Who has to tried to swing really slow and does it even on the court?

[yanni]

I was at the range today. Playing off the mats worked without problem. When I practised on the grass everything got much harder. I would say 50% of the shots were OK. The other had difference errors like shanks, slices, hitting fat, hitting thin etc. Some went very far most not. Some went left some went right...

At the end of the session I did the swing which what I would describe as 40% of my usual power. This really felt extremly slow. And guess what happened? I hit around 90% of the balls perfectly. Very solid, no single slice, very straight. And the distance was not less compared to my 80% shots.. I would say if count all swings I hit those further than the balls I played with 80% of power.

After training I measured my swing speed. All with my 7 iron and wrote down what I felt. This was with a low cost speed meter. So in reality it might be more. But this does not really matter now.

My max speed is 75-80 mph. I would call this 100%
65 mph I feel as  80% of my power
50 mph I feel as 60%
45 mph I feel as 40%. This really feels ultra slow. Almost like slow motion.

I think one roughly can say that 10mph less speed gives you around 20 yards less distance.
When swinging with 45mph-50mph this would be 15mph less than what I would call a 80% feeling and actually I would consider this as very slow. 15mph will give me about 30yards less distance which is quite a lot. I had the feeling though that in reality the difference was much less than you would imagine. I was hitting those ultra slow balls pretty far since I hit those dead center and made great contact.

I think I will continue  practising very very slow and will only speed my swing up when I get the same consistency when swinging faster.. Does anybody else practise those ultra slow swings or even play like this on  the court ? Actually I remember I played like his on the court once and it was my best round. I should mention that I play for around one year now...
 

Edited September 30, 2017 by yanni

[Hacker James]

Ben Hogan once did a video of a slow motion swing. It can be found on the internet, but is very grainy and noisy video. He did not film in slow motion, he swung in slow motion actually hitting a ball.   I would imagine it would help in isolating swing faults.

[Lihu]

4 hours ago, yanni said:

I was at the range today. Playing off the mats worked without problem. When I practised on the grass everything got much harder. I would say 50% of the shots were OK. The other had difference errors like shanks, slices, hitting fat, hitting thin etc. Some went very far most not. Some went left some went right...

At the end of the session I did the swing which what I would describe as 40% of my usual power. This really felt extremly slow. And guess what happened? I hit around 90% of the balls perfectly. Very solid, no single slice, very straight. And the distance was not less compared to my 80% shots.. I would say if count all swings I hit those further than the balls I played with 80% of power.

After training I measured my swing speed. All with my 7 iron and wrote down what I felt. This was with a low cost speed meter. So in reality it might be more. But this does not really matter now.

My max speed is 75-80 mph. I would call this 100%
65 mph I feel as  80% of my power
50 mph I feel as 60%
45 mph I feel as 40%. This really feels ultra slow. Almost like slow motion.

I think one roughly can say that 10mph less speed gives you around 20 yards less distance.
When swinging with 45mph-50mph this would be 15mph less than what I would call a 80% feeling and actually I would consider this as very slow. 15mph will give me about 30yards less distance which is quite a lot. I had the feeling though that in reality the difference was much less than you would imagine. I was hitting those ultra slow balls pretty far since I hit those dead center and made great contact.

I think I will continue  practising very very slow and will only speed my swing up when I get the same consistency when swinging faster.. Does anybody else practise those ultra slow swings or even play like this on  the court ? Actually I remember I played like his on the court once and it was my best round. I should mention that I play for around one year now...
 

Have a look here:

 

[Buckeyebowman]

My guess would be that when you slow your swing down you manage to strike the ball more near the center of the club face. This gives more solid contact, and the ball flies well. Maybe a better ball flight than a higher club head speed and a glancing blow.

My Uncle, a country club pro before WWII, explained this to me. He said when you get caught between clubs and throttle down, sometimes you'll do everything perfectly because you're not in a rush to hit the ball. And you end up hitting it over the green or well past the pin!

His advice was to take the shorter club and hit it harder, but he had the swing to do that. I think there are lessons to be learned from the former example.

When I played my best golf, no swing was an effort! They were all easy!

[Jack Watson]

for myself I generally start to lose my tempo and get real quick if I play a lot.

The key I see swinging in sequence with a good temp beats trying to create power 24-7.

