Rhythm and Tempo
The rhythm and the tempo is the backbone of the golf swing. With a good rhythm and a tempo suited to the golfer, the swing is much easier to duplicate each time.
The rhythm is the relationship between the time it takes to do the backswing and the time it takes to do the downswing. As a rule of thumb the ratio between the two parts of the swing should be 3 to 1 for the full swing, something called the Golden Ratio. This ratio is decreased when the swing shortens. The Golden Ratio for putting is 2.1.
Tempo is the total time it takes to swing the golf club and corresponds relatively often to the golfers personality. Nick Price for example has a fast tempo whereas Ernie Els and Fred Couples has a slower tempo.
To be able to measure Rhythm and Tempo there are ten key positions of the swing that must be set.
The ten key positions is also very important in Swing it since many other features are using the positions, for example the Film Strip and trimming movies.
The ten key positions kan also be used to communicate with the students what should change at different positions in the swing.
See also
Main information panel
The main information panel for the tempo is this panel:
When the 10 positions has been set in the movie it might look like this:
The different parts of the swing are broken down into parts and are a direct result of where the ten key positions has been set.
The timings are shown in seconds, i.e. the player above has a total time of 0.91 seconds from the start of the swing to the impact, 0.69 seconds are spent on the backswing and 0,22 seconds on the downswing.
The most important Tempo is the Start to Impact. Most better players have a tempo of about 1,05 seconds. Their rhytm is around 3 which means that the value for Start to Top is around 0.78 seconds and for Top to Impact is about 0.26 seconds
There are three different ways to display the rhythm:
• as a fraction between the backswing and the downswing
• as the number of frames
• or as a percentage.
The three values below are from the same swing and really means the same.
To switch between the different representation, click on the rhythm value.
Three different ways to display the Rhythm
Background
The 10 key-positions
START OF THE SWING - usually defined when the club head starts to move
CLUB PARALLELL to the ground (back swing)
ARM PARALLELL to the ground (back swing)
Top of the swing - usually defined as when the club head changes direction independent of the body movement
ARM PARALLELL to the ground (down swing)
CLUB PARALLELL to the ground (down swing)
IMPACT
CLUB PARALLELL to the ground (through swing)
ARM PARALLELL to the ground (through swing)
END OF THE SWING
The three most important positions for the Rhythm and Tempo are the start, the top and the impact. The six parallell key-positions can be used to break down the back swing, the down swing and the through swing. The end position is used when the movie should be trimmed or a Film Strip should be created.
Choose the one you prefer.
Different swing types have different ideal rhythms. A full swing has an ideal rhtm of 3.0, a putt 2.1 and half swing somewhere in between.
Choose the current type of swing from the popup-menu in the Tempo panel
Three different types of swings
The ideal rhythm and the tolerance for the three different swing types can be set in the preferences dialog. The ideal rhythm together with the tolerance is used for coloring the Rhythm value in the Tempo panel.
If the ratio between the backswing and the swing is not within the tolerance set in the preference dialog, for the chosen swing type, the rhythm value is shown in red, as below.
Not ideal rhythms
