Getting into building your golf swing, so you start hitting a “Stock Shot” – a shot that starts one way, curves back, and never over-curves the line – starts with your foundations. In this episode, I reveal the secrets to properly gripping a golf club.
Hey welcome back to another episode of the stock Shot Show now that we have covered what you are looking for in a swing we now need to cover what are some of the founding principles that your stock shot needs to be built upon now if you think about it the only thing that
Is touching the golf club is what that is your hands I mean imagine trying to throw a spiral football and you don’t know how to hold the football correctly right like imagine if you’re holding it this way or you don’t know how to use the laces or if you’re trying to throw a
Curve ball but you don’t know how to hold the baseball correctly so or paint and you don’t know how to hold the paintbrush correctly so the only thing that H is connected to the golf club is our hands so we need to give you a Fighting Chance by making sure that your
Grip is correct now on tour right let’s be honest there is an an array of different grips you have weak grips and strong grips and neutral grips some guys are Palms some guys are fingered like but we want to make sure that we create a standard of beauty as to what your
Grip should be like so let’s first just talk a little bit about some terminology as to what some different terms that we use in the grip so first and foremost when we talk and you hear a coach talk about having a strong grip a strong grip
Is not one that’s like like this however we do want to have a strong grip and feeling that’s it the grip is firm which is probably different than what you’ve what you’ve thought about in the past right you hear all these Golf Digest articles and they’re like oh the golf
Ball or hold the grip like you’re holding a bird it’s like yeah but the truth of the matter is is that Brooks kka his grip strength like think about like doing farmer carries his grip strength is like 65 kg and that would be like if you were to come here and test
At the golf room you might be somewhere at like 35 or 40 meaning that when you gripping it as hard as you possibly can that is like Brooks kka doing a five out of 10 grip pressure now the difference is is that when we have a grip pressure
I can hold my grip firm but I can still have my arms be soft and many players get that confused see with a drummer a drummer is holding the sticks and their arms are fast but they are holding the sticks securely they’re out like this with wobbly fingers letting the letting
The drummer sticks do whatever they want so we can have a firm grip with soft arms and shoulders and forearms and let’s we need to be clear about that now what are some other things that are some misconceptions in the industry or not misconceptions but some terms that we
Can Define so that you have we’re on the same page when we’re talking about this let’s talk about what does it mean to have a strong grip now for a right-handed golfer a strong grip means that our our hands basically the V between your index finger and your thumb
Those V’s are going outside your Trail shoulder so those V’s are kind of pointing out here to the right same if you had a weak grip those grip those things are going to be going to the left so by and large most tour players right air with a Little Bit Stronger grips
Than weaker grips and one other thing and we’ll get to this in later episodes but your grip has a direct correlation as to what your face and what your wrist angle should be like at the top of your swing there is this like crazy um like this crazy idea right now
That every that all instructors are trying to say yeah you need to have like these bow wrists at the top you don’t need bowed wrists at the top the only reason you would ever need to have bowed wrists at the top is if your grip is really really weak like Colin marwa’s
Grip is really weak Matt Wolf’s grip really really weak right but then if you have other players like Zach Johnson and his grip is fairly strong so we’ll get to that in more episodes in the future when we talk more about back swing and wrist angles and all that kind of stuff
But right now what we want to do on this stock Shot Show is we want to teach you what is a neutral grip right like how would you teach just a player to have a neutral run-of-the-mill grip so what I would suggest is go get a golf club so
You can do this right with me like at the same time so that we once you do it you can you’ve got it right and for me grip was always something that was like really important to me because I have a tendency we all have our stuff right we
Have our stuff with our swing and our characters and all our and all that is that one of the things with my game was that my right hand would get a little weak so it would be a little bit on top and that would cause wreck havoc in my
Golf swing in the fact that when you have a weak right hand you might have a tendency to kind of put a little bit more extra ump into it at the bottom and I would tip it out so for me managing my grip was something that I was constantly
Doing every single practice in my programming stage when I was practicing to make sure that my grip was correct so what I want you to do is I want you to take the club to get a neutral grip and I want you to just let the club hang
Down by gravity so you can see that the club is kind of hanging down now I’m going to put my hand and balance it and I’m going to try to match up my lead wrist with the face angle and you can see that I’m holding this down my
Fingers I am not holding it in my palm but I’m holding it down the rings of my finger now when I do that I’m also going to stack up my thumb so that my thumb and my index finger are aligned so I don’t want to have a long thumb I want
To have a very short thumb so now I have put it on my hand my lead wrist is matching the club face and then I’m going to swing it around and come down so now you can see that I have a very tight tight Gap right
Here in my hand the V is going to my right shoulder and my thumb is short I don’t have a long thumb that’s like how four-year-olds hold crayons we do not want to hold a club like that so now I’ve got my grip on with my left hand
