Golf’s smoothest swinger says there’s one thing that’s changed over the years: He’s getting slower.
“I’m not fussed by that,” the 43-year-old shrugs, tossing a sideways glance at the Full Swing launch monitor giving real-time feedback as he begins his range session.
“When I got on tour you only used launch monitors when you were testing new drivers, really. And I think I used get it to like 116, 117 [miles per hour]. I think I’m now probably 109 or 108,” he says.
“Ball speed, a few years ago I was still in the 170s when I played tournament. I’m now 168, 169, so I can definitely feel I’m slowing down. But with all the technology that you have now, I’m not really losing a lot of distance on my driver. I mean, you’ve got so many shafts that can help you. You can go to a softer shaft…”
It’s only fitting that one of the game’s legendary smooth swingers is unconcerned by chasing speed. He tried that once, he said, and It led to the worst golf of his career. So as we work through the latest episode of Warming Up, he’s content with a simple solution:
“If I hit it shorter, I’ll just take more club.”
Here are five things I learned from Oosthuizen’s legendary move in 20 minutes on the range.
1. He has two simple sources for his power.
Oosthuizen stands just 5’10” and his swing looks effortless — but he has always sent missiles down the fairway. (And our Full Swing data proved he still has plenty of pop, even if it’s not a priority.)
“Timing and good technique,” Oosthuizen says, asked how where he gets his power. “From day one when I started as a junior I went to a coach and and he was great with setup and posture; those was always the things we worked on and everything was always close to square. At a young age, because I was tiny, I didn’t have any power so I was very loopy, I had a long over-swing, and through the years when I got a little stronger, I could control that. But it’s always been aiming pretty square, just left of target, maybe, and working from an open position. It was never really something I had to do in my swing to try and generate anything. It was always pretty decent timing.”
The first of many understatements.
2. He copied Ernie Els — but not on purpose.
There have always been comps between Oosthuizen and fellow South African smooth-swinger Ernie Els. That’s no coincidence; Oosthuizen counts Els among his golfing idols. But whatever swing similarities they have came through osmosis rather than imitation.
[People] made quite a bit of a fuss about [my swing] after winning the Open,” Oosthuizen says, referencing his 2010 triumph at the St. Andrews Open Championship. “Look, Ernie was one of my idols growing up and he was the guy that always looked in rhythm. I mean, there’s not guys with better rhythm than him.”
“I think it’s just something that happened because I watched him,” Oosthuizen concludes.
3. His golf swing was partly a product of his era.
“It wasn’t really a thing to go out and see how long you can hit it,” Oosthuizen says, remembering the technology when he turned pro in the early 2000s. “Because I think that with the drivers at that stage, you could hit it left and right easily. So technology got so good with the driver that now it’s probably the easiest club to eat in your bag, where it didn’t used to be. So, you were more on hitting shots and hitting fairways and never really go out there and just try and hit it as hard and as far as you can.”
So if Oosthuizen had some along later, would his swing have looked different?
“That is interesting,” he says. “I wouldn’t know because watching the guys growing up now hit it today, you probably get taught differently. Like when you’re on the range, you try and hit it, you know. I’ve not seen someone come out of college, a youngster coming through that doesn’t hit a long way. Everyone hits it a long away.
“One kid that was in my academy, Aldrich Potgieter [now a PGA Tour winner and arguably its longest driver] — kid hits it 70 by me, probably.”
4. At his best, he’s not thinking of much.
“Just a little takeaway thought,” he says, demonstrating what he wants to do with about the first eight inches of his swing. He smiles at the idea that the rest of it falls into place from there. “You play your best when you don’t really think of anything, you just set your target and go,” he adds. “And you still want that to be your main focus, but I sort of just do that [move] to just remind me not to pull [the club] inside because when I pull it inside, I roll it.”
It won’t surprise you that Oosthuizen is chasing simplicity.
5. Don’t let the smooth move fool you. He’s competitive as hell.
Oosthuizen says he’s not just competitive on the golf course.
“Everywhere,” he says, with the possible exception of farming — though he brings an undeniable rigor to that side gig, too. “Anything. Any game. Pickleball, tennis…”
At the conclusion of any warmup session, he likes to “talk some crap to these boys, tell them have a nice day,” he says with a grin. That’s because, whatever he may say in self-deprecating fashion about his swing, speed, he’s not short on self-belief.
“I’ve always said I won’t play golf anymore if I feel like I can’t win an event,” he says. “We all have to believe that you can win a tournament. And otherwise, I mean, it’ll drive me insane coming here and just teeing it up for a paycheck. That will drive me crazy. I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
In recent years he’s won back-to-back DP World Tour events at home — and stacked up close calls around the globe. He has an eye-popping collection of close calls at majors (eight top-threes since that 2010 win) and stacked up four top-fives across the globe in 2025.
“At the end of the day, you still need to get the ball in the hole,” he says.
You can watch the entire video on YouTube here or in the embed below.
