Putting Grips and Tips, How Important Is It To Have A Good Grip (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Putting Grips and Tips, How Important Is It To Have A Good Grip (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

How important is it to have a really good grip when you’re putting? Well, similar to a full swing, be it with an iron or with a driver, the golf putting grip is your only connection to the club head and therefore the only connection to the golf ball. So it doesn’t matter how good your body is doing, how good the alignment is with your feet, how good the stroke is with your body, if you’ve got a weak link here, a poor connection between the club and your body via a poor grip, you’re not going to have the control of the club head or the control of the golf ball that you would like. So it’s really important to get a good grip.

Now, it’s not as simple as giving you one particular type of grip, because when you watch the best players in the world, you’ll see all sorts of different variations on grips and people hold it with a claw grip, a pen holder grip, a normal grip, a back to front grip; all sorts of different types. But one thing I would suggest is the putting grip is not the same as your normal iron swing or driver swing in your full swing. The reason for that is in that grip that we have for a full swing, the hands and arms are designed to hinge and release through the golf ball to generate the power, and that’s the movement we simply don’t need and don’t require when we’re putting. So what I would suggest you do is whatever you do change you grip from a normal putting -- sorry from a normal full swing grip to a definite different putting grip. Now, the easiest way to change this would be start off with the normal grip then unlink your fingers, take the bottom index finger and point it down at the ball and take your other index finger and point that down at the ball which will now sit above those finger nails. And simply by doing that, you change the position and the shape of your hands, quite important as well, you change the feel in your hands, your hands now know they’re not doing the hinging up and hinging releasing job that they were doing in a full swing. They now feel that they have to go backwards and forwards in a much more stable and solid fashion as much less the release and the hinge because we simply don’t require that in a normal putting grip. So I can’t go as far as forcing you to change into one particular fashion but I would suggest that you don’t use your normal putting grip --oh sorry you normal golf swing grip for putting; try something where your fingers work like little stabilizers pointing down towards the golf ball. That when you make your stroke now requires a lot less wrist hinge. And if you can have a good consistent link between what your body is doing and what the club head is doing by really solid stable golf grip, you should have more control of the club head, more control of the ball, and hole more putts. 2014-10-08

How important is it to have a really good grip when you’re putting? Well, similar to a full swing, be it with an iron or with a driver, the golf putting grip is your only connection to the club head and therefore the only connection to the golf ball. So it doesn’t matter how good your body is doing, how good the alignment is with your feet, how good the stroke is with your body, if you’ve got a weak link here, a poor connection between the club and your body via a poor grip, you’re not going to have the control of the club head or the control of the golf ball that you would like. So it’s really important to get a good grip.

Now, it’s not as simple as giving you one particular type of grip, because when you watch the best players in the world, you’ll see all sorts of different variations on grips and people hold it with a claw grip, a pen holder grip, a normal grip, a back to front grip; all sorts of different types. But one thing I would suggest is the putting grip is not the same as your normal iron swing or driver swing in your full swing. The reason for that is in that grip that we have for a full swing, the hands and arms are designed to hinge and release through the golf ball to generate the power, and that’s the movement we simply don’t need and don’t require when we’re putting.

So what I would suggest you do is whatever you do change you grip from a normal putting — sorry from a normal full swing grip to a definite different putting grip. Now, the easiest way to change this would be start off with the normal grip then unlink your fingers, take the bottom index finger and point it down at the ball and take your other index finger and point that down at the ball which will now sit above those finger nails.

And simply by doing that, you change the position and the shape of your hands, quite important as well, you change the feel in your hands, your hands now know they’re not doing the hinging up and hinging releasing job that they were doing in a full swing. They now feel that they have to go backwards and forwards in a much more stable and solid fashion as much less the release and the hinge because we simply don’t require that in a normal putting grip.

So I can’t go as far as forcing you to change into one particular fashion but I would suggest that you don’t use your normal putting grip –oh sorry you normal golf swing grip for putting; try something where your fingers work like little stabilizers pointing down towards the golf ball. That when you make your stroke now requires a lot less wrist hinge. And if you can have a good consistent link between what your body is doing and what the club head is doing by really solid stable golf grip, you should have more control of the club head, more control of the ball, and hole more putts.