How hard do you swing?

I'm sure you've read that the pros only swing with about 80-90% of their best effort.

In my experience, every time I try to swing with 100% effort I end up with a pulled shot, missed the sweet spot, or hit it off the toe. It seems to me that you need to hit at your 100% "confidence level" which means that there is that effort where you feel you can control the swing better and make good impact. For me, that's about the 80% effort.

I can tell you for a fact that no pro swings at “80%”

That’s the most common misconception out there. Those Guys swing very fast. But it’s so efficient, it looks smooth and “80%”

Probably 80% range. I'm more of a tempo golfer. Wish I could go after it a little harder but it throws me off.

I’m at 90-95% at 135 yards out and more.

I’m probably swinging about 90% most of the time.

I hit a stupid high ball (off mats granted but last fitting I was hitting 44 yards high with 919 tour/X100 combo) so I hit my version of a knock down (still 28-30 yards high) probably 75% of the time. Rather than hitting a 180 7 iron I'll hit a 3/4 shot 165-170. Way more accurate and less affected by wind. Still comes to a dead stop or spin back for me. Tiger says swing as hard as you can with a driver granted you can stay balanced and hit the middle of the face.

Driver where it matters...100% Short par 4 where it doesn't matter, 80%. The rest of the clubs, 80%.

But, I think the % thing is a guess for me. It's about control and release for me. I can get quick and get some bad results, so I'm always trying to find that balance point that gives me good distance, but excellent contact and direction.

Also, at 54, there are days when my 100% is not the same 100% as the day before, so there is that variable.

Percentage of what? Swing speed? Pros probably have 2-3 miles an hour in the tank at most, there’s no way they are only 80-90%.

Now, if you want to talk in terms of something that’s controlled verses being off-balance and flailing about, then yeah, I would agree. Trying harder doesn’t necessarily equate to the club moving faster though.

I don’t really think about it in terms of swinging hard. I do try to swing fast. But that’s just how I approach it.

Driver 100%, all other shots 80%.

There is a video that Erik Anders land did at the Taylormade kingdom. One of the guys says that DJ could add something like 3 MPH just because he wanted to ‘get after one’

I reckon they’ve always got more in the tank.

Personally when I swing too hard my timing and tempo is thrown off so the results are never good.

Close to full past 200

150-200 at 90

Short irons ... 75-80%

I swing hard with woods/hybrids. Not sure the percentage

I swing significantly less hard with irons. It's odd really. I can't go after it with irons, specially short irons. I'm 2 clubs shorter with irons than friends that are the same speed/distance with driver.

> @jjfcpa said:

> I'm sure you've read that the pros only swing with about 80-90% of their best effort.

Rephrase: Pros swing with about 80% of their raw strength. This 80% seems to be the norm in several golf articles on the _ideal_ raw-power utilization. Any more than that, and the average golfer likely loses balance, which causes bad things...

Be aware, the 80% comes from analyzing hundreds of golfers and coming up with an average. For you statistics buffs, the people who report this never tell us if half the pros swing between 75% and 85%, or what the ranges and standard deviations are on the distributions.

Jack Nicklaus recounted his key approach shot on the 540-yd. No. 18 hole at Baltusrol in the 1967 U.S. Open. For the his 240-yd. uphill shot into the wind, he took out his 1-iron "and hit the ball as hard as I could." He held the green, and sank a birdie putt to help seal his win. but in _Golf My Way_, Nicklaus talks more about tempo than power.

Similarly, Nicklaus suggested that people who are quick and impatient will probably swing the club harder than people who are more leisurely and easy-going.

If you actually read some of the power articles, the instructors talk a lot about acceleration throughout the downswing. That was the gist of the book by Julius Boros,

**(Newly revealed secret -->** You don't hit the ball any farther by generating extra foot-pounds of pressure on your backswing.)

I think the swinging 80% thing is mostly mental. Rather than actively going at the ball, you concentrate on making a controlled, smooth action, which feels (to you) like you're taking a significant amount of speed off but you're probably generating a relatively similar CHS, just with less tension.

It's probably why a good number of amateurs have trouble with knockdown shots going the same distance.

I think I'm all out with everything. If I try to dial it back then things can go wrong as it feels unnatural.

I wish I knew so I could dial it back a little for some more accuracy.

I'm not sure anyone, even pros truly swings at 100 percent. Literally as hard as you can on every shot? Unlikely though its probably closer than most think

80 is waaaaay to low. Do you know what 80 percent of 115mph swing speed is? 92mph. I probably didn't swing driver at 92mph all of last year on any individual swing.

