Creating and Maintaining Speed In Your Golf Swing

OK, let’s see a show of hands: who wants to hit the golf ball further? Well, in surveying the pretend responses it looks like everyone.

Much of the speed that we create in the swing is from rotation. From a physics standpoint it’s all about centrifugal force which Webster’s dictionary defines as the apparent force that is felt by an object moving in a curved path that moves outwardly away from the center of rotation. In our case the object is the clubhead.

So how do we create more speed? Here’s an analogy for you. If you ever watch figure skating during the winter Olympics you’ve no doubt noticed that when the skaters are spinning at a dizzying pace their arms are tucked in close to their body. When they want to slow down, they extend the arms away from the body.

So, during the backswing make certain that the left arm (for right-handers) remains in contact with the chest and never loses that connection until close to the end of the follow through. Sometimes I see students try to take the club back to the outside during the backswing and almost immediately disconnect. Unless they reconnect fairly quickly their clubhead speed will plummet.

Frequently you’ll see a Tour player practicing with a glove or a towel under their lead arm. And it pretty much stays there until they’re facing the target and the ball is flying miles down the range.