When I write about tempo, I make it somewhat technical so you can work it out precisely at the range. But you can’t use technical methods when you play.

So try looking at tempo this way.

Swing at a pace that feels unhurried. Not too slow, though. For sure, the swing is not a horse race, but it’s not a mosey.

A Sunday afternoon, unhurried tempo will work wonders.

A few days ago, I was on a course which in one spot has the tee boxes for consecutive holes right next to each other. One is a par three, which you play, then walk back to where the next tee is, a par five.

There was a group on the tee of the par five, so when we got the other tee, we waited until they finished teeing off, sitting down on the bench to watch the show.

One guy tees off with a long iron (there’s a pond across the fairway such that if you have even moderate length, you’ll hit into it), takes a vicious swing, and cold tops a 40-yard dribbler. You have never seen so much effort deliver so little result. Well, maybe you have.

Anyway, he says, “I’m going to hit another one.” I think to myself, “Yes. Please. Hit another one.”

So he tees up another one, puts this graceful swing on the ball and just kills it. Beautiful, powerful shot, straight down there.

He picks up his tee and says to his buddies, “You know, it’s amazing how well you hit the ball if you just slow down your swing a little bit.”

Thus endeth the lesson.

Here’s one more way of looking at it. Literally.

This is Bobby Jones’s swing, with a tracer on the clubhead. The points of the swing rhythm are marked.

1 is the instant of takeaway. 2, 3, and 4 are the backswing, 4 being the end of it. 5 is impact.

Again, it looks like you would have to rush to get back to the ball in one count over the same distance it took you three counts in the backswing.

But you don’t.

Try it.

This is my third post on rhythm and tempo in a month. Maybe you think I’m obsessing on his subject. I’m not. It‘s that important and it can make such a big change if you get it right.

A month ago, I talked about the meaning of tempo and rhythm, and went into greater detail two weeks ago. Nothing I said in those posts needs to be changed. But there was something I left out. Here it is now.

This 3:1 rhythm looks like a mechanical formula, but it is anything but that. There is a personal dimension to this rhythm, which you must figure out for yourself in order to make it work for you.

Let me give you an example from music, where the notion of rhythm comes from.

Most of you have heard classical, orchestral music. Most of you as well have heard jazz. The rules of rhythm are the same for each genre. The expression of rhythm is quite different in each, though. One swings, the other doesn’t.

To play jazz in an orchestral style would fail. So would trying to play orchestral music in a jazz idiom.

We all have our own feeling for rhythm built into the way we think and thus the way we move.

For example, some people perform their backswing in strict time, at a steady pace from start to finish. Other people might accelerate a bit as the backswing develops.

Some people might move from the backswing to the downswing without pause. Others would allow the backswing to come to a brief rest before it falls into the downswing.

In other words, the 3:1 rhythm does not confine your swing to one mechanical style. As long as you stay within that external framework, you can, and should, express it in your own way.

A good way to discover your expression is to swing in the air, about halfway between a horizontal plane, like baseball players do, and near vertical, like golfers do. Split the difference. Swing back and forth at that middling angle looking for the way of expressing the 3:1 rhythm in a movement that feels right for you.

I know you’ll find it, along with a tempo that’s comfortable.

Now try hitting a few golf balls. You might find it to the the easiest thing you’ve ever done.

I just talked about this a few weeks ago, and I wouldn’t normally revisit the subject for another few moths at the earliest. But a few things came up after that most recent post was published that made me realize the difference between rhythm and tempo is not clear in the golfing world.

Either people get rhythm and tempo mixed up, or think they are the same thing. You must understand the difference if you are to build them into your swing.

What came up? Two things. First, I was talking to one of my sons about his swing. He was telling me his rhythm was very good and when I asked him more about it, it became clear he was really talking about his tempo. And when he mentioned tempo, it turned out he was really talking about his timing. And when he mentioned timing, he was talking about rhythm.

Then I went to a post I wrote earlier in the year about Ernie Els’s swing, in which the embedded video by Andrew Rice talks about how to make your swing faster (good advice) but says to do that he wants us to have three counts to the top of the backswing and one count back down to the ball (more good advice).