Good proper strikes are the same whether you swing a seven iron ninety or forty mph.

Tempo is absolutely huge.

[nevets88]

Instructors here and elsewhere have strongly recommended it. There are videos in this site that show pros and ams doing it, you'll have to dig through the site. There is one video of Luke Donald taking forever to complete the swing and the ball barely gets out there. That is control.

 

Here is the only one I could find quickly:

 

[yanni]

Took this swing thought the court yesterday. I lost some yards with my drives. Other than that I was way better with any club. Even with the putter. Swinging slow and always with the same tempo really puts you in some relaxed state of mint which makes the playing much more fluent. Also when swinging slow I was able to see what caused my shots going wrong and can work on this on the range next time. When I was just smashing the ball I had no idea what was going wrong I just was trying harder and harder and it got more wrong.

I also checked what the other players (high handicappers) were doing. I could see already during their practise swing if the ball was going to be OK or not. Whenever a player was doing an aggressive practise swing this meant he probably would miss the drive, slice it or whatever. Whenever he was doing it relaxed and fluent it seemed to work. 

To sum it up. Yes I am loosing (quite a lot of) distance with the drives. I would say at least about 30 yards since clubhead speed is not very fast. But in total I was gaining a lot since all those drives were straight and well hit. I was gaining more with hitting them straight and shorter than from hitting them far in the wrong direction or not hitting them at all. With the irons I played past the flag which never happend to me. My feeling was I was hitting them at least one club longer. if not more. This happend cause I hit them way more solid than before.

I will continue to swing like that for some time now and than gradually will speed up the complete, fluent motion. This does not mean I will return to smashing the ball as far as I can or rush the swing. 

 

[Lihu]

42 minutes ago, yanni said:

Took this swing thought the court yesterday. I lost some yards with my drives. Other than that I was way better with any club. Even with the putter. Swinging slow and always with the same tempo really puts you in some relaxed state of mint which makes the playing much more fluent. Also when swinging slow I was able to see what caused my shots going wrong and can work on this on the range next time. When I was just smashing the ball I had no idea what was going wrong I just was trying harder and harder and it got more wrong.

I also checked what the other players (high handicappers) were doing. I could see already during their practise swing if the ball was going to be OK or not. Whenever a player was doing an aggressive practise swing this meant he probably would miss the drive, slice it or whatever. Whenever he was doing it relaxed and fluent it seemed to work. 

To sum it up. Yes I am loosing (quite a lot of) distance with the drives. I would say at least about 30 yards since clubhead speed is not very fast. But in total I was gaining a lot since all those drives were straight and well hit. I was gaining more with hitting them straight and shorter than from hitting them far in the wrong direction or not hitting them at all. With the irons I played past the flag which never happend to me. My feeling was I was hitting them at least one club longer. if not more. This happend cause I hit them way more solid than before.

I will continue to swing like that for some time now and than gradually will speed up the complete, fluent motion. This does not mean I will return to smashing the ball as far as I can or rush the swing. 

 

Go slow in the backswing not the downswing. Don't try to impede your speed down to the ball.

[yanni]

Yes I have to start slow and accelerate when coming closer to impact. But this is my next step. The key is not to rush the downswing and waste all the energy at the beginning. When I really have this down I will add more speed. 

[carri10]

I find that going really slow (like 5 mph) is useful to make sure you have control and awareness of motion.  To get an even better feeling, try closing your eyes.  I do this when I am trying to feel a new motion.  I would say that the normal swing has a lot of forces in that you won't experience swinging slow.  Imagine a golf head (iron) weighs about 250g, the shaft 100g.  If you are swinging that at 80mph (and say, shoulder to ball is about 1.5m), you have a centripetal force of 300N (really approximately).  Which is about 70lbs.  That is a lot.  Unless you train your body to accept this force generation, you'll be in trouble.

So, go for the slow swings, but don't only swing slow.

[yanni]

I am not talking about 5mph here but probably around 50mph (with 7 iron) and probably 60mph with the driver. My max regular speed will probably be around 75mph with iron and 85-90mph with the driver. So its not super slow motion but just an very easy swing. I think the main difference is that I don't to try hit at the ball this way. I am just lifting the club slowely and let it go. My turn is very slow at the moment. As soon as I speed this up everything else will speed up. I will try going faster later.