Then I’m going to take my right hand and I’m going to have the same feeling where it’s holding here down in my fingertips I’m not going to hold it down here in my palm once again like kids hold crayons so we’re holding it and I interlock whether you want to interlock or overlap
I don’t really care it’s whatever you want either way is fine but you cannot tend finger it unless you have some type of physical limitation um but simple simply saying I just want to do it because I want to do it we can’t let you do that you have to have a fighting
Chance and there literally is like one guy in the history of time that has had a 10 finger grip and been good at hitting it straight and consistent and if you’re wanting to hit sock shots which obviously you are because you’re here and you’re on the stock SHOT show
You need to have a Fighting Chance by having an interlocking grip or overlapping so and that’s because it controls the face and the face determines 75% of where the ball goes so we want to make sure that our grip is very very good so now I’m going to put
My right hand on through my fingers and then wrap it around and you can see that this Lifeline in my right hand that’s actually where my thumb is going to go so it’s almost like you know God created them for two Lego pieces to go together
So I’ve got my right hand on I’ve got or my left hand on then I’m going to put my thumb on and then I’ve got my right hand and you can see my right hand my knuckle and my thumb align once again I do not have long thumbs but rather short thumbs
So I’m holding it down in my fingers and then from there I am then clamping down and what that does is that allows me to have full range of motion in my wrist see my wrists can create a lot of speed so when we pom it which to be honest if
There is a 100,000 people that watch this episode 9,925 of them you pommit so if you don’t think think you pom it you probably do so we want to make sure and the easy way to realize if you’re doing that is taking this thing and actually flipping
It around so it’s on the inner side of the club so it’s down the shaft and then put it on and you’re going to feel how much more in your fingers it is when that shaft is smaller in your hands right which is another little pieces that one of my personal hypothesis is
That midsize grips are the death of amateur golf and the reason that is is because the amateur golfer they go I’m going to use midsize grip so it quiets the action in my hands which is maybe true but the problem is is that forces you to Palm your grip and then when I
Palm my grip I can’t hinge my wrist so now when I come back and I change direction I’m then going to release it early and I’m going to hit it fast so it’s like yeah your hands might be more quiet but you hit 3 in behind the ball
And that feels terrible so now we need to make sure that the grip which is why getting custom fit and making sure your grip matches your hand size is really really really really really important right so making sure that um you just have the right utensils in your bag so
You can have your swing work for you and not against you so that would be one way is if you go this way you can also see Adam Scott when Adam Scott does this you can see how he points he puts the club
On his as a righty he puts it on his on his left foot and points the grooves at the Target and then you can see I can hold it and basically match my lead my lead wrist to the face as well and then swing it around that’s another way of
Doing it and then for me in my routine right cuz I told you how in um when I was playing my right hand would get very active and it would be or not active but it would be a little bit too on top so what I will do is like when I’m playing
I’ll close my lead eye or I’m sorry close my right eye because I’m left eye dominant and I’ll line up the basically this part of the shaft with the ball and I’ll get a spot in front of me so now I know that my left hand is good then I
Put my right hand on right and I waggle it and I waggle and take a quarter step 45 degrees to the left side so I go this way so I’m kind of setting up I’m here and I kind of waggle and set up that’s like my routine every single time so
What I’ve done is that now when I’m setting up and getting over the ball my grip is secure and I’m not standing over the ball like worrying about my grip which is never a good thing but the nice part or not the nice part but the time
To really do one of these grip changes is really when you have a span of time maybe it’s an offseason or what I like to call the Development season or a time where you don’t have anything that you’re really playing um but like important like a dude’s trip or
Something like that because to be honest the hard part about a grip change is that when you’re over the ball like this there’s this selft talk that’s like oh my gosh this feels so weird so we want to make sure that we have basically an opportunity to make it our own which is
Going to take a few weeks but if you can just stick with me for a few weeks in trying that it’s going to make it way easier to control the face leverage it create lag and all of those things so that’s what we wanted to cover right
Here on this first on not really the first episode but on this episode of the stock Shot Show is just making sure that your grip is intact so that now you have a fighting chance to control the face because if I were to say hey what do you
Really want you go I want to be more consistent I go so how you going to do that you go I got to know where the face is that’s like another way of saying that that is like the what you want to be on the PJ tour if you can control the
Face then you could be on the PGA tour essentially so we need to make sure that our grip is good to have a fighting chance to control the face so in the next episodes we’re going to dive more into some of these fundamentals because honest to God I think that if we could
Master these fundamentals of like our grip our posture our alignment we would definitely get rid of that gigantic miss that plagues many players games and in the in the next episodes I’ll be talking about why that is and how we can come comat that and how we can practice it to
Make sure that we are always set up for Success so thanks so much for tuning in and we’ll see you guys next time on the stock Shot Show
