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Would you play better if you didn't try to swing as hard?

mikeg_74 said:
your 80% swing is your real swing. we all tend to over swing and rob ourselves of speed and distance. Swing a controlled 80% and you'll hit it further and more online.
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100% agree....at a controlled speed will hit sweet spot on face much more thus maximizing the performance of the club. I apply this principle to all clubs and am getting good results both in accuracy and distance. The challenge is to keep that pattern of consistency thru every shot ?.
 
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For irons, when I club up and slow it down, I tend to ease off on the follow through and end up with a weak fade. My main swing thought now to avoid that is “finish (you moron)” especially when clubbing up.
 
GolfLivesMatter said:
JVbart...I hope this helps. In the past year I'd suddenly gotten almost a "tennis elbow" in my left elbow. The pain was most pronounced late at night or in the morning. I talked to my pro about it and he said I need to start rotating more into impact to get my left elbow in front of me. Either that or give up the game. The reason why is I was lifting my left shoulder too early in the DS, and the corresponding "snap" of the clubhead downward, trailing too far behind, was the likely cause of the pain. The problem is the clubhead weight reacts by going down too early, and my left arm straightened kinda "behind" me. The good news is I have to swing more correctly to keep playing.

I suck at explaining these types of things, and your case the cause could be completely different, but maybe not.
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Thanks for the feedback! Rotation is my biggest issue right now for performance so it would make sense it's contributing to the pain. I mostly focus on trying to rotate in my backswing but I will see if a focus on rotating through the downswing helps with the pain as well. My typical miss is leaving all my weight on my backfoot which is probably caused by this same issue.
 
nope, I tried that, and at a lesson, my instructor looks at me and says there is no way I should be able to shoot my irons further than you. Swing the club. We settled on the 18/6 tempo. Shouldn't matter on "full" shots if you have a 3:1 tempo and a consistent back swing length at any speed.
 
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gkeller813 said:
I have two thoughts on this:

1. For Irons: In my head, I used to hit my 8 iron 150 yds. That required a perfect 100% swing. I took it down to thinking I can hit my 8 iron 140 yds, and adjusted all my other irons down accordingly. So now I swing instead of 100%, maybe 80-90%. Doesn't matter right, percentage wise, because I'm not up there thinking, "I really got to get ahold of this one to hit it 150", i'm thinking "Nice and easy and it'll go 140." This has changed my iron game in a drastic way. I used to be all over the place, but I had a round this past season where I hit the green on all the par 3's, and made at least par. Never had that happen before in my 20 years of golf. Always struggled with par 3's, now i'm hitting more and more of them. Same goes for approach shots. I've become far more accurate taking it down to more of a smooth swing, so I have less bad misses and more GIR.

2. For Driver: I tried to implement the same strategy as the irons, hitting it less than 100%. It did not work. I was always opening up and had a huge slice. Like I aimed 50 yards left of the left side of the fairway, and the ball would come back over. I was losing so much distance it wasn't funny. The less is more theory just wasn't working. I now think in my head, slow takeaway, then attack the ball. Not swinging 110%, but a controlled attack. I've been able to get in a better groove, and my last round of 2019 I hit all but one fairway. I've never been that locked in hitting off the tee. Still a bit of a fade on my shot, but nothing like before, not even close.

Too bad I didn't couple all those FIR with the hitting the par 3's in the same round, would have been a great score!
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I know I struggle with getting lazy & having my form break down more when I think "swing nice & easy." So I think I need a better swing thought - for me, at least.

And to your #2 point: I believe Clay Ballard (Top Speed Golf) had some data that showed that as golfers of all handicaps worked to increase their driver swing speed (similar to using a SuperSpeed protocol), they actually got more accurate, so his recommendation was (for driver at least), "Learn to swing faster & you'll still be more accurate."

I think it's too simple to just say "swing easy" or "swing at 80%" or whatever. If you have decent form, it probably works a lot better.
 
Swinging hard for me is usually a bad thing. I try to think about keeping a smooth tempo. When I succeed I'm usually rewarded with some reasonable results. It's crazy the difference in a loose smooth swing vs. one where you're trying to 'muscle up' (I'm not that strong). Shows on course as well as on monitors. My smooth swings are the ones that generate the most clubhead speed and are the least offline.
 
Just throwing this out there....how many of you folks took a swing at one time or another without a whole lotta thought, like "just hit the ball to that area", and suddenly the ball flies like 15 yards farther?
 
When I try to swing smoother, I swing faster and it doesn’t feel that way. Took a long time to get myself trained to realize that
 
GolfLivesMatter said:
Just throwing this out there....how many of you folks took a swing at one time or another without a whole lotta thought, like "just hit the ball to that area", and suddenly the ball flies like 15 yards farther?
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That can happen. It usually takes place when you unconsciously do something that will increase ball speed significantly that you don't usually do. Some examples are:
- hitting the sweet spot causing a jump in your smash factor
- finding your tempo
- changing your swing plane to a more efficient one
- stop swaying or building a firm lead side on the downswing causing the clubhead to crack like a whip through the impact zone
- getting a better AoA where the clubhead traps the ball really well for the first time

These are just a few examples.
 
