Scratch By 50: Mobility=Swing Speed

Graham Averill will turn 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He’s a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. Welcome to his midlife crisis. 

The problem with golf? It takes time. Time to play, time to practice, time to get better… And time is at a premium when you’re an adult with a job and family. In a way, this entire project is about time. I’m running out of it and trying to make the most of what’s left by attempting something very, very, very hard. 

Over the last two weeks, the struggle against time played out on a micro level; there wasn’t enough of it to play much golf. I got to the course to practice a handful of times and I walked a few holes here and there, but I never had the opportunity to play full rounds. Life simply got in the way. There was a work trip, a family trip, my son’s baseball games, and I was scrambling to meet deadlines because of those other obligations. It’s the same stuff that gets in the way of everyone’s golf game. Unless you’re a pro stick, other obligations take a priority so there’s a two-week gap in scores where my handicap remained static. It’s frustrating but I’m sure it’s not the last time work and family life will get in the way of this year-long project. 

I’m back on track, though, playing back-to-back rounds to start this week. Some readers have asked for more details about my rounds so I’ll dig into those below, but first I want to talk about something I did have the opportunity to do last week: assisted stretching. 

Getting bendy

Assisted stretching is pretty much what it sounds like. Picture a trainer manhandling your body into various contortion-like poses. It’s like yoga but your instructor is trying to mug you. 

I’ll go down a lot of rabbit holes in the name of golf (should I have a shaman bless my clubs?) but this might be the most uncomfortable thing I’ve done in search of a better swing. Mobility has always been a weak spot for me. I’m 49 years old with an assortment of sports injuries so I need 20 minutes of morning stretching before I can walk the dog without pulling a muscle. And I’ve noticed a drastic difference between my “cold” golf swing and my golf swing after a proper warm-up. If I don’t get loose before playing golf, my swing is tense, jerky and ineffective. It’s all arms with no proper turn. 

I’m also at an age when most golfers are losing swing speed and distance. 

According to data collected by Hack Motion, the typical clubhead speed of amateur men in their 20s is 95-105 mph. Hit your 40s and that drops to 90-98. Enter your 50s and it gets real slow: 85-95. 

I didn’t play golf in my 20s or 30s, or even through most of my 40s, so I don’t have any previous speeds to compare it to but I know my swing feels faster and smoother when I take the time to stretch.

Strength obviously plays a part in swinging the club fast and hitting the ball far but maybe I should spend more time focusing on increasing my mobility? 

In order to test this theory, I used an inexpensive launch monitor to clock my driver swing speeds at the driving range on two separate occasions. The first was a regular practice session after my standard warmup which includes a series of stretches and light calisthenics (imagine Jazzercise from the ‘80s but without the leg warmers). The second range session took place immediately after an assisted stretch appointment at Stretch Lab, a national chain with a branch in my town, where I spent an hour getting contorted by a guy named Mitch (not his real name).  

Mitch laid me gently down on a table, then took a leg and pushed it into a position that it had never been in before, and kept it there for an uncomfortable amount of time. He worked his way through my entire body like that over the course of an hour. I left feeling 20 years younger. 

I went immediately to the driving range and the difference was dramatic. My clubhead speed during my regular driving range session topped out at 96.5 mph and I was carrying the ball 235-240 on my fastest swings. After the assisted stretching session, my clubhead speed jumped to 102.4 with the occasional 105 detected and a 10- to 15-yard bump in distance. 

I didn’t do anything different other than let Mitch work me over for an hour and I found another 6 mph out of my driver. 

Mobility=swing speed

At least it does for me. The trick will be finding a way I can stretch properly without the help of Mitch because I don’t have the time to visit Stretch Lab before every round of golf. So I’m in search of a solid mobility routine to work into my daily life and pre-round warmups. It’s time to get bendy. 

Round re-cap

As for my recent rounds of golf… I played nine holes at the beginning of the week, followed by 18 the next day, at my home course in the mountains of North Carolina. I played from the back tees on the nine-hole round because the guy I was paired with wanted to and I’m a people pleaser. It’s amazing how moving back 10-50 yards changes a course entirely. I had a hard time finding the new landing zones from the tee box and shot five-over 41 which did nothing for my handicap. Most of the strokes I lost were off the tee (1.8) but my short game was also an issue (1.6 strokes lost) as I mishit a couple of layup chip shots out of the rough. 

The full 18 was an Odysseus-like journey full of twists and turns but I held it together to finish with a nine-over 81. I walk when I play and I carry my bag and I was absolutely worked towards the end of the afternoon round. Still, I managed to score better on the back nine (three over) than the front (six over) even though my swing was falling apart. Case in point: I started the round with a 275-yard drive but finished with a 220-yard drive. In general, I wasn’t hitting the ball far off the tee but I kept the ball in play for the most part, hitting 79 percent of fairways. It was my approach game that sucked the life out of me, losing 4.2 strokes to a scratch player. My biggest problem distance? 50-75 yards. I didn’t hit a single green from that distance all day. 

Oof. Not being able to hit a green from 50 yards out and duffing short chip shots out of the rough … it’s frustrating but, overall, I’m happy with my two recent rounds and excited to play more as the week progresses. 

My handicap is now 11.5. I have a long way to go but I’m going to celebrate that tiny bit of movement. 

Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham discusses going after low-hanging fruit on the course here.