Hi, my name is Chuck Will, PGA Director of Instruction at the Chuck Will Golf Academy. Today we are going to be talking about the grip or the correct hold on the golf club. The grip is your only connection to the golf club during the swing; positioning of the club is critical in the hands. It allows you to hold the club in a light grip pressure to allow you to swing your arms to create as maximum amount of speed also with the correct amount of control.
The positioning is very critical, we are going to go over the correct way to hold it, a couple of different options, and also, we are going to finish up showing you a couple of other different ways that people tend to make mistakes in the grip. If you are looking at the left hand grip, it should run from the first joint of the index finger to just above the pinky. Close your hand around it; squeeze up with the last three fingers of your left hand. The handle is going to fit just under the heel-pad where pressure is going to be on the last three fingers. If we set the club down on the ground, we ought to see the first couple of knuckles; my left thumb would be just a little bit off to the side.
Raising the club back up in front up of us, we are going to apply the right hand. The right hand is very easy, once the left hand is correct. The palm of the right hand should face the left hand and the connection point that we make first is the base of the right hand to the base of the left thumb. We are going to wrap our fingers around, so the middle two knuckles or the middle two fingers are directly under the handle, and then wrap the hand around. You are going to cover the thumb of the left hand, forming a V with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand.
An easy way to remember that is, if you were to put a coin or quarter in your fingers right here and hold that together and then connect that to the club. Your grip pressure again is the last three fingers of the left hand so far, the base of the right hand to the base of the left thumb. A couple of variations, we have the Overlap or the Warden Grip, this is the most popular. We also have the Interlock - this works well if your hands are small; and then we also have the ten finger where all the fingers are on the grip. This works well if you are not as strong; I recommend this for kids. All the juniors, we start them off with the ten finger grip.
Any variation is acceptable. You have to find the one that works best for you. Mistakes that are very common as far as the grip; holding the club too much in the palm; if I hold that club too much in the palm, makes it very difficult for my wrist to hinge, because again, we want to hold the club in a light grip pressure to create speed. The grip also allows our hands to hinge and unhinge. So, by positioning the handle down in the fingers, squeezing up against the heel pad, that allows our hands to hinge correctly in the golf swing.
The right hand on top, the mistake there would be right hand underneath too much. However much it feels powerful to you to have that right hand underneath, it does not allow your hands to hinge the club correctly. So when you hold the club correctly, it is going to be down in the fingers with that left hand; the right hand is going to feel like you have very little control mostly in the fingers, but it does allow your hands to just hinge the golf club up.
So, once we have got our good positioning of our hands on the club, we set the club down and go through our set up routine, it should be very easy to hinge the club up. Remember, your hands work up in the golf swing never side to side. Practice your golf grip at home and your golf swing will be a lot better as a result. Thank you.
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