Setting The Stage During Your Golf Back Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
Setting The Stage During Your Golf Back Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

So having a strong grip position like the Zack Johnson move that we just talked about, that’s all well and good but that’s not the end of the deal. We can’t just put our hands in a strong position and hope for the best. We’ve got to make a couple of key movements within the golf swing to make sure that the strong grip is really going to work with the rest of the swing.

And I think when you watched that play, one of the key things you'll see with Zack Johnson’s swing is from the slightly strong position with the grip, he makes sure he has a really good shoulder rotation in the backswing. What we find with a lot of club golfers, if they have the strong grip and then they overuse their hands, they feel like their hands have gotten a lot of influence now so they lift their hands and chop back down on the golf club. In that respect, you’re probably going to have a lot of slow hook shots, just smothered hooks that pull down the left-hand side so you can have a slightly stronger grip but you’re going to need to really work hard on a big full body rotation to get the shoulders around to the top. And ideally, we want to see at least a 90-degree shoulder rotation. So I have those shoulders coming around to a nice full backswing turn. Now, as we’re doing that, we also want to make sure that in the backswing, we don’t slide away and we don’t lose our balance. So the slide away is how I would term this motion here, sliding away and then swayed of the golf ball. Too much body weight has come to the right side. All the body weight is on the outside of that right foot is now very difficult for me to move back forward and I’m off balance. And if I sway away to here and have a strong grip, there’s a real good chance that that club face is going to come down in a very closed position. As I hang back, I’m going to swipe my hands across my left leg and just hit this quite low duck hook. So we want to be quite careful that yes, we’ve got the nice strong grip, we lower the shoulders effectively but we don’t sway too much off this right side. We don’t lose our balance, we don’t rock backwards. So it’s quiet hands, good shoulder turn, nice and balanced. And as we turn through the ball there, my ball starts to draw from right to left down that left side slightly lower ball flight than I would normally expect because my strong grip is shutting the club face down slightly, drawing the ball from right to left, give me a nice long strong ball flight. So be careful of your body weight swaying and getting out of balance, make sure you have a full shoulder rotation if you're going to commit this good solid Zack Johnson strong grip. 2016-05-12

So having a strong grip position like the Zack Johnson move that we just talked about, that’s all well and good but that’s not the end of the deal. We can’t just put our hands in a strong position and hope for the best. We’ve got to make a couple of key movements within the golf swing to make sure that the strong grip is really going to work with the rest of the swing.

And I think when you watched that play, one of the key things you'll see with Zack Johnson’s swing is from the slightly strong position with the grip, he makes sure he has a really good shoulder rotation in the backswing. What we find with a lot of club golfers, if they have the strong grip and then they overuse their hands, they feel like their hands have gotten a lot of influence now so they lift their hands and chop back down on the golf club. In that respect, you’re probably going to have a lot of slow hook shots, just smothered hooks that pull down the left-hand side so you can have a slightly stronger grip but you’re going to need to really work hard on a big full body rotation to get the shoulders around to the top. And ideally, we want to see at least a 90-degree shoulder rotation.

So I have those shoulders coming around to a nice full backswing turn. Now, as we’re doing that, we also want to make sure that in the backswing, we don’t slide away and we don’t lose our balance. So the slide away is how I would term this motion here, sliding away and then swayed of the golf ball. Too much body weight has come to the right side. All the body weight is on the outside of that right foot is now very difficult for me to move back forward and I’m off balance. And if I sway away to here and have a strong grip, there’s a real good chance that that club face is going to come down in a very closed position. As I hang back, I’m going to swipe my hands across my left leg and just hit this quite low duck hook. So we want to be quite careful that yes, we’ve got the nice strong grip, we lower the shoulders effectively but we don’t sway too much off this right side. We don’t lose our balance, we don’t rock backwards. So it’s quiet hands, good shoulder turn, nice and balanced.

And as we turn through the ball there, my ball starts to draw from right to left down that left side slightly lower ball flight than I would normally expect because my strong grip is shutting the club face down slightly, drawing the ball from right to left, give me a nice long strong ball flight. So be careful of your body weight swaying and getting out of balance, make sure you have a full shoulder rotation if you're going to commit this good solid Zack Johnson strong grip.