How To Choke Up Correctly On The Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles
How To Choke Up Correctly On The Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles

If we've now established that choking up on the golf club is something we think we'd like to do in our game to get more accurate shots and potentially lower ball flights and we need to make sure we're doing this step by step process in the correct version. It's not just the case of taking your normal stance and set up and then gripping lower down. Let me show you what would happen if that was the case. So I take my normal stance, my normal set up here and then I grip lower down and suddenly as I do that I feel very off balance, I'm far too far away from the golf ball, I'm leaning forward too much and I'm not in a position where I feel like I can accurately and comfortably make my normal swing.

The problem was that I took my normal address position, so correct distance away if I'm holding this part of the club, but then I grip down to this part of the club and suddenly I stretch my back out a bit too much. So what I would like to be able to do is establish the correct set up by being the right distance away from the ball first before we take the right grip. So I'll go ahead and take my set up but this time I'm thinking about having my hands lower down the club and therefore I shuffle nearer to the ball, so I'm not standing back here that I'm in closer because the club's a lot shorter, then I take my address position here. A good way of checking that is that hands and arms are still nicely hanging down in their natural position vertically straight downwards because if I was too far away in stretching my hand would hang in this position, which is where the handle should be so the ball will therefore need to be a lot nearer to me. So in order to accurately choke up on the club, what I would encourage you to do is go to the driving range initially just with some short irons, just some wedges, stand the right distance away from the ball for the choked up position. Get yourself comfortable and clip few shots away at that level and then build that into your longer swings. And yes when you go to your bigger swings, your bigger clubs you will step back a little bit at the time as the club gets longer but you should never feel like you're the normal distance away from the ball for your normal shot and the gripping down because you'll simply be stretched out a little bit too far instead of choking up in the correct way. 2016-07-18

If we've now established that choking up on the golf club is something we think we'd like to do in our game to get more accurate shots and potentially lower ball flights and we need to make sure we're doing this step by step process in the correct version. It's not just the case of taking your normal stance and set up and then gripping lower down. Let me show you what would happen if that was the case. So I take my normal stance, my normal set up here and then I grip lower down and suddenly as I do that I feel very off balance, I'm far too far away from the golf ball, I'm leaning forward too much and I'm not in a position where I feel like I can accurately and comfortably make my normal swing.

The problem was that I took my normal address position, so correct distance away if I'm holding this part of the club, but then I grip down to this part of the club and suddenly I stretch my back out a bit too much. So what I would like to be able to do is establish the correct set up by being the right distance away from the ball first before we take the right grip. So I'll go ahead and take my set up but this time I'm thinking about having my hands lower down the club and therefore I shuffle nearer to the ball, so I'm not standing back here that I'm in closer because the club's a lot shorter, then I take my address position here.

A good way of checking that is that hands and arms are still nicely hanging down in their natural position vertically straight downwards because if I was too far away in stretching my hand would hang in this position, which is where the handle should be so the ball will therefore need to be a lot nearer to me. So in order to accurately choke up on the club, what I would encourage you to do is go to the driving range initially just with some short irons, just some wedges, stand the right distance away from the ball for the choked up position. Get yourself comfortable and clip few shots away at that level and then build that into your longer swings.

And yes when you go to your bigger swings, your bigger clubs you will step back a little bit at the time as the club gets longer but you should never feel like you're the normal distance away from the ball for your normal shot and the gripping down because you'll simply be stretched out a little bit too far instead of choking up in the correct way.