How does My Hand Placement Effect the Ball flight? (Video) - by Pete Styles
How does My Hand Placement Effect the Ball flight? (Video) - by Pete Styles

I’ve got a golf question for you here, how does your hand placement affect the ball flight? There’s a couple of answers to this really because my initial response is well hand placement doesn’t affect ball flight because the ball doesn’t know where your hands are all the ball knows about is where the club is. And there’s the answer really, your hand placement affects the club position and therefore the club position affects the ball flight. So if we trace this one back, if your hands should be on the golf club in a neutral position, neutral position meaning the hands aren’t trying to fight each other, they’re quite happy sitting where they’re sitting, the club face should come back down square. But if your hands turn into a strong position, strong is for the right handed golfer, left hand too far right, right hand, too far right. That’s a strong grip, I know it’s strong because if I relax my hands they do that and the club; face closes over. So if I have strong grip, the club face would be closing over, the ball flight would start left and if I’m swinging straight it would keep turning left. So a strong grip could cause a hook, counteract that with a weaker grip, a weak grip is too far to the left with the left hand too far to the left, with the right hand a weaker grip now opens the club face because my grip controls the club face, my club face controls the ball.

So the club face is pointing to the right and I’m swinging straight the ball starts right and then curves even further right, so to that respect my hands can control the club which controls the ball. One of the consideration with hand placement is if your hands are placed a long way ahead of the golf ball at the start or a long way behind the ball at the start and they’re ahead or behind at impact that’s going to control a height of the shot. Not strictly the direction but more so the height. So if I have the hands ahead when I hit I’m generally going to hit the golf ball down and low that’s more of a punch, like a little chip and roam that’s driven low and runs forwards maybe after the trees to escape the trees. Likewise if my hands are placed back at setup, not a great position to be and if I’m honest this is going to cause the ball to go high if I can strike it, if I get a bad contact I would really struggle to get underneath the golf ball so not a great position to have your hands. But having your hands ahead or behind changes the height, having a strong or a weak grip controls the direction. Ideally you would have a nice, neutral grip with your hands very slightly ahead of the ball with the mid iron that’s going to be the best position to control the height of the shot, to control the strike of the shot and keep the direction nice and straight. 2014-05-12

I’ve got a golf question for you here, how does your hand placement affect the ball flight? There’s a couple of answers to this really because my initial response is well hand placement doesn’t affect ball flight because the ball doesn’t know where your hands are all the ball knows about is where the club is. And there’s the answer really, your hand placement affects the club position and therefore the club position affects the ball flight. So if we trace this one back, if your hands should be on the golf club in a neutral position, neutral position meaning the hands aren’t trying to fight each other, they’re quite happy sitting where they’re sitting, the club face should come back down square. But if your hands turn into a strong position, strong is for the right handed golfer, left hand too far right, right hand, too far right. That’s a strong grip, I know it’s strong because if I relax my hands they do that and the club; face closes over. So if I have strong grip, the club face would be closing over, the ball flight would start left and if I’m swinging straight it would keep turning left. So a strong grip could cause a hook, counteract that with a weaker grip, a weak grip is too far to the left with the left hand too far to the left, with the right hand a weaker grip now opens the club face because my grip controls the club face, my club face controls the ball.

So the club face is pointing to the right and I’m swinging straight the ball starts right and then curves even further right, so to that respect my hands can control the club which controls the ball. One of the consideration with hand placement is if your hands are placed a long way ahead of the golf ball at the start or a long way behind the ball at the start and they’re ahead or behind at impact that’s going to control a height of the shot. Not strictly the direction but more so the height. So if I have the hands ahead when I hit I’m generally going to hit the golf ball down and low that’s more of a punch, like a little chip and roam that’s driven low and runs forwards maybe after the trees to escape the trees. Likewise if my hands are placed back at setup, not a great position to be and if I’m honest this is going to cause the ball to go high if I can strike it, if I get a bad contact I would really struggle to get underneath the golf ball so not a great position to have your hands. But having your hands ahead or behind changes the height, having a strong or a weak grip controls the direction. Ideally you would have a nice, neutral grip with your hands very slightly ahead of the ball with the mid iron that’s going to be the best position to control the height of the shot, to control the strike of the shot and keep the direction nice and straight.