You're Correct!

A question that often gets asked is “What is the right way to hold my putter?”. The truth is, there is no right or wrong way to hold it, but there are some key features that are present in any good putting grip no matter what style of grip you employ.

Let us look at those key features and how they work within a couple of different styles starting with a conventional grip.

The Conventional Grip

Firstly, you need to place your top hand on, taking care to rest the lifeline (the line in the palm of your hand that runs from the joint of your wrist towards your index or fore finger) against the edge of the flat part of the grip, placing your thumb on the top. Place the lifeline of your bottom hand against the middle finger of your top hand.

From here, your thumb will now sit next to the thumb of your top hand and the palms of your hands will be facing each other. It is vital that you do not try to put your thumb on top of or over the thumb of your top hand as this will effect the alignment of your forearms and make it harder for you to control the putter face during your stroke.

The Claw Grip

The claw still has some key features even though only one hand is fully on the putter handle. The top hand is placed on the handle in exactly the same way as it would be for a conventional grip, with the lifeline resting against the edge of the fat part of the grip. The importance of this sees the back of the top hand facing towards your aim line.

There are a couple of different ways for the bottom hand of the claw grip to rest. The original way and where the grip gets its name from is to place the finger prints of your four fingers on the flat front of the grip and the thumb against the back. This helps to reduce the amount of wrist movement during the stroke. The other popular way is to place the bottom hand on like youre holding a pencil, with your finger prints on the side of the grip, and facing the palm of your top hand.

If you hold the putter in your fingers then your stroke will have some degree of wrist action in it. Although there is no wrong way to hold your putter, the more into the fingers the grip gets, the more wrist action you will have in your stroke, and the more difficult it will be for you to control your putter face.

Having a gap between your hands can be quite destructive when it comes to making a solid putting stroke. With your bottom hand separated from the top, it starts to dominate the stroke more in the forward swing, causing the lead wrist to break down and the putter head to flip through impact with too much speed.

Having the forearms level in the set up is crucial to maintaining a good putter face position throughout your stroke, and turning one of your hands more towards the target has a detrimental effect on this. If this happens, your ability to keep the putter face square to the path throughout your stroke will be impossible unless you develop a compensatory move in your stroke.