Left Hand Golf Tip: How to Create the Right Grip Pressure (Video)
Left Hand Golf Tip: How to Create the Right Grip Pressure (Video)

Probably the most important part of your setup, the most important part of your golfing technique is your grip. It’s the only part of your body which is in contact hopefully anyway with the club at any one time so your hands on the grip need to be in a perfect position but also they need to have the perfect grip pressure. Now grip pressure very simply is how lightly and how tightly you're actually holding on to the club. Every one’s different; everyone has a different kind of grip pressure which is unique to them. If you go back to the great players say and Arnold Palmer he used to grip onto the club as tightly as possible while Sam Snead same well – same generation just a little bit before, he used to hold onto the club as lightly as possible.

So it is very individual, Sam Snead was very languid he was very relaxed, Arnold just gripped it round, grip it, grip it find it again very tight grip. It does need to be individual but there are extremes. If you are gripping onto the club too tightly as soon as you start to grip on tightly the tension starts in the hands, builds up through the four arms and before you know it you're upper body is too tight. And when the upper body gets too tight it restricts movement, it restricts motion. On the opposite end of the scale if your grip pressure is too loose and you're holding in very, very lightly as though it’s not even there and your hands everything can become a little bit – well the best word to use is floppy actually through the ball and you won’t quite get the connection that you need, you won’t quite get the power and you won’t have as much control over the club as you should have. So it needs to be somewhere in the middle but it also needs to be unique to you. Now there's a couple of ways of actually doing it, there's a couple of old maxims, they have been flying around for a few years that you can actually think about. The first one is that you're holding a live bird; just something small like a sparrow or a finch but just a very light grip, just to make sure that it doesn’t fly away but you don’t want it tight enough that you actually hurt the bird. So you're just griping it just so it’s held in the hands, just so it doesn’t fly away but not that you're actually hurting it. The second one you can use is imagine you're holding an open tube of toothpaste so if you're holding the tube of toothpaste you want to be swinging it just with a grip pressure that will see the tube of toothpaste doesn’t fall out of your hands but not quite strong enough the tooth paste is squirting out all over the place so were going to just holding on to it just lightly enough so it doesn’t squirt but strong enough so you don’t drop it. If that doesn’t quite appeal to you can just use a grip pressure scale. Very simple from one to 10, one being the lightest you can grip it, 10 being the tightest you can grip it. Most people will kind of fluff – will find their better grip pressure right in the middle of that scale number five. It’s very simple to do, you can grip on to it with a grip pressure of 10 to see how that feels and you can actually just in my arms and my hands as I relax that’s sort of one. You can actually see how much relaxed they get. What you want is somewhere in the middle about a four or a five. When you get down to the shorter clubs it can become even less than that. One of the greatest putters of all time Ben Crenshaw he used to grip his putter so lightly it almost fell out of his hands. Tiger Woods another great putter he holds it a lot stronger which is about five or six on the scale. Like I said its individual. But you don’t want to be too light; you don’t want to be heavy handed with the grip. You need to find that nice middle ground which will give the most consistent and the best results for your game. 2014-03-04

Probably the most important part of your setup, the most important part of your golfing technique is your grip. It’s the only part of your body which is in contact hopefully anyway with the club at any one time so your hands on the grip need to be in a perfect position but also they need to have the perfect grip pressure. Now grip pressure very simply is how lightly and how tightly you're actually holding on to the club. Every one’s different; everyone has a different kind of grip pressure which is unique to them. If you go back to the great players say and Arnold Palmer he used to grip onto the club as tightly as possible while Sam Snead same well – same generation just a little bit before, he used to hold onto the club as lightly as possible.

So it is very individual, Sam Snead was very languid he was very relaxed, Arnold just gripped it round, grip it, grip it find it again very tight grip. It does need to be individual but there are extremes. If you are gripping onto the club too tightly as soon as you start to grip on tightly the tension starts in the hands, builds up through the four arms and before you know it you're upper body is too tight. And when the upper body gets too tight it restricts movement, it restricts motion. On the opposite end of the scale if your grip pressure is too loose and you're holding in very, very lightly as though it’s not even there and your hands everything can become a little bit – well the best word to use is floppy actually through the ball and you won’t quite get the connection that you need, you won’t quite get the power and you won’t have as much control over the club as you should have. So it needs to be somewhere in the middle but it also needs to be unique to you.

Now there's a couple of ways of actually doing it, there's a couple of old maxims, they have been flying around for a few years that you can actually think about. The first one is that you're holding a live bird; just something small like a sparrow or a finch but just a very light grip, just to make sure that it doesn’t fly away but you don’t want it tight enough that you actually hurt the bird. So you're just griping it just so it’s held in the hands, just so it doesn’t fly away but not that you're actually hurting it. The second one you can use is imagine you're holding an open tube of toothpaste so if you're holding the tube of toothpaste you want to be swinging it just with a grip pressure that will see the tube of toothpaste doesn’t fall out of your hands but not quite strong enough the tooth paste is squirting out all over the place so were going to just holding on to it just lightly enough so it doesn’t squirt but strong enough so you don’t drop it.

If that doesn’t quite appeal to you can just use a grip pressure scale. Very simple from one to 10, one being the lightest you can grip it, 10 being the tightest you can grip it. Most people will kind of fluff – will find their better grip pressure right in the middle of that scale number five. It’s very simple to do, you can grip on to it with a grip pressure of 10 to see how that feels and you can actually just in my arms and my hands as I relax that’s sort of one. You can actually see how much relaxed they get. What you want is somewhere in the middle about a four or a five. When you get down to the shorter clubs it can become even less than that. One of the greatest putters of all time Ben Crenshaw he used to grip his putter so lightly it almost fell out of his hands. Tiger Woods another great putter he holds it a lot stronger which is about five or six on the scale. Like I said its individual. But you don’t want to be too light; you don’t want to be heavy handed with the grip. You need to find that nice middle ground which will give the most consistent and the best results for your game.