You're Correct!

When hitting your golf shots, you may feel a real vibration once you have struck the ball, you can really feel the club vibrating and you get a tingling in your hands. This is because you are hitting the ball from off centre, it is not being struck from the middle of the golf club or off the sweet spot.

The sweet spot on the club face is about the size of a small coin, centred in the middle of the face and when the ball is struck from this area of the club, you get maximum length, maximum accuracy and most consistency. You will not feel the shot at all as you strike it as it is being hit from the middle.

The more vibration that you feel in your hands when you have hit your shot and the more intense the vibration is, the further away from the centre of the club face the golf ball was struck. This kind of feeling really helps you know where the ball is coming off the club face, but it is not good to be hitting off centre golf shots on a cold day, when your hands are cold, because it really can hurt at times if you are not striking from the centre.

A good drill to work on to help reduce the amount of vibration you feel with your golf clubs and to get you hitting more from the centre of the club face, is to play a game called Ten Ten. If you look at your club face, imagine where the sweet spot is and imagine a bullseye in the middle of the club face. We are going to call that position, the middle of the club face, a Ten Ten. It scores a 10 because you have hit it right from the centre of the club vertically, from the bottom of the face to the top and it also scores a 10 because you have hit it from the centre of the club face horizontally as well. It is a good idea to do this drill with some impact tape, or face tape. You can put one of the stickers onto the club face and it will leave a circle where the ball was struck from.

If you know where Ten Ten is in the middle of the face, you now need to hit a shot and then before you look at the face and where the mark is on the face tape, decide where the ball was struck from. Was it from the centre, did it score Ten Ten, or was it struck towards the bottom of the face, towards the zero? If you start moving towards the heel, the outer side of the heel is zero and similarly towards the toe, the outer side of the toe is zero. So what number would you give where you felt the club face strike the ball? Now look at the mark that has been left, to see if what you thought happened actually happened. You will get the feedback from the tape, because the mark will be left on it. Work on improving the strike and moving the next strike closer to the middle of the club face.

Holding the golf club loosely should actually create a positive influence in your swing as it will reduce tension which in turn can lead to better strikes and less club vibration.

If you hit from the sweet spot, you really will not feel anything as you go through the ball. You will not feel any impact on the ball. You will achieve maximum distance, maximum accuracy and most consistency in your shots. Work on playing Ten Ten and getting the ball more centred in the middle of the club face. If you find that you are striking more towards the heel then just try standing a little bit further back from the ball. Similarly, if you are striking too much off the toe, try and stand a little bit closer.

Work on this until you find the strike is coming much more from the centre and you should find that really improves your golf game.