What Is Club Speed? Average Swing Speeds by Handicap

What is club speed?

Club speed is how fast the centre of the club head is travelling just before it reaches the ball, measured in miles per hour.

It sets the ceiling on how far you can hit it. What it does not do is determine how far you actually hit it, because the ball only receives the portion of that speed your strike manages to transfer.

Key takeaways

• Measured in mph, just before contact
• TrackMan put the PGA Tour driver average at 115 mph and the LPGA Tour at 96
• The average male amateur at 14.5 handicap sits at 94 mph
• Each extra mph can be worth up to three yards with a driver
• Speed separates the best golfers from everyone else, not mid handicappers from high ones

Average club speed by handicap

These are TrackMan Combine driver figures, which makes them a fair benchmark rather than range-session bravado.

Men

• Scratch or better: 110 mph
• 5 handicap: 101 mph
• 10 handicap: 95 mph
• Average golfer, 14.5 handicap: 94 mph
• Bogey golfer: 92 mph

Women

• Scratch or better: 90 mph
• 5 handicap: 87 mph
• 10 handicap: 83 mph
• 15 handicap: 79 mph

Tour averages

• PGA Tour: 115 mph with driver, 94 mph with a 6-iron
• LPGA Tour: 96 mph with driver, 80 mph with a 6-iron

Read that table again

There is something in those numbers that cuts against the way most golfers think about distance.

From a bogey golfer to a 14.5 handicapper: two miles an hour. From 14.5 to a 10 handicap: one more. The entire middle of the amateur field sits inside a four mile an hour band.

Then from a 10 handicap to scratch: fifteen miles an hour.

Speed is not what separates a 20 handicapper from a 14 handicapper. Those golfers swing at almost identical speeds and shoot wildly different scores. What separates them is strike, short game and decisions.

Speed absolutely is part of what separates a 10 handicapper from a scratch golfer. At the top end it becomes a real differentiator.

Why this matters practically. If you are a mid to high handicapper convinced that distance is your problem, the data says otherwise. You already swing at roughly the same speed as the golfers beating you by six shots. The difference is elsewhere.

The LPGA comparison is the one to notice

Average male amateur, 14.5 handicap: 94 mph of club speed, 133 mph of ball speed.

LPGA Tour average: 96 mph of club speed, 143 mph of ball speed.

Two miles an hour more club speed. Ten miles an hour more ball speed.

That gap is not strength and it is not speed. It is strike quality, and at roughly two yards of driver distance per mph of ball speed, it is worth around twenty yards.

Which is the most useful thing club speed data tells most golfers: before you go looking for more speed, check how much of the speed you already have is reaching the ball.

What one mph is actually worth

TrackMan put it at up to three yards of driver distance per mile per hour of club speed, assuming your strike quality holds.

That is a real number and it is why speed training has become popular. Five miles an hour is fifteen yards, which is a club into most greens.

The caveat sits in that assumption. Swinging faster usually costs you strike quality, at least at first, and a faster swing that finds the toe gains you nothing. Speed is only worth three yards per mph if you can still find the middle at the new speed.

When speed genuinely is your problem

Three honest tests.

Your smash factor is already good but your distance is not. If you are converting efficiently at 88 mph, you have taken strike as far as it goes and speed is the remaining lever.

You are losing clubs into greens. If you are hitting hybrid where your playing partners hit 7-iron, every approach is harder than it needs to be, and that compounds over eighteen holes.

Your speed has dropped over time. Mobility tends to go before strength does, and lost club speed is often lost rotation rather than lost power.

And when it is not your problem: if your smash factor sits below about 1.42, you have speed you are not using. Recovering it is faster, cheaper and less risky than generating more.

Where club speed actually comes from

Not from arms, which is where most golfers look for it.

Speed is built from the ground up, in sequence: the lower body starts the downswing, the torso follows, the arms and club arrive last. Each segment accelerates the next. Golfers who fire the chest and arms early cap their speed and usually wreck their strike at the same time, which is a particularly poor trade.

Mobility is the common limiter. If your hips cannot rotate, your body will not let you load properly, and no amount of effort will produce speed your range of motion does not allow.

Our guide to using your legs in the golf swing covers the sequencing side in detail, and fixing your downswing deals with the sequence fault that costs most amateurs both speed and accuracy.

How to measure it honestly

1. Use your average, not your fastest. Everyone has one swing a session that reads four mph above the rest. It is not your speed.
2. Measure at normal effort. A speed reading from a swing you would never make on a course is a vanity number.
3. Read it beside smash factor. The two together tell you whether to chase speed or chase strike. Alone, club speed is half a story.
4. Test seasonally. Speed moves with fitness, temperature and how much you have been playing.
5. Compare like with like. Driver speed and 6-iron speed are different measurements, and tour data shows roughly a twenty mph gap between them.

Measuring speed properly at Grip

Speed readings from a swing you would never use on the course are not much use, which is the trouble with testing it in a hitting net with no feedback on where the ball went.

Every bay at both our London studios runs Trackman 4, so club speed arrives alongside ball speed, smash factor and carry on every shot. That combination is what makes it actionable. You can see immediately whether a faster swing produced a faster ball, or just a worse strike, and most golfers find the answer surprising.

Tower Bridge is open 24/7 to members on a personal door code, which suits speed work because it rewards short, frequent sessions rather than occasional long ones. Deptford Park is our coaching home in SE8, where one of our professional coaches can tell you whether your speed is limited by sequence, mobility or simply by a club that does not fit you.

The Trackman technology page covers the rest of what the bays measure, and our club path guide handles the direction side of the same impact.

Book a session

Club speed sets your ceiling. Strike decides how close you get to it, and most club golfers are further from their ceiling than they think.

Book a free trial at Tower Bridge or Deptford Park and get your real number alongside your smash factor. One of those two is your limiting factor, and knowing which saves you a winter of working on the wrong thing.

Benchmark figures throughout are TrackMan's published tour averages and Combine amateur averages.