How To Achieve Better Tempo In Your Golf Swing

One thing you see with all the big hitters on tour is better golf swing tempo. They make it look effortless! How can it go so far, when it looks like they are barely swinging the club? It's all about relaxed muscle, and better sequence that produces maximum power and distance.

What happens when you tell yourself you're going to hit it hard? I know for me, it usually goes much shorter and not very straight. So, it's an oxymoron to think that swining eaiser gets more distance, but it does. Let me explain.

When you have good tempo, you also have a higher level of muscles relaxation. Loose muscles fire at higher speeds, which results in faster clubhead speed and ultimately distance. 

On the other hand, a tight muscle is a slow muscle. So when you want to hit it hard, you actually tighten your muscles, which then slows your swing speed way down. Does that make sense?

One thing I have found is that you still have to swing at a high enough speed to get more distance, so you just can't swing so easy that the club comes through impact extremely slow...but when you swing, just think of SMOOTH. I like that word, as it evokes a more relaxed swing, with no lashing at the ball, or fast downswing with that "hit" instinct.

One golf drill you may have heard, or even tried is having a pause at the top, before you come down. This is an excellent drill to slow you down. The start of the downswing is where most amateurs screw it up. They so bad want to HIT that ball, and what happens is an out-of-sequence downswing, that results in a mishit of the ball on your clubface.

At that point, it doesn't matter how fast or hard your swing, if you are making off-center contact on your clubface, you loose distance and more importantly accuracy, so this is another benefiting of swinging smooth with better tempo in your swing.

Some golfers try to do a count of 1 for the backswing, 2 for the top, and 3 coming down, to improve their tempo, and it might work, but I know for me it did not. I think about swing technique too much, so adding the counting in there did not feel good to me.

I think the best thing you can do, is try several different drills, like the pause at the top, and see which one works for you. To improve golf swing tempo won't happen overnight, nor will just pounding balls make it happen.

In fact, you might want to consider a golf swing tempo trainer as this can be done while actually making golf swings, so you will at the same time improve your swing sequence. When you achieve better tempo AND sequence you will start to crush your golf ball.