[Lihu]

5 hours ago, yanni said:

I am not talking about 5mph here but probably around 50mph (with 7 iron) and probably 60mph with the driver. My max regular speed will probably be around 75mph with iron and 85-90mph with the driver. So its not super slow motion but just an very easy swing. I think the main difference is that I don't to try hit at the ball this way. I am just lifting the club slowely and let it go. My turn is very slow at the moment. As soon as I speed this up everything else will speed up. I will try going faster later.

Going that slow could really mess your timing up, and I'd guess it wasn't actually that much slower. Do you have a swing speed radar or similar type of monitor?

5 hours ago, yanni said:

Yes I have to start slow and accelerate when coming closer to impact. But this is my next step. The key is not to rush the downswing and waste all the energy at the beginning. When I really have this down I will add more speed. 

Accelerating is not such a good idea, until you groove a good swing. Even then, I wonder if good golfers actually do that?

Just let the swing happen without impeding it. Go slow just to get a feel for body position as you noted, but when it comes time to make contact I'd recommend relaxing and just let the swing happen.

[Patch]

On 9/30/2017 at 9:07 AM, yanni said:

I was at the range today. Playing off the mats worked without problem. When I practised on the grass everything got much harder. I would say 50% of the shots were OK. The other had difference errors like shanks, slices, hitting fat, hitting thin etc. Some went very far most not. Some went left some went right...

At the end of the session I did the swing which what I would describe as 40% of my usual power. This really felt extremly slow. And guess what happened? I hit around 90% of the balls perfectly. Very solid, no single slice, very straight. And the distance was not less compared to my 80% shots.. I would say if count all swings I hit those further than the balls I played with 80% of power.

After training I measured my swing speed. All with my 7 iron and wrote down what I felt. This was with a low cost speed meter. So in reality it might be more. But this does not really matter now.

My max speed is 75-80 mph. I would call this 100%
65 mph I feel as  80% of my power
50 mph I feel as 60%
45 mph I feel as 40%. This really feels ultra slow. Almost like slow motion.

I think one roughly can say that 10mph less speed gives you around 20 yards less distance.
When swinging with 45mph-50mph this would be 15mph less than what I would call a 80% feeling and actually I would consider this as very slow. 15mph will give me about 30yards less distance which is quite a lot. I had the feeling though that in reality the difference was much less than you would imagine. I was hitting those ultra slow balls pretty far since I hit those dead center and made great contact.

I think I will continue  practising very very slow and will only speed my swing up when I get the same consistency when swinging faster.. Does anybody else practise those ultra slow swings or even play like this on  the court ? Actually I remember I played like his on the court once and it was my best round. I should mention that I play for around one year now...
 

I have always thought that the golfer "swinging for the fence" so to speak was robbing themselves of both accuracy and in some instances distance. Their fast swing was not allowing them to have a controlled, balanced swing. 

I also believe that most amateurs do not have the right core muscles to swing any club at 100%.

 When using 70-80% swing (60%?) the golfer see better control and some decent distances. They are balanced, and in more control. This leads to a better transfer of energy into the ball, with the better timing/tempo swing. All the various swing part are working better, together. 

[dennyjones]

There are times at the range when I swing my driver with my feet together.   This forces me to slow everything down and focus on rotation and path.   If I overswing, I have come out of my stance.    

 

[JonMA1]

Great topic @yanni. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I'm going to try this on the course as well.

Erik gave some great advice recently about swinging at 30% when working on a priority and not increasing that speed/effort until I can accomplish whatever priority I'm working on close to 100% of the time. Only then do you move up to 40% applying the same goal before moving up to 50, 60, 70%, etc.

I took some very slow swings today not worrying too much about the results and focusing mainly on my swing path and just repeated the feel over and over again at that slow speed.

In addition to accomplishing my priority much of the time, I was surprised how little distance I lost with this 30-50% swing - probably going a bit less than my next club down (5w).

So I think it makes sense to continue this practice on the course as I'm not as concerned with score and don't play any courses with a lot of forced carries.

[Buckeyebowman]

On 10/2/2017 at 10:05 AM, dennyjones said:

There are times at the range when I swing my driver with my feet together.   This forces me to slow everything down and focus on rotation and path.   If I overswing, I have come out of my stance.    

