Videotaping Your Swing

I videotaped my golf swing the other night for the second time this summer. I did it for the first time earlier in the season for no other reason than my wife had the camera out and I had a few minutes to kill with golf on the brain. I kind of forgot about that first session and then, the other night, I found myself home alone with the kids already in bed and a few hours of sunlight left before darkness would fall. What a perfect time to videotape my swing again, I thought. This time my taping session had a purpose, though. See I've recently come to realize that my tempo vs. distance debate might actually be all in my head. Maybe I could continue to have a good tempo and yet still achieve more respectable distance with all the clubs in my bag. I should just swing "harder" and see what happens. So I recorded three swings from two different angles of me swinging at my normal, much-envied "smooth" swing speed and then three more from both angles with me trying to swing "as hard as I can without falling over." Lo and behold, upon further review of the tape, there was almost no discernible distance in the look of my swing. If I didn't know that I was trying to swing harder in the second set of swings I'm not sure I would've been able to tell any difference in the two tapings. My conclusion? Maybe I can swing harder at the ball (assuming I can do it and still actually hit the ball) and not lose my game altogether. No pressure or anything, of course--my club's championship tournament is now less than a week away. Now or never, I guess you could say.