Love the concept.....no gimmicks. The book lays it out very nicely.....every professional golfer (Save for a few with extremely slow backswings....think Woody or Nancy Lopez) has a 3:1 ratio - (start of club to backswing) (3) / (backswing to impact) (1) ratio (in terms of tempo).
The funny thing is the entire book could be presented in about a 1 page manual....the rest of the book is just two drills that take too long to explain, and about 100 pages of testimonials and Q and A. Here's the gist:
With that 3:1 ratio in mind (the book takes 30 pages proving it by telling how the author analyzed dozens or hundreds of tour swings), the author has clumped basically all pro golfers into 3 camps of actual swing-times. Get it? Every pro golfer has a 3:1 backswing/forwardswing-to-impact ratio, but individual pros take one of three different amounts of time actually completing the whole process. Those three times are measured in frames per second (from standard a standard television video feed that displays at 30 frames per second): 27/9, 24/8, 21/7. So, for example, Jim Furyk, Fuzzy Zoeller, David Toms, Ben Crenshaw, etc use 27 frames per second backswing, and a 9 frames per second forward swing to impact (frames per second = FPS). Get it? 27/9 = 3/1. Tiger, pPhil, Norman, Paddy, Freddy, Daly, Vijay all use 24/8 FPS (which is 3/1).
Actually, all the pros are not EXACTLY 27/9 or 24/8 or 21/7, but all fall within 1 FPS.
The takeaway - the reason ALL pro golfers look like they are swinging so smoothly, and yet hit the ball a mile, is that they have this same silky smooth, but fairly quick rhythm.
The takeaway for us - we can LEARN tempo, now that we know what the "Tour tempo" is. Most golfers are actually taking WAY too long with their backswing.....because of the bad advice of "low and slow" and "slow one-piece takeaway." Think about it, only Woody on tour really uses that advice....and he's only been hot for 6 months.
The valuable thing the book provides is actually the CDswith the various tempos on beat tracks with tones that correspond to the 3:1 ratio. The author recommends amateurs use the 27/9, because that is much faster than most amateurs actually do. If you buy the MP3 of of iTunes, get the 27/9 Pre-shot track. This includes a lower tone for when to start the backswing, a higher tone for when to start the forward swing, and a final tone for when impact should occur. Just get it, play in around the house, practice your swing without a club trying to match it to the beats, then play it on your ipod at the range.
That's it, that's what the book tells you (plus two drills that really have nothing to do with tempo, they are just good drills for learning fundamentals). Yes, that's really it. I would recommend the book because it explains everything in detail. But I kept turning the pages waiting for the next big "secret." But there is no secret beyond the 3:1 ratio.
This is a great book, great research, and probably one of the most fundamental golf advances in recent years. Definitely worth the $$ for the book (or at least 99 cents for the track on iTunes).
Edited by willamette, 20 October 2007 - 03:29 PM.
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Otherwise--a very good concept, and I do own the book.
