Practicing Your Golf Claw Putting Grip (Video) - by Pete Styles
Practicing Your Golf Claw Putting Grip (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you’ve decided that you're now going to go ahead and make the change to the claw or the penholder or the saw putting grip, the first thing I'd like you to consider doing is making sure you've had plenty of practice time on the putting green before you even dare to take it out on the golf course. I don’t want you starting on the first green worrying about whether this new grip is going to work for you. That’s no good at all. This needs to be tried and tested on the putting green before you take it out to play. And the first consideration when you are practicing here is holding out.

So I'd like to take the ball pretty close to the hole between 3 and 5 feet away from the hole, and just practice banging in putts in this distance. You might do some different drills here. You might do sort of around the clock drill where you put a ball down at every hour marker around the clock, walk around there trying to knock them all in. And if you miss one you go back to the start and start again. But just basic drills that can help you holing out from 3 to 5 feet away. You should feel like with that new grip you've got less influence of the right hand. And you can start to just stroke the ball in. The second part of your practice, you're going to stand a lot further back away from the hole. And focus not on necessarily getting the ball in, but on your distance control. A lot of people suggest that when they change to this different type of grip, they lose a bit of distance control. So distance control from further away is quite important because that's primarily the reason why people do putt. So we want to get this first putt rolling down nice and close to the hole within about a putter’s length of the hole. And ideally if we can get the ball to roll past the hole that would be even better. So if on long range get the ball rolling up to slightly past the hole that it had a chance to go in, but it’s still close enough that it's within one putter’s length and we can knock in the return putt. So distance control from long range and then holing out from close range, they are the best ways for you to practice with your new putting grip. 2016-07-15

If you’ve decided that you're now going to go ahead and make the change to the claw or the penholder or the saw putting grip, the first thing I'd like you to consider doing is making sure you've had plenty of practice time on the putting green before you even dare to take it out on the golf course. I don’t want you starting on the first green worrying about whether this new grip is going to work for you. That’s no good at all. This needs to be tried and tested on the putting green before you take it out to play. And the first consideration when you are practicing here is holding out.

So I'd like to take the ball pretty close to the hole between 3 and 5 feet away from the hole, and just practice banging in putts in this distance. You might do some different drills here. You might do sort of around the clock drill where you put a ball down at every hour marker around the clock, walk around there trying to knock them all in. And if you miss one you go back to the start and start again. But just basic drills that can help you holing out from 3 to 5 feet away. You should feel like with that new grip you've got less influence of the right hand.

And you can start to just stroke the ball in. The second part of your practice, you're going to stand a lot further back away from the hole. And focus not on necessarily getting the ball in, but on your distance control. A lot of people suggest that when they change to this different type of grip, they lose a bit of distance control. So distance control from further away is quite important because that's primarily the reason why people do putt. So we want to get this first putt rolling down nice and close to the hole within about a putter’s length of the hole.

And ideally if we can get the ball to roll past the hole that would be even better. So if on long range get the ball rolling up to slightly past the hole that it had a chance to go in, but it’s still close enough that it's within one putter’s length and we can knock in the return putt. So distance control from long range and then holing out from close range, they are the best ways for you to practice with your new putting grip.