What Creates Swing Speed?

December 2024

YouTuber Steve Pratt asked this question in an April 2024 video. Steve is a former touring professional who learned the game from his mentor, Mike Austin, a noted long-hitter during his playing days. Steve is now a teaching professional. His channel is Steve Pratt Golf and his website is HitItLonger.com. (1)

The Mike Austin swing teaches a particular wrist motion at impact to add club head speed. Is Steve’s high swing speed mainly due to the wrist motion, as some golfers think, or is it due to other moves? Where does club speed come from? 

Steve explains in the video that swinging the club starts from the golfer’s feet in contact with the ground. Steve shows a video clip of him sitting on a swivelling barstool with his feet lifted off the ground. When he tries to swing the club, the forward movement of his upper body and arms is opposed by the reverse movement of his legs and hips. The club speed is nowhere near the speed that he gets when his feet are anchored to the ground.

The wrist move helps, but only adds a small amount of speed. The amount of muscle required to swing a golf club to 100+ mph from a standing start in a quarter of a second is simply not found in the wrists. It is found in the legs, hips and the torso. (2)

The Stacked Block Analogy

The way that speed gets from the ground to the club head is explained by comparing the golfer's body to a set of blocks stacked on top of each other, each one able to rotate freely around an inclined axis. (3)

The first block is the lower body including the golfer’s pelvis and stomach area. It is relatively large and heavy. It sits on powerful legs anchored to the ground through the feet. The legs are able to rotate the lower body quickly using large leg muscles. The second block is the upper body including the rib cage and shoulders. It is large and heavy although less than the first block. It is rotated using large torso muscles fixed to the pelvis at the lower end. The third block includes the much lighter weight arms and hands. It is rotated using arm muscles attached to the shoulder blades and ribs. The golf club is held in the hands which have small muscles in the wrists able to move the hands relative to the arms.

When the golfer takes the club back from the address position, the leg muscles turn the lower body away from the target about the main axis. The upper body muscles pull against the turning pelvis so that the torso also turns away from the target. The arm muscles pull against the turning shoulders to rotate the arms back. Finally the wrist muscles pull against the arms to set the golf club at the top.

At the end of the backswing the golfer reverses direction but maintains the same sequence of bottom-up motion. The leg muscles turn the pelvis towards the target by pushing against the ground. The upper blocks begin turning with the pelvis since they are stacked on top of it. The upper body muscles pull against the pelvis to increase the speed of the shoulders toward the target. The arm muscles pull against the shoulder blades and ribs to increase hand speed. The last link to go is the golf club as it is pulled down by the hands.

At each junction, speed is transferred upward by muscles pulling with equal force on the upper and lower blocks. The upper block gains more speed than the lower one loses due to the difference of weight between the sets of blocks. However, all of the speed ultimately starts with the legs, and hand speed is a direct result of the initial effort given to the downswing by the legs. (4)(5)

How does the club head gain so much speed if the wrist muscles are so tiny?

Centrifugal Motion of the Club 

From the top of the backswing through to the finish, the hands move in a wide circle around the body. The hands pull the club grip on the same arc. From the golfer’s point of view, the club head is seen to swing away from the body. It is called centrifugal motion because the club appears to be escaping, like a fugitive, from the golfer’s centre. (6)

The club head, on the other hand, begins by following the straight downward path given to it by the initial pull of the hands towards the ground. From the club head’s point of view it is the grip which is swinging rapidly inwards. These two different swing path directions, the head in one direction and the grip in another, cause the club shaft to rotate.

The club shaft’s speed of rotation is fast enough that the club head speed rapidly surpasses the hand speed. The club head overtakes the hands in the impact zone, and finally leads the shaft and grip during the follow-through. The top speed of the club head depends on how fast the hands travel through their arc, and may be up to 6 times the hands’ top speed. The faster the better: Increasing hand speed by 10% gives a 21% boost to club speed. An increase of 15% gives a 32% boost!

As the club head starts to swing out as the hands pass waist height, the grip pushes back on the hands which slow down a small amount as a result. Let them, it is evidence that some of the arms' speed has been given to the club. Any effort to accelerate the hands through the impact zone of the swing actually slows down the club, so resist the urge! (7)

Wrist Action and Swing Speed

At best, the wrist muscles can add a little more speed to the club at impact as in Steve Pratt's video. They can break-even by simply allowing the wrists to move freely with the club. They can also slow down the club head if they prevent the wrists from moving freely as the club releases.

References and Footnotes

(1) Steve Pratt Golf,  "The SHOCKING TRUTH About Where Clubhead Speed Comes From!"

(2) Cochran & Stobbs, "Search for the Perfect Swing", Triumph Books, copyright 1999, p 3

(3) Cochran & Stobbs, "Search for the Perfect Swing", Triumph Books, copyright 1999, p 80.

(4) Although the muscles between the blocks become progressively smaller, their pull on progressively lighter body parts results in faster rotation of the smaller parts.

(5) If the legs are disconnected from the ground and the upper body muscles pull against the lower body, the pelvis will rotate in the opposite direction from the shoulders due to the pull. We see this in the video of the barstool action when the feet are lifted.

(6) The club's motion is named centrifugal motion. Since we like to explain any motion with forces we coin the term Centrifugal Force to explain it.

(7) Jorgensen, "The Physics of Golf",  Springer-Verlag New York Inc., copyright 1999, p 161.