Grip

The way you hold the golf club is as important as anything we do in golf. Of all the positions the golf swing requires, the very first thing you do is the most important. That is an undeniable fact. However, what is little understood is that there is no ONE grip for every golfer. And what each golfer needs to know is how to hold the club FOR THEIR SWING.

The purpose of the grip is to control the face of the club. Your hands should work in concert with the movements of your body. That is to say that as many varieties of swings as there are, there can be that many ways to hold the club to complement THAT swing!

Basically, there are two “kinds” of grip. We refer to them as “strong “and “weak.” I’ll define as much as possible: For a right-handed golfer, a strong grip is one where the hands are turned more to the right, vice versa for a left-hander turned more to the left. Picture your thumb; a “neutral “grip might have the thumb down the middle of the grip. A strong grip will place it more on the side of the shaft. Depending on how far to move the thumb away from the center, it is that much stronger.

A ”weak” grip does just the opposite. Again, for a right-handed golfer, the hands are turned more to the left and away from the center.

So those are merely descriptions of the positioning of the hands. An easy adjustment! The secret is KNOWING if you need a strong, weak, or neutral grip.

There are a lot of reasons, but I’ll keep the article to the two MAIN ones.

• If you are a golfer who has a LOT of rotation through the golf ball, you will likely need a STRONGER grip.
• If you have little to NO rotation through the ball, you will need a neutral to WEAKER grip.

The reason is this: The more you turn, the SLOWER the clubface squares or closes. The less you turn, the FASTER the club squares or closes. Two examples of great players who played with a stronger grip: the great Lee Trevino and more recently, Dustin Johnson. If those two players were told, “You have to weaken your grip,” we would have never heard of them! Once the body stops rotating, the hands become dominant and “flip over” more instinctively and quickly. And if the body rotates early and aggressively, your hands will be quieter through impact.

As mentioned earlier, these are two (of many) determinants for how you might hold the club, but in my experience, they are the main reasons. Other considerations:

Swing Plane: Typically, more upright swings can consider a stronger grip; flatter planes a weaker one. The more horizontal a club swings into impact, the faster the face will close; the more vertical, the more open it will be.

Attack angle: A stronger grip can help those who are shallow, a weaker one may aid those with a steep angle of attack.

In sum, if you are not hitting the ball straight, see your teacher and see if he/she thinks you need a grip change.