Choking Up - Troubleshooting Your Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Choking Up - Troubleshooting Your Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

So far it sounds like choking up on the golf club is all win, win, win. You know, we get more control we get a more penetrating ball flight and so on. But there are some issues that might happen to a golfer who does choke up on the golf club. So things we’ve got to consider things we’ve got to watch for. The first one could be hooking the golf ball, so making the ball move too far from right to left and the ball finishing down the left hand side. Now this will often happen for a golfer because they’ve gripped down on the club they feel like they’ve got more control and their hands actually have a bit too much influence on here. And particularly because their lower body might move slower their tempo is quicker the hands fire over and the ball can hook down the left hand side for the right handed golfer because you are choking up.

So be careful of that one. The next one we might consider is topping the golf ball. It’s a fairly simple and easy thing to understand this and that you are normally holding the club at this length and the club reaches the floor you are now holding the club at this length and the club doesn’t reach the floor unless you make the relevant compensations by tilting a little bit more forwards in the posture and feeling like you are more a top of the ball. So as you grip down on the golf club we’ve got to make sure that we lean nicely over and we stay nicely over and we don’t stand up back to our normal position which is probably going to cause the club to come in too high and hit the top of the ball. Last consideration that some people get into when they choke up on the club is actually they stand a little too near to the golf ball and they actually hit the shank. So although we are choking up on the club and holding towards the base we want to stand the relevant distance back. We don’t want to crowd it. If we get too near here we could find that there is no room to bring the club down. We bring the heel towards the ball and we shank it and it shoots off sideways. So let’s make sure that we stand the relevant distance away from the ball, we are trying to avoid the shank we are trying to avoid the top and we are trying to avoid the pull hook with this new choking up idea in our grip. 2016-07-18

So far it sounds like choking up on the golf club is all win, win, win. You know, we get more control we get a more penetrating ball flight and so on. But there are some issues that might happen to a golfer who does choke up on the golf club. So things we’ve got to consider things we’ve got to watch for. The first one could be hooking the golf ball, so making the ball move too far from right to left and the ball finishing down the left hand side. Now this will often happen for a golfer because they’ve gripped down on the club they feel like they’ve got more control and their hands actually have a bit too much influence on here. And particularly because their lower body might move slower their tempo is quicker the hands fire over and the ball can hook down the left hand side for the right handed golfer because you are choking up.

So be careful of that one. The next one we might consider is topping the golf ball. It’s a fairly simple and easy thing to understand this and that you are normally holding the club at this length and the club reaches the floor you are now holding the club at this length and the club doesn’t reach the floor unless you make the relevant compensations by tilting a little bit more forwards in the posture and feeling like you are more a top of the ball. So as you grip down on the golf club we’ve got to make sure that we lean nicely over and we stay nicely over and we don’t stand up back to our normal position which is probably going to cause the club to come in too high and hit the top of the ball.

Last consideration that some people get into when they choke up on the club is actually they stand a little too near to the golf ball and they actually hit the shank. So although we are choking up on the club and holding towards the base we want to stand the relevant distance back. We don’t want to crowd it. If we get too near here we could find that there is no room to bring the club down. We bring the heel towards the ball and we shank it and it shoots off sideways. So let’s make sure that we stand the relevant distance away from the ball, we are trying to avoid the shank we are trying to avoid the top and we are trying to avoid the pull hook with this new choking up idea in our grip.