Wednesday 1 April 2009

Tutorial One - The Grip

The grip is your only contact with the golf club. You can therefore save yourself an awful lot of problems by getting it right. The correct grip encourages the hands to work together as a unit. Adopt too strong or too weak a grip and your hands will be fighting each other throughout the swing with potentially disastrous results. It is true that some top players through history have used unconventional grips but they have had the athleticism and ability to make them work through compensatory movements. It is unlikely that you have. It is far better for you to adopt a neutral (neither hand dominating) grip at the start as it is the basis of a conventional reliable swing. The grip is a notoriously difficult thing to change once ingrained so please take some time to make sure you start with the good foundation of a conventional neutral grip.
Taking Your Grip
Place a club across the bottom fingers of your left hand then close your hand to show around two and a half knuckles on your left hand. Your left thumb should be very slightly flexed to act as a support. Make sure there are no gaps between your fingers or you may risk losing control of the club at the top of the backswing.
Now place the right hand on the club. The shaft of the club should be in the base of the fingers and your right thumb should be on the left hand side of the shaft as you look down. The back of your left hand should be facing your target and the back of your right hand should be facing directly away from the target - this will ensure a neutral grip in which neither hand dominates.
Overlapping or Interlocking or Baseball?
To further ensure that your hands work together through the golf swing most good players adopt either the overlappping or interlocking grip. In the overlapping grip the little finger of the left hand rests on top of the first finger of the right hand. In the interlocking grip the left little finger and right forefinger interlock. Either is fine but avoid the two handed or baseball grip as making the hands work as a unit becomes more difficult with this approach, this is explained on the video however it is hard to maintain and not many pro golfers use this grip, but it might suit you and your swing so don't totally rule out this option.
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