When golfers watch PGA Tour professionals play golf I like to eaves drop on their comments. The comment I hear repeatedly is how slow the tour players swing the club and how far the ball goes.

What these golfers see is not what really happens. The average male golfer swings the club 88 – 92 mph. The average PGA Tour player swings the club 108 – 112 mph. Professionals swing twenty percent faster than the average male golfer. That is a big difference.

What they do see is in most cases a very rhythmical golf swing that is highly repeatable. What they don’t recognize is the power difference I remember many years ago reading an article by Jack Nicklaus stating he tried to make the back swing 3 times longer than the down swing. That statement stuck with me for no reason other than Jack said it. There is a gentleman in the golf industry by the name of John Novosel who made a very interesting discovery using the playback of a VCR. A consumer and most commercial VCR’s play at 30 frames per second. Today, we have computer video analysis programs with the capability of compressing the 30 frames into 60 frames per second to make swing studies even more accurate. With that information it leads to John’s most important discovery.

John’s startling discovery was that most PGA Tour and high level amateur competitors swing the club with a back swing to down swing at a ratio of 3:1. He broke the various swings down to three basic levels (27/9, 24/8, 21/7) in the beginning and most recently added another level (18/6).

I am not a doubting Thomas but I had to double check for myself with using the video (approx. 10,000 swings of PGA Tour, and my personal students) I have in my library. Don’t be misled and think I checked 10,000 swings because I did not. I did check common players I had in my library with John’s list in his book and a few more. He was absolutely correct.

In actual time the PGA Tour professional swings the club from the start of the back swing to the top and down to impact between .9 of a second and 1.2 seconds. Most amateurs swing the club 1.3 to 1.5 seconds. Most ladies are even slower than that.

In the past I have spoken frequently with John and have a good relationship with him. I really like how simple this system is. I carry his Tour Temp Player metronome for my students.

I use his method with my students showing how much faster PGA Tour professionals swing the club than they actually do. The results are startling and most students now understand the need to swing faster than they thought was possible.

Speed is stable and produces power bottom line. Get rid of that thought of swinging the club slow. Learn to create more power.