Golf for Women has published a snippet of a book called Tour Tempo: Golf’s Last Secret Finally Revealed. The snippet outlines the 3:1 ratio that most tour players seem to have in their swings. Three beats to reach the top of the backswing, one beat coming down to impact.
You too can attempt to achieve “Tour Tempo” by counting in your head. Most music is in 4/4 time, so pick a song with a rhythm you like. Swing back to the top on the first three beats while humming the song or singing it (even if you do so quietly or in your head), and swing down and make contact with the ball on the last beat. If you have decent rhythm, simply saying “1 2 3 4” rhythmically will be enough.
Give the “Tour Tempo” a try the next time you golf. It’s not much of a swing thought, but then again, that’s the point.
I think the “Tour Tempo” concept encourages a compact swing. All the extras that can creep into a swing throw you off and the writer is encouraging sticking to the basics: a compact and rhythmic swing.
You might run over to Amazon and read the user reviews on “Tour Tempo.”
Summary for those who don’t care to visit Amazon: Most are 5/5 stars, and a few are 1/5. The book costs about $15, so you’re on your own from here.
Thanks for the pointer, Jeff.
I’ve read the book, and tried the method. Basically, your backswing needs to be three times as long as your downswing (in terms of time). It actually works. I’m not sure how, but it does.
I purchased TOUR TEMPO during the holidays, read, listened to the DVD, practiced, and then took it out on the course. My practice swings in the living room as I watched the video seemed impossibly fast in the beginning … ” I can’t swing THAT fast,” my brain said … but then I sat down, flipped on the Golf Channel, and tapped out the tempo of the pro’s swings … and sure enough, they WERE that fast, and were close to the 3:1 tempo. I realized that my S-L-O-W backswing followed by a similar tempo forward swing (to avoid errors) was killing my distance–and not always helping to eliminate errors anyway. Despite my inner golfer screaming “You can’t swing that fast without hitting it into the trees,” I repeated the mantra, “Swing Speed = Distance” over and over again. Then I trotted out to my local course in late December, 40 degrees, not a recipe for big drives. WOW. My drives went anywhere from as far as in the summer, to as much as 20-30 yards further sometimes, with wet fairways. Repeat after me: “Swing Speed = Distance.” I am not a big slicer anyway, but I now find it almost impossible to slice. The slightly abreviated backswing encouraged by the rapid tempo seems to short-circuit a host of swing plane ills (many of which occur in the final quarter of the backswing, in my estimation) while encouraging a more flowing, natural kinetic chain. I can audibly hear a much bigger “swoosh” at the bottom of my swing. The ball goes straight and far. My approach shots on par 4’s are now 140 yards instead of 170. I have invested $25, and about 3 hours reading, practicing, and gained ALL of this good stuff with nary a pro lesson, and relatively little sweat. Now I simply chant, “Swing-(pause)-Set-Thru” and play better golf all the way from tee to green. Tour Tempo? For me, a big thumbs up.
It is attractive to think you can count in your head and achieve accurate timing of physical movements. But what musicians know is that you will unconsciously delay a count to allow your body time to perform a more difficult maneuver, without being aware you are doing that. It is the difference between playing a piece by counting in your head, and playing it again by playing to the beat of a metronome. In other words, you tend to count the way you want it to come out, instead of following the way it IS. By counting to yourself you run the risk of doing something the way you have always done it rather than learning a new way. Best to use the TT audio files.