No question - YES! Overswinging has done more damage to my game than any other single thing. I try to tone it down every round, but it always crops up. Usually at the worst possible time. It impacts my driving most. Then the long irons. I can usually swing the mid and short irons fairly smoothly. The wedges I definitely swing in a controlled manner. But then I chunk about a third of my chips by either decelerating or swinging too fast and blading the ball. Maybe when I get older it will be less of a problem - LOL. (I'm 74 at this point).
 
Yes, 100% this. I find i swing much smoother when I am not trying to batter the ball. As my instructor said, "the ball is already dead, you can't kill it any more by hitting it harder."
I find I actually get just the same distance (if not more) because my accuracy improves at the same time.
 
100%. This is something I struggle with a lot - trying to swing too hard and getting out of rhythm.

Swing fast, not hard - I heard once.
 
I've read that swing tempo is kind of a "DNA" thing. Some folks are faster, some slower, and it's difficult, if not bad to try to change. The idea is to find "your" tempo and work within those boundaries by finding shafts, club weights, etc, that best work with one's natural tempo.
 
GolfLivesMatter said:
I've read that swing tempo is kind of a "DNA" thing. Some folks are faster, some slower, and it's difficult, if not bad to try to change. The idea is to find "your" tempo and work within those boundaries by finding shafts, club weights, etc, that best work with one's natural tempo.
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That's true. It's also true that most players' tempo is too quick compared to their ideal tempo.
 
Quick note from today's practice and playing round. I was hitting slightly fat shots on the range, and enough on the front 9 to be frustrating. A guy I play with who used to play on the mini tour told me "you're hip rotation is too slow", and I look too "rigid". He said my hips weren't "snapping" quickly enough to initiate the down swing and thus my arms were getting stuck behind my body. He asked me to "double" the speed of my hip "snap" on the next shot, and relax my arms/shoulders/wrists, be "loosey goosey". Sure enough, great shot with compression. I kept doing the same for the rest of the round and no more fat shots, with some shots I haven't hit in years in terms of distance or accuracy. That said, my swing didn't turn into some wild flailing at the ball with the upper body, the "whip" came from the lower-body, if that makes sense.

He said somewhere along the way I started to become too "mechanical", thinking a slower, more deliberate hip turn would be more controllable when in fact it works in the opposite. I'm not saying he's 100% correct, or that this would work for others, but it was a freeing sensation to just fire the left hip left & up because everything else seemed to fall into place.
 
I worked on this today at the range...distance was less with the relaxed swings but not enough to dissuade me from trying this out for the next few rounds to see how it improves my fairways reached...i'll gladly take less yardage to reach more FW.
 
My instructor sent this workout routine to weed-out upper body dominance and gain swing speed. Don't do this fast and rack yourself up, progress slowly through the routine. The idea is to get the feel of transitioning from an upper body to lower body initiated movement, reducing tension, and listening to the shaft sound.

First, hold an iron out in front of you with the shaft pointing straight-up, like an antenna, and get into address posture (normal spine angle). Hold the club with maximum tension in the wrists, arms, and shoulders, a death grip, or a 10 on a scale of 1-10. Then keep releasing tension to a 9, then 8, all the way down to a "1", where the club is resting on the ground. The point of this exercise is to see how you feel after this exercise vs. your current tension level at address, and helps with the next drill.

Next, get an alignment stick (or driver) and start swinging back and forth, keep going without stopping, and make sure you're rotating back, and rotating around yourself, like you're swinging "in a barrel". Start off with an upper-body dominant swing with maximum tension in your shoulders, arms, wrists being a "10" on a scale of 1-10, or most tense and most upper body with minimal hip rotation. According to my instructor, my hips should be turning "under" my shoulders, whereby the shoulders are "behind" in terms of rotation, or hips rotate and shoulders feel "behind" for a split second, if that makes sense.

As you continue swinging, start decreasing upper-body tension to a 9, 8, down to a "1" while rotating the hips faster and faster from the top, ending with the least upper body tension and maximum hip rotation. Listen to the shaft sound as you progress. If done correctly, the "whip" sound should be the loudest at the end of the session. Also, watch the club path arc at the bottom from where you started at address vs. the end because if done correctly the arc should end inside the initial starting point.

He says even the best players revisit this exercise on a consistent basis because even they can migrate into upper-body dominant swings and lose distance and accuracy.
 
Trying to forcefully slow my swing down just causes problems. My swing may look like I’m going at the ball too hard or too fast, but it feels normal to me and I still have some left in the tank if I wanted to step on it. I typically don’t try to add any extra because that’s not good for me either.
 
I also had a coach who instilled in me that hard and fast are two different things and that I should never swing hard
 
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