If you swing your 7 iron at 90mph. That would mean your average 7 iron you're swinging around 72mph. I know theres more to it than just pure swing speed numbers but you get the idea.

92 to 95% is probably realistic for many

Depends on the shot. My best days I'm swinging freely and not calculating a percentage.

> @MtlJeff said:

> I'm not sure anyone, even pros truly swings at 100 percent. Literally as hard as you can on every shot? Unlikely though its probably closer than most think

>

> 80 is waaaaay to low. Do you know what 80 percent of 115mph swing speed is? 92mph. I probably didn't swing driver at 92mph all of last year on any individual swing.

>

> If you swing your 7 iron at 90mph. That would mean your average 7 iron you're swinging around 72mph. I know theres more to it than just pure swing speed numbers but you get the idea.

>

> 92 to 95% is probably realistic for many

>

>

I think this may be one of those feel vs real things. I feel like I’m taking some off but in reality it’s probably not actually 20% less than I “can” swing and I agree - nobody is swinging literally as hard as they can. You’d flat out blow your back out. Pros can swing harder without losing balance or jeopardizing strike. Lots of guys on here have PGA or faster SS but strike is king with every single club in the bag.

I swing ‘grunting hard’ with my driver. About 80% with my irons.

In the entire history of golf, nobody has ever swung 80% unless trying to hit a knock down type shot. This would roughly equate to 90mph 7i @ ~177 yds to 72 mph @ ~132 yds. The 80% gibberish is a ‘feel vs real’ teaching aid to keep people from rushing their transition at top and swinging out their shoes because ultimately a properly sequenced swing yields more speed and consistency. Even with clubs where it does make sense to leave some in the tank such as 80-120 yd approach shots at ~54 degrees or greater loft, a full 20% reduction is extremely unlikely unless purposely trying to hit a lower less spinning shot.

As an experiment, next time you have access to a decent monitor, grab a 7i, swing completely out of your shoes, and then try to take a full 20% off while maintaining decent contact. My guess is that for most the difference between squeezing cheeks and a solid on course swing is in the 5%-7% range (e.g., 86mph to 80mph for the average recreational guy that hits his 34 degree 7i in the 150 yd range).

I do not even think about it, I focus on target more than anything else

> @"Aviador Naval" said:

> The 80% gibberish is a ‘feel vs real’ teaching aid to keep people from rushing their transition at top and swinging out their shoes because ultimately a properly sequenced swing yields more speed and consistency.

I agree 100%. For most of us, including tour pros, the **feel** of 80% probably produces 95% or more of the maximum available swing speed. Personally, on most shots I'm trying to swing as fast as I can while maintaining control. I'm not necessarily thinking of a percentage, but I'm certainly not trying to get every last mph from my swing. And I do try to take some percentage off when I want to hit a reduced spin shot, but even then I don't think of percentages.

i always give it 110%, unless I'm really going after it, you know, that extra speed I keep in the tank for driving a par 5 and such.

A buddy of mine has sky trak. Practicing wedges at different "percentages" is an eye opener. Really diifcult to dial in a distance with a "50 percent" swing.

At least for me.

That Tour Pro’s only go at it at 80% is absolute nonsense. There is no way that the guys that go it at it like 120mph can get it up to 144mph just absolutely no way. I would absolutely accept that they don’t go at it 100% but they are still swinging out of their shoes.

95% unless I'm in between clubs. When I need to step on one and swing out of my shoes that extra 5% usually means the big miss is in play.

I try not to think about percentages. I try to just think "Swing smooth"

There might be another way of looking at the question that would make estimates like 80% more valid.

I didn't think about the question originally as having a different gear. I think I swing the club pretty much at the same rate. I'm thinking more about how much load I put into the club with the back-swing. I rarely take my irons back as far as most people, usually because doing so will create all kinds of problems.

An example. Several times this summer I played a little competition against a friend. He got to use his entire bag and I got to use my 8 iron, a 56, and a putter. He beat me most of the times we did this, but I learned that I can hit an 8 iron 175 yards, which is a good 20 yards past my normal 155 yard 8 iron. That 175 yard 8 iron is absolutely my max swing speed, and the only reason I attempted it was because I had that one club to use.

So when I hit my normal 155 yard 8 iron, that is something less than the max speed I could produce.

That said, from the same length of arc for a given swing, producing different speeds would be very difficult and probably not very repeatable.