Swing speed is king in the modern age of pro golf. I feel like I’ve typed some variation of that sentence over 100 times in the past two years, and I’ll likely type it 100 more times in the years to come. But as long as the game continues trending in the direction it’s going, distance will continue to reign supreme.
Pro golfers, with the help of advanced analytics, have only recently been able to quantify the advantages that distance provides, and those insights are ushering in a new era. Bryson DeChambeau brought the boom to the mainstream, and other pros are following suit. The quest for bombs is not confined to the PGA Tour, though. The shift is taking place from the pros to elite amateurs, and even in the recreational game.
One such golfer who’s decided adding yards off the tee will help her game is second-year pro Hannah Gregg. And in a recent Twitter post, she revealed to her followers that she’d added nearly 10 mph to her swing speed over the past year. Even better, she shared the methods for her transformation.
Check out below for her three keys for adding swing speed.
1. Mass over mobility
Gregg describes herself as a “hyper-mobile” pro golfer, so instead of focusing on added flexibility, she opted to add mass to her frame to gain those extra yards.
“I’m very flexible, so I didn’t feel like there was much “snap” to my swing- just a long, fluid motion,” she said in her thread. “We worked on building muscle (specifically glutes) & ACTIVATING muscles instead of stretching them.”
2. Adjust technique
Gregg also said she needed to change her swing in order to swing harder. She had to teach herself to use ground reaction forces better to generate more power.
“I used to be very in-to-out with very little use of the ground & my swing relied heavily on timing,” she said. “If I’d swing faster, the ball would go sideways. My swing had to improve before I could add speed, so my coach helped me make a plan to do that.”
3. Go all out
Gaining swing speed is about breaking barriers, and the best way to do that is just let loose and swing HARD. To teach herself how to do that, Gregg ended every range session with 20 balls of all-out sends.
“I do this at the end of my practice so that I’m tired to build endurance,” Gregg said. “For those 20 balls, I don’t allow myself to care where it goes or how the contact is. Strictly speed focused.”