He wants you to speed up your swing and tells you what the rhythm of the swing is. Oh, my.

Even the experts get confused.

So let me be very clear here. Rhythm and tempo are words taken from music. Tempo is the overall speed of a composition. Rhythm is the relative duration of its component parts.

You can play Stars and Stripes Forever at a quick pace or slower pace (tempo) but the quarter notes stay quarter notes, and the eighth notes stay eighth notes (rhythm).

If the golf swing were music, the backswing would get three beats, and the downswing would get one beat.

Count out your swing, starting at 1 when you take the club away. Then count 2, 3, 4 to the top of the backswing, and 5 back down to the ball. That’s your 3:1 rhythm laid bare.

The tempo of the swing is how long it takes to make those five counts. It takes Els 1.0 seconds to execute a 3:1 rhythm. It takes Price 0.8 seconds to execute his 3:1 rhythm.

So if you want to speed up your swing, just take less time to execute the 3:1 rhythm.

OK?

The correct rhythm and tempo makes everything you do right fall into place. It is the glue that binds the swing together. Until you get this part right, all your other work is for naught.

The correct rhythm is three parts backswing, one part downswing. Count from one to five as you swing. One is the moment you take the club way. Four is the top of the backswing. Five is impact. Three parts up, one part down. That’s it.

Tempo is how long the one to five count takes. Swing as fast as you can while still controlling the club.

Find your optimum tempo by hitting balls using the 3:1 rhythm. Start out by swinging slowly, even leisurely, at first. Gradually start picking up the overall pace of your swing, staying inside the 3:1 boundaries. The assistance of a portable metronome keeps your swing speed consistent at each point, which controls the experiment.

At some point you will find the ball leaving your clubface with authority, going high, straight, and far. Keep swinging faster just to make sure, but I promise you will reach a speed at which your swing just falls apart. That’s too fast.

Slow back down to where you get those pure strikes. That is your standard tempo. You might be surprised at how fast it is.

Use your pre-round warm-up to groove the 3:1 rhythm and find the tempo that is working, because tempo will vary from day to day.

When you’re playing, a sudden decline in the quality of your shot-making often means nothing more than your swing rhythm is off. Take a few practice swings to remind yourself of the 3:1 rhythm. That should be enough to get you back on track.

Every golf instructor in the world wants you to swing like Ernie Els. They show you videos of him so you can see what you are aiming for. Watch out, though. His swing is not what it seems.

The main thing you get from watching Els’s swing is his marvelous rhythm. Go ahead and copy that. His swing speed is another matter entirely.

You know, it looks like he has a languid, flowing swing that any of us can imitate. But we also wonder why he hits the ball so far with such a slow swing. News flash: his swing is FAST. It only looks slow because of its efficiency.

Here’s a video from andrewrice.com that puts a clock on his swing. From takeaway to impact, it’s only 1.033 seconds. Let’s call it one second. That’s fast.

If you can get a metronome, set at mm=60 and get it going. Now when you hear a tick, start your swing, and swing the way you normally do. By the time you hear the next tick, the club should have returned to the impact point.

I’ll bet dollars to donuts you were maybe halfway into your downswing when you heard that second tick.

My Legal Department advised me to warn you against trying a one-second swing right now just to see if you can do it. You could hurt yourself. Seriously. So don’t do it!

If you want to hit the ball farther, one of the things you have to do is swing faster. But if you want to pick up your swing speed, you need to do it gradually. This is not a one-week project. More like six months, at least.

When you start swinging faster, it throws your timing off. You have to do the same things, in the same order, in less time. That takes getting used to.

Not to mention, there is a practical limit to your swing speed based on your strength, flexibility, and athleticism.

And finally, you don’t want to swing at your maximum speed anyway. You want to swing at your optimum speed, which is a bit slower.

How do you know what that speed is? It’s the fastest speed at which you can reliably hit the ball on the center of the clubface.

So let Ernie be Ernie. Let you be you. Admire his swing, but remember it’s his swing, not yours.

So many fundamentals, and I‘ve written about them all, many times. The ones I hear touring pros paying the most attention to are aim and tempo. I wrote about aim a few weeks ago. Today, let’s talk about tempo.

