PGA pro Gareth Lewis shares a simple drill to increase your golf swing speed
If you want to learn how to increase your swing speed, it's vital to develop an understanding of how speed is generated and the faults that many golfers fall foul of. In this video and article, PGA pro Gareth Lewis shares a simple drill that will help you boost your speed and distance without losing control…
What I commonly see with people is that they’ve spent so long trying to hone the perfect technique to make their golf swings look pretty, that they’ve lost the ability to generate speed. If you want to hit the ball with the optimal driver launch angle, the clubhead needs to be travelling at its fastest through impact. To do that, knowing what is lag is a great place to start.
A fault many golfers share is that they don’t introduce enough wrist hinge in the golf swing, resulting in an action that looks very wooden and inefficient. All too often this occurs because people are so worried about hitting it offline that they try to guide it, which is only going to lead to a lack of commitment and exacerbate the problem.
As you can see in the video above, when Gareth doesn’t hinge his wrists, all that happens is he loses speed and distance, while the lack of release means he can’t square the club up and the ball ends up going right of target.
Golfers need to develop an awareness of clubhead speed and how to create it properly, and a really good way to do this is to switch the club round and make some swings with your wrists hinged and unhinged. You’ll quickly notice a difference in how you're able to rotate your hips for power and create a whipping noise as the butt end of the club flashes through the hitting zone.
Even when trying to swing fast, there is a real lack of speed when your wrists don’t hinge. Imagine there’s a microphone at the bottom of your swing and you’re trying to make the loudest noise possible. The only way to do that is to hinge your wrists and create lag, which can then be released at the right moment.
Once you’ve done that a few times without a ball and you’ve gained a sense of what you want to achieve, hold the club conventionally again, taking your proper driver address position, before recreating this feeling. Over time, you'll notice that your swing speed increases, which will translate into more power and distance.
In the video, Gareth gained nearly 20mph of swing speed by hinging his wrists, so there’s no reason you can’t experience the same kind of gains. Add this simple drill to your practice routine to hone a feeling for hinging the wrists better and generating more swing speed.
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