Swim 50 meters or yards at a decent pace, concentrating on your technique, as it is right now. Count your strokes (each time a hand goes in the water counts as a stroke), and record your time. Add your stroke count to your time for 50m/yds in seconds. For example, you swim 50m in 40 seconds and take 40 strokes. Your Swim Golf is 80. Do 4 x 50m Swim Golf's with plenty of recovery between each. Take the average score. This is your Swim Golf, a measure of your efficiency as determined by velocity and distance per stroke.

So what is a good Swim Golf score?

1. Just like golf a low score is good, high score is bad. I like to give folks a goal of sub 80 for a 25yd pool, sub 85 or so for a 50m pool.

2. Focus first on reducing the stroke count component, then the speed component. As for stroke count, a good goal would be less than 20 strokes per 25yd or less than 42 strokes per 50m. This is based on my personal experience with stroke counts. Once you get under 20, then 19 is good, 18 is better, 17 is very good, 16 is excellent. Now for fun, bust out those videos of Ian Thorpe at Sidney and check out his Swim Golf in the 200m or 400m. Gives me goose bumps. Freakish.

As a side note, an often overlooked benefit of counting your strokes is in open water swimming. I have found that the act of simply counting my strokes takes me out of the washing machine/WWF cage match and puts me back into the little 8 x 3 foot box that I can control. It focuses me on the task at hand and brings me back into my stroke.