a 5 mile golf course in a set number of strokes. But in this context, I like the thought. Feeling as if hands are slower, helps create the hand and core connection we seek in good shots. Commonly our club, arms and hands, (vertical plane), outrun our core, turn, (horizontal plane), which causes a disconnect. That's an example of poor tempo. Of course when anxiety strikes, and that's almost always in golf, we tend to lose tempo. When we hear a tv announcer say a player is tensing up; the golfer's tempo is deteriorating. In an effort to fight anxiety; grab the problem by the neck and focus on hands, arms and club moving comfortably with your turn. There is no need to think about actually hitting the ball. Just picture moving the club up to the swing top in back, then comfortably moving it to the swing top at the finish, without considering hitting a ball. Practice doing this on the range first!

There is no substitute for rehearsing whether on the range or course. Repetition in the form of practice, yields repetition on the course. The repetition should be to work on TEMPO with one of these drills. There are countless other tempo drills, look them up on-line, but try one.