This short article is part of my Swing Speed Training Guide. That article goes into detail about everything you need to know about embarking on a successful speed training journey.
Monitoring on course club and ball speed data can be very informative. It may sound obvious, but if you’re doing all this training with the goal of seeing progress on the course, shouldn’t we keep track of actual on course data?
You can get a good estimate of progress from where your drives are going on courses you know well, and you might have data from shot tracking apps like Arccos or ShotScope, but there’s something nice about seeing club and ball speed. Shot distance on any given day can be influenced by conditions. Club and ball speed are more stable. These are also the metrics you track in training, so it makes a simple like-for-like comparison.
It answers the question “How well am I transferring my training to the course?”
The Stack or PRGR Radars are absolutely perfect for this. They’re easy to fit in your golf bag and only take a few seconds to turn on and set up. I love doing this on a few drives in recreational rounds (you can’t do it in tournament rounds). It gives you a chance to see what difference, if any, there is between your training and on course speeds.
If there is a big difference between your training speeds and on course speeds, it could be a sign you are being too fearful and holding back too much on the course. In this instance using the radar as external feedback can be a great commitment tool.
”I know from training I can comfortably hit ____ mph, let’s see it here on the course!”
For example, if in your driver training you are comfortably hitting 105 mph club head speed and 155 mph ball speed, but on the course you’re seeing 97 mph and 143 mph, you know there is a big speed gap. It’s most likely down to comfort and commitment. Without measuring you may have been oblivious that you were holding so much back on the course.
It’s normal for there to be some difference between on course speeds and the speeds you see in your speed training. How much of a difference depends if we’re comparing “absolute max” or swings where we are hitting driver and ball and trying to slightly push the needle.