Check out the accompanying blog post on how to hold a golf club or how to grip a golf club at
Your golf swing happens fast!
In under two seconds, as a matter of fact.
Because your golf swing happens so fast I always want to keep it as simple as possible.
Once you start to take your club back,everything needs to be automatic.
Because your golf swing happens so quickly, I divide it into two main parts.
Pre-swing and Swing.
This is the first of a 3 part series on pre-swing fundamentals. I will follow this series up with more on the actual swing.
Check out this video on how to hold a golf club and why it’s considered by most golf professionals, to be the holy grail to good golf.
The Importance of Learning How To Hold A Golf Club
The first thing a person needs to learn to play good golf is how to hold a golf club.
This is commonly known as the golf grip or how to grip a golf club.
The way you put your hands on your golf club directly influences whether your clubface is open, closed or square.
In other words it directly influences the “law of clubface squaredness.”
Your clubface arguably has the most influence on the ultimate direction of your golf ball because your clubface is what departs spin on the ball and causing it to change direction, in the air.
How To Hold a Golf Club: Keeping It Neutral
Until you’ve established what your tendencies are I think you should try to keep your grip as neutral as possible.
By neutral I mean that your grip has the least amount of influence on your golf clubface squaredness.
If you hold the club “too strong” it causes your clubface to close at impact and impart a hook spin on the ball.
If you hold the club “too weak” it causes your clubface to be open at impact and imparting a slice spin on the ball.
What is the best way to tell if your grip is neutral?
The way I do it is to make sure the back of my left hand is facing the target and the palm of my right is facing the target.
That is a generalization of the setup, but it will get you started.
Once you’ve hit enough golf balls, you will start to see a trend.
Once you see that you “tend” to hook or slice the ball, you can then decide whether you or not you want to adjust your grip or your swing.
How To Hold A Golf Club: Keeping It In The Fingers
There is some room for personal preference when it comes to holding the golf club, but keep in mind that you have to be able to return your clubface to square, as easily as possible.
I keep the club a little higher in my hand than most, but I recommend that you keep the club a little more in your fingers.
You’ll also see some coaches talking about running it diagonally across your hand, but again I think you should keep it straight across at first.
If you hold the club incorrectly at first and it feel’s good, it will be much harder to change it later.
If you hold it correctly at first, it may feel weird, but you will get used to it. When it becomes second nature your entire golf swing will become much more solid.
How to Hold A Golf Club: Grip Pressure
I didn’t mention it in the video, but I wanted to touch on grip pressure very briefly.
Many coaches teach that you need to hold the club lightly or that it should be held like you are holding a bird.
This is all I will say about grip pressure.
If you are swinging a golf club 80-100mph you want to make sure that you are holding the golf club tight enough so it doesn’t fly out of your hand.
That’s it.
You don’t need to strangle the damn club, but you don’t want it taking your playing partners heads off either.
In part 2 of our 3 part series on pre-swing fundamentals, we will show you a simple technique to take direct aim at your target.
For a replay of this video go to:
