Timing your golf swing

I had 2 very interesting lesson sessions yesterday. These students have been working very hard on specific swing mechanics with their Amazing Angle swing trainers, optimizing swing positions and movements, and are making wonderful progress.

Both students, while making progress, were just not hitting the ball purely, with power. In cases like this I try to explain that in addition to practicing swing mechanics, we are also responsible for timing our swing correctly. A distinction should also be made between fast paced swings and slower paced swings. Which is better? Both can be good. There are great players who swing with a fast pace and great players who swing with a slower pace. The point is that swing pace is different from swing sequence or timing.

There is a book that I highly recommend for both new and advanced students that deals with this subject. The title of the book is “Tour Tempo”, written by John Novosel. His contention is that all good golf swings, including a long list of tour players, are timed in a 3 to 1 ratio. Measuring this relationship is done with a special camera that allows counting frames of the backswing and downswing to impact. According to Mr. Novosel, if for example your backswing has 30 frames, your downswing would have 10 frames. 27 frames up, 9 frames down, etc.

If you actually count one thousand one, one thousand two to the top of your backswing and then one thousand three to impact you get the basic feel of 3 to 1 timing. The measurement is obviously more complicated than this, but I think this concept has some juice. Try it the next time you are in the practice mode, you may be pleasantly surprised by the results!