STEP 1 Establish a baseline
It’s important to find out how fast you swing a driver. While your “all-out” speed is nice to know, pay more attention to your “gamer” speed. That’s the speed you typically swing at while playing golf. Have a look at this chart below. These are other amateur golfers’ gamer swing speeds by percentile versus all-out speeds. For example, if you’re in the 50-59 age group and swing 95 mph on the course and 98 on a simulator or range, you’re in the 50th percentile.
ALL-OUT SWING SPEED
MALES
GAMER SWING SPEED
8-14 AGES
25TH PERCENTILE
50TH PERCENTILE
75TH PERCENTILE
100TH PERCENTILE
25TH PERCENTILE
50TH PERCENTILE
75TH PERCENTILE
99TH PERCENTILE
Now that you know where you stack up, let’s see if your body is preventing you from safely swinging faster. Try to pass the following tests. If you can’t, we’ll give you exercises to move better – and unlock real distance gains. Without sufficient mobility, trying to ramp up your speed is likely going to get you hurt. Speaking of hurt, please get cleared for all of this by your doctor before jumping in. 116.7 15-19 98.6 103.4 110.2 119.7 100.4 105.9 113.3 125.5 20-29 105.8 110.9 116.3 145.0 109.2 114.4 121.2 149.0 30-39 98.3 105.4 110.7 128.8 104.3 109.7 115.8 128.9 40-49 94.6 101.3 106.6 117.5 99.0 105.2 110.8 122.9 50-59 89.3 94.6 99.5 118.5 93.3 98.5 103.5 123.3 60-69 83.8 88.6 94.4 113.5 87.3 92.1 97.6 114.6 70+ 73.5 79.8 85.7 96.9 78.1 83.7 89.5 102.3 76.6 84.1 89.0 113.6 78.5 86.1 93.3
At my gym, Par 4 Success near Raleigh, North Carolina, golfers come to us with all sorts of goals, but you can guess what just about everyone wants most– more distance. Knowing it’s the No 1, No 2 and No 3 wish of most golfers, we’ve spent a lot of time identifying what truly matters in terms of power and speed in golf. Here’s a fun fact: If you can properly touch your toes, on average you could swing the club 6 miles per hour faster than if you can’t. Like I said, we’ve dug pretty deep. We’ve tested more than 15 000 regular golfers in the past 10 years and we will share some of the data we collected to help you get faster. If you do the programme we outline here, you’re guaranteed to gain at least 4mph of clubhead speed (and potentially 10 more metres off the tee) within a few months. It’s a 10-week programme (at least 90 minutes per week) and starts with testing your current mobility and ability to generate speed and then implementing movements and exercises that will allow you to safely swing faster than ever. (I’m going to demonstrate the evaluations while Josh Leyes, our director of coaching, will demonstrate the exercises). If you think of your body like a car, you’ll soon be testing the possibilities of a bigger engine under the bonnet and a better transmission for higher gears. Let’s get started. – WITH RON KASPRISKE
STEP 2 Test your hip, trunk and shoulder mobility
HIP- ROTATION TEST Sitting upright in a chair, rotate your lower legs outward. The goal is to get at least 40 degrees of rotation. (You can measure how far you rotate by doing it in front of a mirror and marking the distance or by downloading any number of smartphone apps that measure body motion when you upload video to them.)
112 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2026
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