Swing Lab · Ep. 7
@tom.beaudet · Analyzed by AI

Find your
power leak.

Smash factor is ball speed ÷ club speed. It’s the number that tells you how much of your swing actually reaches the ball — and where it’s leaking out.

Step 01 — The Diagnosis

My staircase
falls off a cliff.

Here’s mine, verified on a launch monitor. Long irons are near the ceiling for the club. Scoring clubs are bleeding.

5 IRON1.37
6 IRON1.34
7 IRON1.32
8 IRON1.27
PITCHING WEDGE1.14

Tap to replay — the leak is at the bottom of the bag

“120 mph doesn’t matter if only 1.14 of it shows up on a wedge.”

Step 02 — What The Number Means

Where the
speed goes.

Smash factor caps out around 1.50 with a driver and drops naturally as loft goes up — more loft means more spin and less forward energy. So a lower wedge number is normal. Falling off a cliff is not.

A big drop at one club means one of three things: you’re missing the center of the face, hitting turf before ball, or delivering the club with the face open and adding loft. All three are strike problems, not speed problems.

Speed you can’t deliver isn’t speed.

Step 03 — The Prescription

Face tape
doesn’t lie.

1

Spray the face. Hit five.

Foot spray, face tape, whatever. Find out where you’re actually hitting it before you change anything.

2

Heel strikes? Stand a touch closer and hold your posture.

Most heel patterns come from standing up out of the shot — the squat problem again.

3

Low-face strikes? Move the low point forward.

Pressure forward, divot after the ball. That’s the line drill.

4

Re-measure the same club. Same day.

Chasing smash on five clubs at once teaches you nothing. Fix the worst one.

DoseWorst club only · 20 balls · face spray every 5
Step 04 — When You’ve Passed

The staircase
steps down.
It doesn’t drop.

No club drops more than 0.04 from the one above it

Strike pattern is centered on the face, not heel or low

Same numbers hold on a second session, different day

Step 05 — Your Turn

Build your
staircase.

Punch in whatever numbers you have from a launch monitor, a sim bay, or a Trackman session. You don’t need all five — two clubs is enough to see the drop. Nothing gets saved or sent anywhere.

Your numbers

Club speed and ball speed in mph. Leave a row blank if you don’t have it.

ClubClub mphBall mph
Driver
5 iron
7 iron
9 iron
Wedge