Tip Of The Week: Using Club and Ball Speed to Improve Your Swing

You can see your club and ball speed with the iDSR™ Digital Swing Recorder. What you will quickly learn from this information is that you can achieve greater club and ball speed by swinging easier. Why? Because when you try to swing harder your muscles tend to get tense and don't move as quickly, thus slowing down your club. When you swing too hard, you don't make good contact which leads to poor ball speed.

Speed ratio is simply the ratio of ball speed to club head speed (ball speed divided by club speed). It provides an easy indicator of the quality of your swing and ball contact. The higher the ratio, the better the club head speed was transferred to the ball. A good number to achieve is over 1.4, but many factors besides your swing can affect this number. For example, limited-flight balls used at some driving ranges might reduce the ball speed for any given club head speed. To understand how using the Speed Ratio can help you quickly evaluate your swings, take the following example: Which ball strike was better between the two driver swings below?

At first glance, it appears that the second one is more impressive. The club speed is over 100 mph and the ball speed is two miles per hour faster. However, looking at the same swings with the speed ratios clearly shows that the first swing was more effective. Swinging easier, you are more likely to stay balanced through the swing, hit the ball more solidly and get better results on average than when you swing hard. Swinging hard may give a good hit occasionally, but good scoring comes from a consistent, repeatable swing.

Below is the speed data for several pros as measured during CBS coverage of PGA tournaments. These numbers are consistent with numbers measured on iDSR using standard flight golf balls. Remember, most tour professionals will tell you that they rarely swing at over 80%. That means they swing as hard as they can (100%) then back off until they feel like they are swinging at about 80% speed.