Whether you ’re a frequent golfer or new to the game, chances are you have heard a lot of talk about your grip. The way your hands grip your club is crucial to a good swing.
It is also the element that the majority of golfers get wrong. You may have heard more than a few sure-fire ways to hold your club.If you ’re lucky, you got good advice. But just in case, it is worth it to take a moment to review how you should be holding your club so that you can make any necessary adjustments.
First things first: you need to take stock of how your arms naturally hang. If you’re a right handed golfer, stand with your left arm hanging loosely at your side. Notice how your wrist naturally turns. You will then want to grab a pen or pencil and grip it in your hand while keeping your hand and arm relaxed.
Odds are the pencil is not perpendicular to your body but angled slightly towards your body, perhaps even 20 degrees. This is the ideal position of your left hand while gripping the club; the reason being that this is the natural position that the hand is going to return to before impact with the ball.
In addition, you need to keep your hands relaxed the entire swing, from beginning to end. The only pressure your hands and fingers should be applying to the club should be the bare minimum to keep the club from flying out of your hands. Imagine holding the club as if you were holding a baby bird. Squeeze too hard and you damage the bird. Sounds silly, but it’s true. The more relaxed you grip the club the more power you will exact during your swing.
But how exactly do you grip it? You ’ll hear more about wrist-hinge later, but if the club is gripped in the palm of your hand, the wrist-hinge will have no effect. You want the butt of the club to start just below the pinky of the left hand and to run diagonally across the fingers so that the shaft ends up in the middle of the index finger.
Imagine, if you can, the club head resting on the ground with the shaft in your hand. Now try this in real life.• Wrap your entire palm around the club. Try and lift it. This should feel awkward and uneasy.
• Now try wrapping just your fingers around the club. Hinge your wrist once more and it’s effortless.
This effortlessness is due to the fact that the fingers control the club better than the palm. This is not to imply that the fingers do anything during the golf swing other than keep the club stable, but that the fingers do a better job of stabilizing than the palms.
Whatever kind of grip you choose is up to you, but whichever one you choose, you should assume your grip position, and make sure that your fingers are mainly touching the club and not the palms. A proper grip with your fingers, not your palms, allows maximum wrist hinge which allows maximum power.