You're Correct!

Its really important to hold the golf club at the correct pressure throughout your golf swing if you want to ensure a crisp, consistent strike on the golf ball.

Holding the club at the correct pressure will allow you to present the golf club face back to the ball correctly, ensuring a centred strike, that produces maximum accuracy and length.

In order to hold the golf club correctly and to hold it rather than squeezing it tightly, try the following drill. Hold the golf club and the squeeze your hands as tightly as you can. This is a 10 on our grip scale. Now relax the pressure in your hands to half of this, to a five. Just release slightly more so you achieve a 4 out of the original 10 tight squeeze. This is now the correct pressure to hold the golf club at throughout the swing, a 4 out of 10.

Holding the golf club at this pressure will allow you to hold rather than squeeze the club. Your muscles will then be able to remain relaxed throughout your golf swing and this will allow you to present the club face back to the ball at the height that it began at.

If your muscles become tight and tense during your golf swing, your muscles actually shorten as they contract when they are working. When this happens, even though you have set the club head on the ground in your address position, as soon as you squeeze tightly in your hands, your muscles in your arms contract and you shorten the length of your arms. This now results in the club head being lifted from the ground and as you swing the club head back towards the ball with a shorter arm length, you will strike the top of the golf ball, or have an air shot.

Holding the golf club too loosely with your hands will cause you issues as you swing your golf club. If you do not have a sufficient grip pressure when the club head strikes the golf ball, especially if it strikes the ball off centre on the face, the club will twist and turn in your hands and produce a shot that flies off target.

If you hold as tightly as you can, not only are the muscles in your hands in use, but also those in your wrist, forearms and even those in your shoulders. Tight muscles in your wrists means that you will not be able to hinge them correctly, or release them through impact correctly. Tight shoulder muscles mean that you will not make a full shoulder turn during your swing. This will result in a loss of distance and accuracy to your shots.