Golf Drill Tip: Top 3 ways to improve golf swing tempo (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Drill Tip: Top 3 ways to improve golf swing tempo (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you work really hard on building all the good technical fundamentals and good key positions of a golf swing, but it is just not really firing, it’s not really consistent. I mean it doesn’t look particularly good and smooth; one of the issues you might be suffering with, it is just not a very good tempo. Now tempo can often disguise quite a few. If I see somebody on the range and they got really good tempo, you often presume that a good player even without noticing the key fundamentals within their swing. So here are three exercises that would help you get best of tempo and therefore more consistent results out on the golf course.

The first thing I would like to go ahead and do is hit some golf shots with your feet together, so your feet absolutely together and the golf ball there in the middle of your feet. The reason why this helps with good tempo is it stops any part of your body moving too quickly, you can't be too aggressive with your feet together, you would end up off balance or falling over. So just a take a little pitching wedge, we just make some little buck and through swings keeping the feet together and I can't at any point get too aggressive or too fast, and once you have had a few practice swings, you will start to be able to pitch the ball away quite nicely with quite a good contact, keeping your feet together. It helps you to work on balance and it helps you work on not hitting the golf ball quite so hard.

The next exercise I would like to work on for good tempo is actually just to go ahead and turn your club upside down and swing it, using the head of the handle and the grip down here as the far end and that's going to provide a swoosh, so if that picks up on the microphone I don't know but you can hear the swoosh, all right, you can hear the swoosh here as I make my swing. Now, the swoosh I want to be nicely timed and even particularly I am not listening for the swoosh in the back swing, that would be a mistake that would be too quick, that would be a snatch on the back swing, I don't want to hear the swoosh there, I don't really want to hear a swoosh too early in the down swing either. That would imply that I am hitting from the top and I am smacking the ball too early, I want to hear the swoosh nice and late on but nice and quick through the ball, so we have a nice slow back swing and then the swoosh happens down around the ball area, just after as I crack the whip. So you go ahead make a few swings with the club upside down and listen for the swoosh.

One last exercise just to help you with good tempo is just to hit some 80% wedge shots, taking a little bit of power out of your waist swing would give you a swing that has a lot more control. So if you go ahead and work over 80%, there are lot of people they hit a full wedge of 100 yards, nice, easy simple math, your 80% swing is going to go 80 yards, so you take your pitching wedge and hit one as hard as it goes, look at the distance, if it is anywhere near a 100 just dial it back into 80, pick a flag or an area on the practice ground that is only 80 yards away and you feel that you are swinging and then develop a lot more timing and tempo just pitching the ball away at 80 yards, rather than standing there and trying to hammer it out there and trying to get it go 100 yards, so using those three exercises to try and develop a little bit more timing, little bit more tempo and trying to develop all of the good fundamental positions you worked on in your swing, but let them all just blend together with little bit more tempo to look better but also to perform better particularly under pressure.

 2013-03-26

If you work really hard on building all the good technical fundamentals and good key positions of a golf swing, but it is just not really firing, it’s not really consistent. I mean it doesn’t look particularly good and smooth; one of the issues you might be suffering with, it is just not a very good tempo. Now tempo can often disguise quite a few. If I see somebody on the range and they got really good tempo, you often presume that a good player even without noticing the key fundamentals within their swing. So here are three exercises that would help you get best of tempo and therefore more consistent results out on the golf course.

The first thing I would like to go ahead and do is hit some golf shots with your feet together, so your feet absolutely together and the golf ball there in the middle of your feet. The reason why this helps with good tempo is it stops any part of your body moving too quickly, you can't be too aggressive with your feet together, you would end up off balance or falling over. So just a take a little pitching wedge, we just make some little buck and through swings keeping the feet together and I can't at any point get too aggressive or too fast, and once you have had a few practice swings, you will start to be able to pitch the ball away quite nicely with quite a good contact, keeping your feet together. It helps you to work on balance and it helps you work on not hitting the golf ball quite so hard.

The next exercise I would like to work on for good tempo is actually just to go ahead and turn your club upside down and swing it, using the head of the handle and the grip down here as the far end and that's going to provide a swoosh, so if that picks up on the microphone I don't know but you can hear the swoosh, all right, you can hear the swoosh here as I make my swing. Now, the swoosh I want to be nicely timed and even particularly I am not listening for the swoosh in the back swing, that would be a mistake that would be too quick, that would be a snatch on the back swing, I don't want to hear the swoosh there, I don't really want to hear a swoosh too early in the down swing either. That would imply that I am hitting from the top and I am smacking the ball too early, I want to hear the swoosh nice and late on but nice and quick through the ball, so we have a nice slow back swing and then the swoosh happens down around the ball area, just after as I crack the whip. So you go ahead make a few swings with the club upside down and listen for the swoosh.

One last exercise just to help you with good tempo is just to hit some 80% wedge shots, taking a little bit of power out of your waist swing would give you a swing that has a lot more control. So if you go ahead and work over 80%, there are lot of people they hit a full wedge of 100 yards, nice, easy simple math, your 80% swing is going to go 80 yards, so you take your pitching wedge and hit one as hard as it goes, look at the distance, if it is anywhere near a 100 just dial it back into 80, pick a flag or an area on the practice ground that is only 80 yards away and you feel that you are swinging and then develop a lot more timing and tempo just pitching the ball away at 80 yards, rather than standing there and trying to hammer it out there and trying to get it go 100 yards, so using those three exercises to try and develop a little bit more timing, little bit more tempo and trying to develop all of the good fundamental positions you worked on in your swing, but let them all just blend together with little bit more tempo to look better but also to perform better particularly under pressure.