Vijay Singh added another piece of equipment to his practice routine that has been paying off big time: headphones.
Last week at the Deutsche Bank Championship, Singh talked about a device he's been using since the U.S. Open that lets him listen to the tempo of his swing.
"(It) tells you how fast you're swinging the club or not. It just keeps you in a good rhythm all the time," Singh said.
The system, made by Sonic Golf, is not yet on the market. It uses a sensor that's installed in the grip of any club and which generates information about the swing. The sensor transfers that sound information to wireless headphones that the golfer wears. Each swing produces a unique, audible rhythm of tones that helps the golfer adjust his or her tempo for more consistency.
Its inventor, Dr. Robert Grober, is a physics professor at Yale University who has been developing a way to link the golf swing with sound for more than a decade.
"Good golf swings are rhythmic," Grober said. "Generally a rhythmic golf swing gets closer to the swing plane and is more consistent."
Singh agrees that the device works to improve consistency.
"I always had a good rhythm, but I never had a consistent rhythm," Singh said. "That's making my swing a lot more consistent, not just with the driver but the whole game. It's one rhythm for the whole game instead of having a quicker rhythm for irons or slower rhythm for the driver. It's just making me so much more consistent."
And, Singh said, it works even when he isn't using it.
"Even when I take it off, I remember the humming sound in my head. I hum to myself on the golf course just by listening to that that many times," he said.
For information on Sonic Golf, see www.sonicgolf.com.
