How To Grip The Club - Full Swing

The grip is a vital component of the golf swing. If you put your hands in the wrong place, then your body will be constantly striving to adjust for a misaligned clubface. The major key requirement of a good grip is to allow freedom of movement of the wrist. I frequently see golfers who have the grip in the palm which locks the wrist joint and causes excess elbow and shoulder movement. You have probably heard the term Strong, Weak, or Neutral grip.

Typically, a strong grip is referred to as a grip where the hand is more on top of the club, and you can see many knuckles, and the V formed between your thumb and forefinger is pointing at your right shoulder or so. <image>

A weak grip is where your hand is more on the side of the club, you can see less than 2 knuckles on the left hand, and the v is pointing toward the chin.

There are lots of reasons that these words have stuck around as descriptions, but here is one way to understand the implication of the strength of the grip. When you approach impact, the arms are going to fling away from your body toward neutral alignment, which is going to be with the left wrist flat and in line with the left arm. If you remember from the ball flight section, a closed clubface will tend to be more delofted and an open clubface will tend to add loft. So a STRONG grip, closes the clubface to the path and delofts the club through impact.

This causes the ball to want to start more left and lower. A WEAK grip tends to open the clubface and add loft, which tends to cause the ball to start more right and higher.

A NEUTRAL grip is somewhere in the middle between weak and strong. It is typically referred to as seeing 2.5 knuckles, but this can create a very small/subjective scale. For me, the easiest way to monitor your drip strength is to place the left arm vertically and the wrist in a fixed position and see what the club looks like. For a “neutral grip,” you will see the club turned about 20-30 degrees. A weak grip is close to vertical and a strong grip is close to 45 degrees. This is a good place to start for beginners, but if you have an established swing, then it’s best to not mess with the grip strength at this point.

How to grip in the fingers and unify the hands. Other than grip strength, the universal goals of the grip are to grip in the fingers and unify the hands. To grip in the fingers. Hold the club in the right hand as you position the grip. Place the club along the fold of your hand and then wrap around with the club in the fingers of the middle two fingers of your right hand