 

My Uncle used to recommend wearing smooth soled shoes or an old set of sneakers sometimes when practicing. If your feet start slipping, you're probably over swinging.

That hasn't been my problem lately. I'm 65 and have been working on lengthening my swing, and keeping my flexibility.

I also lost interest in the "slow backswing" idea a while ago. Look at the pros. They don't waste any time getting the club back. For me, and a lot of other people I've seen, "crawling" the club back can cause them to jump from the top. This is poor tempo. If the putting stroke should be "tic-toc", then the full swing should be pretty much the same, Hideki Matsuyama notwithstanding!

Now I'm talking about actually playing. When you are doing drills,It can pay to slow down so you can feel what it is you're trying to do.

3 hours ago, JonMA1 said:

 

Erik gave some great advice recently about swinging at 30% when working on a priority and not increasing that speed/effort until I can accomplish whatever priority I'm working on close to 100% of the time. Only then do you move up to 40% applying the same goal before moving up to 50, 60, 70%, etc.

 

This kind of struck me funny. I know Erik doesn't really care for Hank Haney, and I can take him or leave him depending on what he says. But, Haney said much the same thing about slowing things down to learn a particular skill. As he put it, "If you can't do it slow, then you can't do it fast!"

Also, I can't remember how many pros who have said that they swing at about 80% effort. Of course their 80% might be our 120%, but you play the game you have. 

This is what I have striven for lately. Making a good pass at the ball with out jumping out of my shoes.

[yanni]

8 hours ago, JonMA1 said:

Great topic @yanni. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I'm going to try this on the course as well.

Erik gave some great advice recently about swinging at 30% when working on a priority and not increasing that speed/effort until I can accomplish whatever priority I'm working on close to 100% of the time. Only then do you move up to 40% applying the same goal before moving up to 50, 60, 70%, etc.

I took some very slow swings today not worrying too much about the results and focusing mainly on my swing path and just repeated the feel over and over again at that slow speed.

In addition to accomplishing my priority much of the time, I was surprised how little distance I lost with this 30-50% swing - probably going a bit less than my next club down (5w).

So I think it makes sense to continue this practice on the course as I'm not as concerned with score and don't play any courses with a lot of forced carries.

This makes perfectly sense. As a piano player for example you never would practise a tune at  full speed. If you would do this you never would learn to play it. You would focus on a certain aspect (just right hand first)) and practise this at 30% speed until 100% perfect. Then you would practise the other hand. Than both hands together. If this works out 100% you would add a little speed and play it at 40%.

I was doing this totally wrong in golf. What I did I do? I hit 100 balls the same way with full power and was hoping this would change something. Somehow I thought the more balls I hit the better I would get. And of course I thought I have to swing at full power so my distance would increase. And its totally correct. What you cannot do at slow speed you cannot do at full speed at all. Actually my pro even told me to practise slowley. But I somehow did not really get it. Actually he told me from the first lesson on "don't swing to hard!". But I did not believe him.

I did somehow improve but actually it was wasted time and energy now that I think about it. Focussing on certain issues and practising slowley gave me a very big boost. Of course you can and should add "power" drills and hit at full speed. But not 100% of the time. Most people I see on the range do just that. Hit some balls at the same speed and swing as hard as possible. No drills, no tempo changes nothing.

Look at the big guys like Woods when they are doing warm ups at the range. They swing extremly slow and seem to focus on something.

Edited October 4, 2017 by yanni

[JonMA1]

17 hours ago, yanni said:

I was doing this totally wrong in golf. What I did I do? I hit 100 balls the same way with full power and was hoping this would change something. Somehow I thought the more balls I hit the better I would get. And of course I thought I have to swing at full power so my distance would increase. And its totally correct. What you cannot do at slow speed you cannot do at full speed at all. Actually my pro even told me to practise slowley. But I somehow did not really get it. Actually he told me from the first lesson on "don't swing to hard!". But I did not believe him.

I hear ya. I've been reading about proper practice here on The Sand Trap for a few years now and have no excuses. I really want to adopt some better practice habits and understand what to look for as an indication of success.

I think part of it is that I really enjoy hitting golf balls, but that is not practicing. There are a few clubs that I hit well enough with my full swing that I'm closer to unconscious competence, but even with those, I'm not there yet.