That golf ball you’re about to hit – it doesn’t react to what your swing looks like or how you’re standing or how long you’ve been playing golf…
All it reacts to is how fast the club is travelling, what direction the club is travelling in and the position of the clubface at impact.
All of those are controlled by how you grip the golf club.
Yes, changing your golf grip is uncomfortable at first and you might feel like you’ve taken a step backwards in the immediate term. But it’s well worth the small amount of effort it takes to make a proper golf grip feel second nature. You’ll play much more consistent, solid golf for many years to come as a result.
Proper Golf Grip
A correct golf grip will help you to achieve more distance, greater feel, better ball striking and more consistency with every club in your bag. Follow these steps for a great grip (reverse the instructions if you are left-handed):
How to grip the golf club – Left Hand
- Place the club in the fingers of the left hand. The grip of the club should run from the middle of the index finger to the base of the little finger (see Image #1).
- Grip the club half an inch from the end.
Compared to gripping it right at the end, this will improve your control of the club and ball striking ability, without any loss of power (see Image #2). - As you look down at your left hand, there should be 2½ knuckles visible. This is classed as neutral position.
The ‘V’ made by your left thumb and forefinger should point to your right shoulder (see Image #3). - If you can see more than 2½ knuckles, your left hand is said to be in too strong a position.
- If you can see less than 2½ knuckles, your left hand is in too weak position.
How to grip the golf club – Right Hand
Place the fleshy pad of your right thumb directly on top of your left thumb.- The ‘V’ made between your right thumb and forefinger should point to your chin (see Image #4).
- If the ‘V’ points over your right shoulder, your right hand is in too strong a position.
- If the ‘V’ points over your left shoulder, your right hand is in too weak position.
Types of Golf Grip
There are 3 main golf grips:
The fingers of the right hand can grip the club and link with the left hand in 3 different ways – referred to as the interlinking grip, the overlapping or ‘Vardon’ grip and the baseball grip.- It’s a common misconception amongst amateur golfers that the interlinking grip is predominantly used by ladies and juniors. Both Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods use the interlinking grip.
- I recommend you use either the interlinking or overlapping grip – whichever you find more comfortable.
Grip pressure – How hard should you grip the golf club?
You’ll often hear that gripping the club tightly causes tension in the body, which in turn hinders your ability to make a good swing. However, gripping the club with a lot of pressure at the point of impact will help you to better control the strike.- On a scale of 1 to 10, imagine that a level 10 equates to gripping the club as tightly as possible. A level 1 equates to holding the club so loosely it only just stays in your hands.
- At address, hold the club with a grip pressure of 4 out of 10.
- At impact, your grip pressure should increase to a 9 or even a 10 out of 10. You might want to consciously grasp the club more tightly at impact to see how that effects your ball striking.
You can watch a summary of this article in this video.