Several years ago, I watched a rebroadcast of a PGA Championship Champions Clinic on TV. At these clinics, past tournament champions teach shotmaking and playing strategies to an assembled audience. Every pro who talked about the full swing on this show said that what he was working on at the time was tempo.

Good tempo allows your swing to work like it should, like a tuned machine. Everything works at the right order and at the right moment.

The proper tempo allows you to play golf with a calm mind. In a world filled with technical instruction, it needs to be mentioned that a calm mind is what permits technical excellence to emerge.

A lot of what you read in instruction books about finding your tempo is pretty vague, saying your tempo should fit your personality. Easy-going, slow tempo. Fast-paced, quicker tempo. I have no idea where that connection ever came from, or what its basis is, or why champion golfers keep repeating it. It’s not how they did it. Let’s take another tack.

I will guess there are moments in your swing when your mind blanks out. Am I right? Somewhere between the start of the downswing and the follow-through there is a piece that happened too fast for your mind to experience. You were following your swing in your mind, and at some point it just disappeared. That represents your tempo getting out of whack.

To find the tempo that is right for you, slow down your swing until this blank spot disappears. Swing at a speed such that your mind can follow everything you’re doing, from start to finish. This is not so your mind can give orders, or critique your swing as it goes along. It’s so your mind can observe the whole thing. Nothing more. Once you find that swing speed, that’s the tempo that is right for you.

This speed might feel a lot slower than you’re swinging now. Don’t be concerned. The club will still be moving fast enough, and you’ll gain control of the clubhead. That leads to centered hits on a square clubface, which leads to straight shots and good distance.

It is a fact that when the rhythm of your swing is right, it is a lot easier to hit the ball consistently well. You can count it out, and I have written often on that method. There is another method, which is perhaps easier in that it follows an energy that is universally available and is always the same — gravity.

My previous post alluded to this in helping you make your swing feel like it is one continuous motion, not two motions connected somehow. In this post, I want to go into more detail on the gravity-assisted swing to show you how it creates proper rhythm. We’ll do that by refining the transition.

The backswing should be thought of as making the clubhead float upwards, not of lifting it upwards. This style of taking the club back ensures that the golfer stays relaxed. Tension is the enemy of sound movement.

When the backswing has reached the limit that the golfer has selected for it, the backswing movement comes to a gentle, but definite halt. Though your body has stopped moving, your mind might feel like there is still movement in that direction.

The club will still feel like it is floating, and for split-second, it is. At the apex of its flight, when it is moving neither up nor down, it feels weightless in your hands. The handle places no pressure on the palms of your hands at any spot. Now comes the key to achieving natural rhythm.

As the club comes down, the hands must come down with it in such a way that the neutral feeling inside them remains unchanged. If you move down too early, it will feel like you are pushing down on the handle. If your hands are late, you will feel the handle shifting inside your hands a pressing upwards on your left palm.

Your hands must move so they follow the weight of the club. By doing this, the club begins dropping at a constant speed, the acceleration due to gravity. If your hands get the right feeling every time, your rhythm will be the same every time.

Gravity alone is not enough to build up the amount of clubhead speed you need to hit the ball a reasonable distance. You add to that speed with your body turn. At no time, though, can you turn your body so fast that your are leaving the club behind.

There is a third factor in acceleration, leading with your left side. Your left hand should get back to the ball before the clubhead does. Actually, this does not accelerate the swing. It prevents the swing from being decelerated as would be the case if the right side were to push the club through the ball. That actually slows down the swing.

So this is what you practice — letting the club float downwards from the transition so the  neutral feeling in your hands does not change, adding on your body turn without it getting out of harmony with the feeling the hands, and leading the club through the ball with the left side. The half wedge swing from the previous post is the drill to use to learn all of this.

If you master this kind of downswing, the improvement in your ball-striking will be amazing.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com.

Your grip, your aim, and the rhythm of your swing contribute to hitting good shots more than anything else. Here is how to get your swing rhythm right. When you hit a few bad shots in a row, check this fundamental first. It might be all you need to correct to start hitting good shots again.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com