PRIVATE LESSON
PGA Teaching Professional Clinton Russell explains the importance of keeping the same tempo for every club.
WATCH a golfer hit a pitching wedge, and then a driver, and you will notice how the player ramps up the swing speed with the longer club.
Of course, the driver clubhead moves faster because it’s longer, which is due to the principles of physics, not because the golfer is actually swinging the club with a faster tempo.
Tempo is the total amount of time it takes to create your golf swing from beginning to end. Some players have a relatively fast tempo, no matter what club they have in their hand. Others naturally have a slower swing tempo.
Either way is fine, as long as you keep the same tempo for every club in the bag, whether it’s a 7-iron (pic 1), a wedge or a driver (pics 2 & 3). Golfers get into trouble when they either slow down or speed up their natural tempo.
When your tempo starts varying from club to club, the timing required to hit consistent golf shots is lost. That’s one reason why you feel you can hit your irons well one day, but not the driver, and vice versa. For every club in the bag, the tempo should be the same.
It should take the same amount of time to make a swing with your pitching wedge as it does for the 7-iron and the driver, for example. What’s different is the speed of the clubhead. Because the driver is longer than a wedge, the clubhead moves faster throughout the swing, but if it takes two seconds to swing a wedge, it should take the same two seconds to swing the driver.