Recall when you’ve played your best golf. What did your swing feel like? Effortful and strenuous or smooth, well-timed and controlled? The irony is that moves in the golf swing that feel powerful and require plenty of effort are actually the ones that drain speed.

Dr Sasho MacKenzie, who is the founder of the Stack System and one of golf’s foremost biomechanists, told Golf Digest that there are primarily two “speed-killing” moves that plague amateurs.

Speed-killing move No.1: Casting

“The big one is casting from the top. If you decide to uncock your wrists and get that clubhead going really fast before your lower body does anything, that’s a speed killer,” says MacKenzie, who helped Matt Fitzpatrick add distance ahead of his breakthrough 2022 US Open win.

Casting, or the releasing of wrist angles early in the downswing, is a common issue among golfers because it’s a move that feels powerful. The issue, MacKenzie says, is that these golfers are trying to create speed at the wrong time.

“If you get that clubhead going early, it feels like I’m putting a lot of effort in the swing. It’s really hard, but unfortunately that doesn’t translate to higher speeds. So if it feels really effortful and the club feels really heavy and you’re really applying a lot of force to it early [in the downswing], that’s not the best way to generate speed,” MacKenzie says.

The solution to stop casting often comes from starting the downswing more with the lower body and keeping a light grip pressure, both of which MacKenzie says are important for generating speed. If you start your transition with your lower body moving towards the target and starting to rotate before your arms and hands do anything, then you will keep the angle in your wrists longer.

This is all in an effort to “get the speed out to the club later in the swing”, instead of applying it early in the downswing. MacKenzie concedes, however, that some players, especially low handicappers, hold on to the angle in their wrists too long in the downswing, which is also a power killer. The key is timing the release of the wrists to get the clubhead travelling at its fastest speed right at impact.

Speed-killing move No.2: Overactive body

Instead of trying to generate speed by casting and losing lag early in the downswing, some golfers try to speed up the swing by speeding up the body. MacKenzie says this comes from a misunderstanding that to create more clubhead speed, we don’t necessarily need the body to move faster, we need the club to speed up.

“Another common one that can happen with a very athletic folks who play some sports a lot is keeping too much speed in the body,” MacKenzie says. “It’s common for baseball players especially, and it definitely promotes a slice.”

Players who use too much body in the downswing struggle to release the club properly, as they hold the angles in the wrists and arms too long. Think of a hitter in baseball, as MacKenzie mentions. When they hit the ball, their upper body is nearly facing the pitcher because they have rotated so hard.

That’s not how you create speed in golf. “We don’t want the body moving that fast at impact,” MacKenzie says. “We have to get some speed into the body early by using the ground effectively, but then we want to do things to get the speed out to the club.”

The solution, MacKenzie mentions, is not to think about slowing down the body at impact. Instead, he suggests feeling as though the arms are speeding up through the impact area, as you release the clubhead into the ball.

“I don’t think for most people it’s very helpful to think, Stop the torso,” he says. “I do think it’s helpful to think, Sling the arms, or think about getting the speed out to the club.”