Swing Tempo

What is Swing Tempo?

This is a measure of your backswing and downswing times presented as a ratio.  In other words, if your backswing was three times longer than your downswing, your tempo would be 3:1. Note that the overall length of your swing doesn’t matter, only the relative times between your backswing and downswing. For example a 3 second backswing with a 1 second downswing would have the same tempo ratio as a 6 second backswing with a 2 second downswing.

Do not confuse swing tempo with swing speed. Your swing speed is how fast the club is moving at a particular point in the swing, not the ratio of the backswing to downswing times.

What should Swing Tempo be?

A good Swing Tempo is usually around 3:1 for a full swing. This was originally determined by John Novosel, who discovered that most tour professionals have a remarkably consistent tempo.  For example, he analyzed videos of Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan and found they both had 21 frames in the backswing and 7 frames in the downswing. Fred Couples and Tiger Woods had 24 and 8, and Bobby Jones had  27 and 9.  All three measurements have a different number of frames total, but the ratio between them is always the same - 3:1.

What should your particular tempo be?  Like most aspects of the golf swing, tempo will vary slightly between players. However, since most professionals’ tempos are close to 3:1 for a full swing, that suggests yours should be too. Be aware these 3:1 tempo measurements were taken using video at 30 frames per second, and therefore have much lower resolution than SkyPro.  This means that it’s very unlikely that all these professionals would read exactly 3.0 : 1 on the SkyPro, although they would be pretty close. Short game tempos are often a little quicker, usually around 2:1.

Once you've settled on your best swing tempo, try grooving that value in Groove Mode.